Abstract
This paper quantitatively analyses the role of morphemes with respect to their types of origin. Static quantitative analysis of a given data set is not sufficient for this aim, as language data in general and terminological data in particular have the specific characteristic of being “incomplete” in the sense that many unseen elements are expected in the theoretical population. Thus, the quantitative structure of morphemes in terminology should be analysed dynamically, by observing the growth pattern of morphemes. In order to allow for that, we use binomial interpolation and extrapolation. Results of analyses of the terminologies of six different domains follow, revealing interesting characteristics of the role of morphemes of different types of origin that do not manifest themselves through static quantitative analysis.
