Hello,

for my dissertation project I need to make the point

1) that there are more nouns (and noun compounds) in English that there are verbs/adjectives/adverbs etc.

2) That new nouns (and noun compounds) are more frequently invented than other word classes.

While most linguists will probably agree, I need some numbers to back this up!

Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this? I though about obtaining some counts of how often entries for these word classes occur in dictionaries. Does someone know if there is some numbers like this publicly available. For example for LEO? (although that's probably not the best dictionary to go for--my Professor is rather old and anything that is somewhat related to the Internet has the stigmata of unreliability--in her eyes, not in mine.)

Thanks a lot for your help!

Best Regards,
Marc