初期近代英語期の語彙の増大

派生による語彙の増加の重要性

初期近代英語期は語彙が大きく膨らんだ時代で、この際に注目されるのが、古典語からの借用です。しかしながら、派生（derivation）が無視できない要因であったことも忘れることはできません。Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton（編）の　The History of English, vol. 4: Early Modern English の第10章、”Standardization” を記述した Lilo Moessnerは、以下のように述べています。

“Robert Boyle, one of the most famous natural scientists and one of the founding members of the Royal Society, contributed as many as 446 neologisms. Only 73 (= 16.4%) are loan-words, but 315 (= 70.6%) belong to the category of affixations (Gotti 1996: 42-43). Henry Powel, another scientist and member of the Royal Society, who contributed 109 lexemes to the EModE vocabulary, followed a similar strategy: 70.6% of his neologisms are affixations, and only 12.8% are loan-words. A comparison with the neologisms attested in William Barlow’s treatise Magneticall Aduertisements (1616) reveals that in the natural sciences, contrary to the common core vocabulary, affixations played a more important role than loan-words already at the beginning of the 17th century. Their share decreases between the first and the second half of the century, whereas the share of affixations increases (Moessner 2007: 250).” (p. 181)