This study takes into consideration some essential features of Dutch medical
language, contrasting them with features of Italian medical language and
comparing these data with observations made on other Germanic and Romance
languages. The purpose is to give an outline of the typological position of Dutch
and Italian with respect to their language families. First, Dutch nominal
compounds are analysed, focusing on a phenomenon typical of Germanic
languages: a double vocabulary, consisting of a native and a non-native,
neoclassical layer. Attention is then shifted to the morphosyntactic level,
highlighting the specific behaviour of adjectives in Italian and other Romance
languages, in particular their syntactic functionality and right-branching
structure, which favours clausal expansion. As a consequence of stronger
nominalization patterns in Italian with respect to Dutch, complex prepositions
are briefly analysed; followed by a discussion of the verbal system, which
emphasizes the use of concrete forms and complex verbs in Dutch. Both exhibit
a typical Germanic style, which is in strong contrast with the more abstract,
grammatical hardware-like verbs of Italian and other Romance languages.
