Abstract

CADEMARTORI, Yanina; PARODI, Giovanni  and  VENEGAS, René. El discurso escrito y especializado: caracterización y funciones de las nominalizaciones en los manuales técnicos. Lit. lingüíst. [online]. 2006, n.17, pp. 243-265. ISSN 0716-5811.  doi: 10.4067/S0716-58112006000100015.

In this article, we focus on nominalizations, which are an important lexical resource used in written specialized discourse. Our purpose is to describe the occurrence and syntactic functions of nominalizations identified by derivational suffixes in a corpus of technical manuals belonging to three different areas of specialization: maritime, industrial and commerce. By means of computational tools following corpus linguistic methodologies, nominalizations occurring specifically in each area were determined. Through this process, we intend to identify lexical units with a specialized meaning, belonging to specialized vocabulary of each area of knowledge. The results confirm the idea that the comparatively relevant presence of nominalizations is a prototypical feature of technical discourse. Concerning the derivational suffixes, the evidence provided confirms the high occurrence of the suffixes -ción/-sión in all the three areas. The most common syntactic function is as head of nominal group object of the prepositional phrase and as head of the nominal group followed by a prepositional phrase postmodifier

Keywords : nominalization; specialized discourse; corpus linguistics.