A diachronic approach to scientific lexicon in English: Evidence from Late Modern English

Abstract

This research focuses on the Corpus of English Texts on Astronomy (CETA), the first sub-corpus of CC, presenting a diachronic approach to astronomy specific lexicon found in texts from 1710 to 1920. The goal of this research is trying to determine the evolution of the lexical astronomy-domain specificity in the CETA. That is, how many astronomy-like lexical features occur in the English astronomic texts gathered in the CETA. This might shed some light on: (i) the introduction rate of new astronomic specific vocabulary along time, (ii) lexical richness in English astronomic texts, (iii) the rate of new astronomic specific vocabulary along time, (iv) the potential lexical specific features of English astronomic texts, and (v) lexico-semantic text difficulty of English astronomic texts.