Structural Types of Noun Phrase Premodification and Their Distribution in Medical English

Abstract

This paper investigates premodification as one of the major noun phrase components in a specific type of written scientific register. The aim is to investigate and describe the structure and distribution of types of premodification in a corpus of medical English and determine if there are some significant differences among different periods in the last twenty years. Since the corpus comprises medical articles, we set up two hypotheses 1 - types of premodification within the noun phrase appearing in these periods are the same and their complexity and distribution can be conditioned by the level of research complexity described in an article, and 2 - there are new premodifying elements in addition to the typical ones, which are related to medical English, i.e. scientific writing. Using analysis, synthesis and comparative method we managed to confirm our hypotheses, which means that premodification of a noun phrase in medical English is specific and different from other written registers to a certain extent.

Keywords

• premodification
• medical register
• premodifying element
• premodifier