Medical terminology across the centuries: distinctive features of a chronological study in the field of ophthalmology

Abstract

This article deals with the comparison of the lexical features of two texts from a diachronic point of view. Interest in lexical comparison arises from the fact that the two texts belong to a specialised field within medicine –ophthalmology– and both can be considered of the same genre. The linguistic analysis focuses on morphological and etymological aspects, based on previous studies with a historical perspective in the field of medicine (Norri, 1992). As a result of the study, different implications concerning the use of words from the Germanic native stock or from other sources, together with the different social and scientific changes, are shown in this article.

Keywords

• Medical English
• historical linguistics
• lexicology
• corpus linguistics