Initial combining forms across registers: the case of aero-, hydro- and cyber-

Abstract

This study investigates to what extent certain lexical differences can be attributed to factors such as register. To this end, the paper addresses the empirical domain of a word-creation process by means of initial combining forms (ICFs) of neoclassical origin. The research undertaken is based on the use of ICFs in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, a corpus compiled from texts drawn from spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper and academic sources. The study focuses on the variation of neoclassical elements across registers, and questions their morphological status and currency. The findings confirm the hypotheses of the higher presence of initial combining forms in science and technology domains n magazine and academic journals, and the lower use in spoken registers. It also confirms that nowadays some initial combining forms have developed into free morphemes, a fact which contradicts the essence of the bound nature of combining forms. The study highlights that neoclassical forms are a salient resource in the lexical expansion of terminology and claims their pedagogical implications in ESP word-formation processes.