Nominality Ratio as Element of Stylistic Characteristic o/Text
Marek Ruszkowski
Abstract
The most characteristic part of every text as regards the occurrence frequency of speech parts is the number of nouns and verbs, respectively. Quantity relationship between the two word classes detem1ines the degree of nominality which can be calculated with the application of the so called nominality ratio. lts value is the quotient of the total number of nouns used in a text by the to tal number of used verbs. The numeric value of the parameter under analysis is of importance for the purpose of detem1ining stylistic nature of a text. The value may characterise both the style of a particular text, author, types and genres ofliterature as well as functional styles and specify the extent ofnominality in national languages. Analysis o f27 types oftexts - both spoken and written ones -demonstrates that some of them represent nominal styles (as it seems, the noun-to-verb ratio exceeds 3.0), others - verba! styles (the noun-to-verb ratio is !ower than 1 .5). However, most texts should be numbered among intermediate styles (the noun-to-verb ratio ranging from 1.6 to 3.0) that span between liveliness, dynamics and intellectual colouring which manifests itself by nomina lity. Significant deviations from the average value of that parameter whose value for the Polish language is 2.3 are always stylistically meaningful.
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