A Corpus-based Study Of English Clause Complex Features In Research Article Abstracts

Clause complex is an important linguistic unit for its role of linking clause and text,which is a new device for exploring the discourse structure.English clause complexes are mostly segmented by punctuation marks,such as full stops,exclamation marks and question marks in writing.As a unique genre,research articles(RA)have been of great interest to scholars at home and abroad.Although many studies have explored the discourse structure and the specific linguistic features of RA,few have investigated RA at the clause complex level.This thesis examined the English RA abstracts from the perspective of clause complexes.A corpus of English RA abstracts from both English and Chinese native speakers(ENSs and CNSs)across various disciplines was constructed and annotated with clause complex structures.This thesis aims to the explore the following two questions:(1)What are the clause complex-level characteristics of RA abstracts?(2)How do the characteristics of clause complex usage in RA abstracts differ based on related factors?The main findings are as follows: While all four patterns of naming-sharing structure(NSS)are present in RA abstracts,their distribution is significantly different from that in other genres,highlighting the unique style of academic text at the clause complex level.Most namings in abstracts are composed of single word or phrase,such as nouns or noun phrases.Compound namings are relatively infrequent but follow some certain patterns.Finite verb phrases are the most common type of telling in abstracts,while compound tellings are rare.There is a significant difference between ENSs and CNSs in the use of stack pattern,with CNSs using more stack patterns than ENSs.This suggests that there are significant differences in the use of NSS between native and non-native English speakers and that the utilization of clause complex structure is influenced by scholars’ mother tongue.Moreover,when comparing the use of the stack pattern in English abstracts translated from Chinese to those directly written in English by CNSs,it is found that the the number of stack pattern in the former is significantly larger,indicating the influence of language ability and translation on the use of clause complex structure.In terms of the syntactic feature of namings,CNSs tend to use more nominal coordinate structures,adverbials,clauses and formal subject/object as namings in RA abstracts,while less use pronouns,verbs or auxiliary verbs.This further displays the influence of language background on the use of clause complexes.Furthermore,a comparative analysis of the characteristics of English RA abstracts from different disciplines revealed no significant difference in the NSS and the syntactic type of naming and telling between“soft” and “hard” disciplines,indicating the universality of clause complex structure across disciplines.Based on the above findings,this study argues that the clause complex,as a linguistic unit,deserves more attention in language studies and should also be considered in contrastive study of different genres.Additionally,RA abstracts have unique usage of clause complex.Furthermore,there are certain differences in the usage of clause complex structures in abstracts written by ENSs and CNSs.Therefore,this study suggests that the patterns and grammar of clause complexes should also be introduced in language teaching to improve students’ understanding and production abilities at the clause complex level.