Yanina Cademártori’s research while affiliated with Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso and other places

In this article, we focus on nominalizations, which are an important lexical resource used in written specialized discourse. Our purpose is to describe the occurrence and syntactic functions of nominalizations identified by derivational suffixes in a corpus of technical manuals belonging to three different areas of specialization: maritime, industrial and commerce. By means of computational tools following corpus linguistic methodologies, nominalizations occurring specifically in each area were determined. Through this process, we intend to identify lexical units with a specialized meaning, belonging to specialized vocabulary of each area of knowledge. The results confirm the idea that the comparatively relevant presence of nominalizations is a prototypical feature of technical discourse. Concerning the derivational suffixes, the evidence provided confirms the high occurrence of the suffixes -ción/-sión in all the three areas. The most common syntactic function is as head of nominal group object of the prepositional phrase and as head of the nominal group followed by a prepositional phrase postmodifier

En el presente estudio se analizan 24 manuales técnicos que destacan como un exponente del discurso divulgativo en el ámbito didáctico y que, como tal, está obligado a responder a múltiples exigencias comunicativas. Dado lo anterior, podemos suponer la coexistencia en esta clase textual de modos de organización textual variados, incluidos el narrativo y el expositivo-informativo. Por tanto, nuestro propósito es realizar un análisis cualitativo que dé cuenta de la presencia de fragmentos tanto narrativos como informativos en estos manuales, relacionándolos con dos de las dimensiones o interpretaciones funcionales de co-ocurrencia de rasgos lingüísticos, establecidas a partir del proyecto marco en el cual el estudio está inserto, es decir, la dimensión Foco Narrativo y la dimensión Foco Informativo.