Globale Untersuchung zum Sondervokabular des Thomas von Aquin

This contribution studies the vocabulary of scholasticism – exemplified in St. Thomas Aquinas – from a global, linguistic point of view. His digitised opera and the Thomas-Lexikon by Ludwig Schütz in comparison with works from St. Augustin and Cicero serve to determine the formation of words not yet present in these latter authors and changes in the frequencies of prefixes, suffixes, compounds and prepositions. This procedure makes it evident that nominalisation – especially through suffixation – is the main source of new words (although not so much with the «prime suspect » -tas) whereas prefixes and compounds play only a minor rôle. But on the whole it is the amount of prepositions that differs most strikingly in St. Thomas from Augustin and Cicero. They seem to be of special importance to guarantee the perspicuitas needed in scientific university discourse. A concluding glance at Byzantine Greek seems to indicate that there composition took the rôle suffixation plays in Latin scholasticism.