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Noun Formation in the Scientific Register of Late Modern English

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Noun Formation in the Scientific Register of Late Modern English NOUN FORMATION IN THE SCIENTIFIC REGISTER OF LATE MODERN ENGLISH A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH Gonzalo Camiña-Rioboo Department of English Philology Faculty of Philology University of A Coruña 2013 Supervised by Prof. Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño Doctorado Internacional, año 2013. Programa: Novas aproximación aos estudos ingleses Directora: Isabel Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa RESUMEN NOUN FORMATION IN THE SCIENTIFIC REGISTER OF LATE MODERN ENGLISH: A CORPUS-BASED APPROACH // LA FORMACIÓN DE NUEVOS NOMBRES EN EL REGISTRO CIENTÍFICO DEL INGLÉS MODERNO TARDÍO: UNA APROXIMACIÓN BASADA EN CORPUS. Gonzalo Camiña Rioboo Esta tesis doctoral presenta un análisis empírico y cuantitativo de los procesos de formación de nombres que se observan en el registro científico del inglés del siglo XVIII, después de la llamada ‘Revolución Científica’ en Gran Bretaña, y establece los patrones lingüísticos que siguen los nombres acuñados en el ámbito de la ciencia por los científicos de la época para denominar los nuevos descubrimientos, herramientas, avances tecnológicos, teorías e ideas predominantes en la época. Además, la investigación aquí presentada revisa los períodos de la historia de la lengua inglesa en los que los diferentes procesos morfológicos y unidades involucradas en esos procesos adquieren más o menos relevancia, y analiza la veracidad de las diferentes teorías lingüísticas actuales, las cuales presentan datos contradictorios: unas sostienen que en el siglo en cuestión se produjo una deceleración intencionada en la producción de palabras para conferir al inglés un status semejante al del latín y griego clásicos, lenguas que gozaban de gran prestigio en Europa y que no se veían afectadas por el cambio lingüístico por el hecho elemental de no contar con hablantes nativos vivos. Eran además las linguas francas de la ciencia y utilizadas en publicaciones y reuniones científicas hasta ese momento. Otras teorías aducen que no hay un número suficiente de estudios que se centren en el inglés moderno tardío como para determinar cuantitativamente la deceleración citada con anterioridad. Sea cual fuere el motivo, el interés de este período radica fundamentalmente en el deseo y voluntariedad por parte de los investigadores de la época, así como de instituciones científicas tales como la Royal Society of London, de abandonar el uso de las lenguas anteriores para diseminar el conocimiento científico en inglés, ya que esta era la única lengua que conocía la mayoría de la población y, por tanto, el mejor vehículo para la transmisión del saber. Este se considera el momento crucial en el que la ciencia sale de las universidades y se hace universal. En este punto se enmarca esta tesis, y para demostrar todo lo citado en el párrafo anterior he utilizado la metodología de la lingüística de corpus, es decir, la combinación de un corpus lingüístico anotado conforme a los estándares ‘eXtended Mark-up Language’ y ‘Text Encoding Initiative’, y diversas herramientas informáticas para extraer y cuantificar los datos morfológicos relevantes al estudio, con el fin de analizarlos y encontrar patrones lingüísticos que expliquen amplios rangos de ocurrencias que corroboren, contradigan o complementen las teorías lingüísticas existentes. Como principal fuente de consulta del origen de los nuevos nombres, los elementos que los componen y de las fechas de primer uso tanto de esos elementos como de las palabras resultantes, he utilizado el prestigioso Oxford English Dictionary (OED) en su versión online, en sintonía con otros trabajos significativos, como el publicado por Culpeper y Clapham (1996) sobre el sobre el préstamo lingüístico, y Camiña Rioboo (2010, 2012) sobre la formación de palabras, o el de Caso (1980) sobre el cambio semántico, aunque este último utilizó el diccionario Chambers de ciencia, más conocido como Collocott. Con el objetivo de ofrecer una variedad de resultados que abarque disciplinas científicas en claro contraste, he estudiado textos que provienen de dos ciencias diferentes, una experimental basada en la observación y las matemáticas, y la otra basada en el razonamiento abstracto. Para este estudio he utilizado dos subcorpora de astronomía y filosofía de muy reciente creación pertenecientes al Coruña Corpus of English Scientific Writing (de aquí en adelante, Coruña Corpus) desarrollado en la Universidade da Coruña por el Research Group for Multimedia Studies in English, concretamente el Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA, publicado en 2012 por John Benjamins Publishing Company), y el Corpus of English Philosophy Texts (CEPhiT, pendiente de publicación por John Benjamins), respectivamente. Ambos han sido analizados desde un punto de vista morfológico con la herramienta desarrollada por IRLAB, Coruña Corpus Tool, cuya apariencia se muestra en el gráfico siguiente: La tesis está dividida en cuatro capítulos principales, y cuenta también con una introducción, un capítulo de conclusiones y un apéndice. Los cuatro capítulos tratan en profundidad los aspectos intralingüísticos y extralingüísticos más relevantes en la historia de la lengua, detallando aquellos que teóricamente intervienen en el cambio lingüístico, y que dan forma al inglés que se escribía en los textos científicos entre 1700 y 1799, mi objeto de estudio. Así pues, el capítulo 1 describe la historia externa de la lengua. En él se destacan la importancia de las sucesivas invasiones de Gran Bretaña, con la consiguiente influencia de las lenguas invasoras en los angloparlantes, así como los cambios y revoluciones culturales y sociales que tuvieron impacto en el conocimiento en general, y en la lengua en particular. Igualmente, se valida el estudio de eventos históricos y científicos del pasado desde la perspectiva del siglo XXI, aunque se advierte de los peligros que esto conlleva, haciendo hincapié en que algunos de los términos empleados, como el de ‘ciencia’ o ‘científico’ todavía no existían en el momento de la historia en la que se basa este estudio. Además, se recalca que la división entre astronomía y filosofía no era como la entendemos hoy día. Para obtener más información sobre la composición del corpus habrá que referirse a los múltiples estudios publicados por Isabel Moskowich, Begoña Crespo, e Inés Lareo, entre otros (ver bibliografía al final de esta tesis). El capítulo 2 explica teorías lingüísticas actuales sobre morfología y formación de palabras, intenta definir los límites entre la morfología flexiva y la derivativa, define los procesos principales de esta última, al igual que los elementos que intervienen en la acuñación de nuevos nombres, y compara las teorías lingüísticas de hoy con las teorías gramaticales imperantes en el siglo XVIII, cuando el término ‘morfología’ ni siquiera se aplicaba en el ámbito lingüístico, sino que estaba restringido a las ciencias naturales. Es de destacar que los ejemplos citados en este capítulo para explicar estas teorías han sido extraídos del corpus prácticamente en su totalidad. El capítulo 3 se centra en la metodología empleada, la lingüística de corpus, y el conjunto de muestras analizado. Se describen las condiciones establecidas por MuStE que deben cumplir las muestras de texto para que puedan ser incluidas en un corpus lingüístico, en este caso el Coruña Corpus, condiciones que han sido ahora también adoptadas por importantes lingüistas de corpus a nivel internacional, y se presentan los contenidos de los dos subcorpora analizados. En este capítulo se muestra el proceso en cascada descendente del análisis realizado en el capítulo 4, con el que se espera restringir y focalizar el estudio con cada paso. El gráfico siguiente muestra el proceso: CETA y CEPhiT Elementos •Segmentación léxicos • Desambiguación Nombres Simples y •Complejidad complejos Procesos de •Morfología derivava formación • Exclusión de composición, Nombres conversión y otros derivados En primer lugar se han compilado los subcorpora de astronomía y filosofía utilizando cuarenta y una muestras, todas ellas de diez mil palabras, excepto en dos casos que corresponden a artículos científicos más breves. Todas las muestras han sido escritas por autores diferentes con un uso de la lengua variado, y se han utilizado prácticamente en todos los casos primeras ediciones. Las muestras son trabajos originales en inglés, es decir, no proceden de traducciones de otras lenguas, y ni siquiera de adaptaciones al inglés escritas por los mismos autores que también publicaban trabajos en latín o griego. Todos los autores son hablantes nativos que han sido educados en las islas británicas, tanto del sexo masculino como femenino. El corpus presenta una variedad de géneros literarios/tipos de texto que permite contrastar usos lingüísticos diferentes en ellos. En segundo lugar he segmentado el corpus, que contiene cuatrocientos ocho mil novecientos ochenta y un elementos léxicos, y he cuantificado todos los nombres, y agrupado todas las ocurrencias en tipos, obviamente teniendo en cuenta tanto las diferentes grafías como los casos de singular y plural. El gran número de nombres obtenido, cuatro mil quinientos cincuenta y ocho, me ha obligado a crear una base de datos informatizada que pueda manejar la cantidad ingente de información a manipular y el uso de fórmulas matemáticas complejas que comparan y contrastan los datos desde el punto de vista de una multitud de variables, tales como el número de ocurrencias de cada nombre en los textos, el proceso lingüístico asociado a su creación, en caso de ser afijación también he analizado el subproceso,
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