Zu Adjektivkomposita in der heutigen Sprache der Medizin auf der Grundlage der Fachzeitschrift „Deutsches Ärzteblatt“. Ein sprachlicher Schnappschuss

Abstract

The linguistics of special languages, which deserves a great deal of attention, makes it possible to break down the various special languages almost to the ground. The position of special languages is undoubtedly relevant at the present time. Transferring specialized knowledge, special languages make it possible to define, among other things, various phenomena typical of a particular field. With the permanent development of sciences, special languages are also evolving. One of the special languages that is developing with tremendous speed is the language of medicine which is analyzed here. One particularly significant aspect of the study of special languages is word formation. The purpose of this article is to present adjectival compounding in German medical language. The theoretical part, first and foremost, presents the informative sketch of special languages in general, of medical language itself and of adjective composition as a type of word formation. In the empirical part, based on the corpus incorporating issues of the professional journal “Deutsches Ärzteblatt” it was investigated (using a qualitative and quantitative method), what a-constituents have the adjective compounds, how many components the adjective compounds retrieved there consist of, how they are written and what linking morphemes participate in their formation. The corpus analysis carried out in the article illuminates the direction of orientation in the development of the German language of medicine in the area of word formation – here with regard to adjective composition – and provides important information on the structure, length and spelling of the extracted adjective compounds.

Keywords

• special language
• medical language
• word formation
• adjective compounds
• corpus