Types and Frequency of Compounds in a Selection of Texts in Economics
Types and Frequency of Compounds in a Selection of Texts in Economics

Summary/Abstract: Compounding in English is a complex linguistic phenomenon. Analyses of compounds can be quite demanding as it is sometimes necessary to analyze word classes comprising compounds in order to distinguish between composite nominals and compound nouns. Due to the complexity of their form, it may be rather difficult to interpret their meaning appropriately, especially in the absence of proper contextual clues. The present paper investigates the frequency and types of compounds in a selection of texts in economics collected from the 1995 and 2015 journal volumes. The analysis includes frequency data and comparisons between different types of compounds used in the two-decade period. The results show that the frequency of compounds in economic texts has increased, along with their complexity. The most frequent type were the nominal compounds, neoclassical being the least used.

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