Dependency distance has increasingly become a key measure of interest in cross-linguistic corpus studies from multiple perspectives. Based on a syntactically annotated corpus of 400 PhD dissertation ...abstracts written by native English (L1) and English as a foreign language (L2) academic writers, the current study investigated the mean dependency distance (MDD) variation across language backgrounds and disciplines, which is followed by a grammatical description based on fine-grained indices related to particular syntactic structures. The findings include: (1) L2 academic writers produce an averagely longer MDD than L1 academic writers because of their heavy use of prepositional phrases; (2) The MDD of the linguistics abstracts is significantly longer than that of the physics & chemistry abstracts because of the relatively higher syntactic complexity of the language of linguistics. The findings suggest that MDD can effectively differentiate academic texts with different language backgrounds and disciplines, that both L1 and L2 academic writers write under the constraint of dependency distance minimization, and that L2 PhD dissertation writers have achieved native-like writing proficiency in extending nominal structures.
This article aims to conduct a corpus-based study of the diachronic and synchronic distributions of a special type of participle adjectivization, the
adjectivization. The study based on the Corpus of ...Historical American English (COHA) finds that this process of adjectivization consists of two phases: (1) The downward rank-shift from the
construction to the
adjectivization is a process of metaphorization; (2) The transcategorization from the
adjectivization to the
adjectivization is a process of lexicalization. The study based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) finds that
adjectivizations are mode and register sensitive but not discipline sensitive. The modifier use prefers to occur more in hard science texts to increase the complexity of nominal groups and the predicative use prefers to occur more in soft science texts to increase the grammatical intricacy of sentences. The reason for the non-sensitivity across disciplines is that evaluative adjectives tend to occur in neither soft nor hard science texts.
This article conducted a corpus‐based study on the discipline distributions of two types of textual metaphor identified by He et al. (2015) and He and Wen (2017), conjunctionalization of conjunctive ...adverbs and zero conjunctionalization of hypotactic conjunctions. It is found that conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbs is more prevalent in soft science texts than in hard science texts and zero conjunctionalization of hypotactic conjunctions is similarly distributed in hard science texts and in soft science texts. However, conjunctionalization of conjunctive adverbs is more prevalent in native English linguistics texts than in EFL Chinese linguistics texts while zero conjunctionalization of hypotactic conjunctions dominates in EFL Chinese linguistics texts because of the relatively lower frequency of hypotactic clause complexes in EFL Chinese linguistics texts. Textual metaphor functions to increase the grammatical intricacy of text and hence is not a characteristic feature of scientific writing. It is hereby concluded that EFL Chinese linguists do not write as technical texts as native English linguists.
This article conducts a COHA-based study on the diachronic and synchronic distributions of interpersonal metaphors of modality. The diachronic research finds that the metaphorization of modality ...occurs towards two directions, one being from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation, and the other being from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation. The synchronic research finds that interpersonal metaphors of modality are genre sensitive, but this sensitivity is determined by the shift from the subjective orientation to the objective orientation rather than from the implicit orientation to the explicit orientation. The findings show that interpersonal metaphors of modality arise from the transcategorization within the semantic domains, and it is objectification rather than explicitation that is the characteristic feature of the relatively more technical non-fiction texts.
This paper conducted a corpus‐driven study on the syntactic and semantic features of the first verb and the to‐infinitive in the “V‐to‐V” construction. It was found that the syntactic combination ...strength of the “V‐to‐V” construction and the semantic contribution of the first verb are in general negatively correlated. The “V‐to‐V” construction can, therefore, be classified into three types: (1) Hypotactic clause complex of expansion, where the two verbs in the “V‐to‐V” construction construe the two processes, with weak syntactic combination and high semantic contribution of the first verb; (2) Single verbal group, where the two verbs construe one process with the first verb being auxiliary, with strong syntactic combination and low semantic contribution of the first verb; (3) Hypotactic clause complex of projection, where the two verbs construe two processes, with flexible syntactic combination and high semantic contribution of the first verb. Such correlation can thus form a cline from hypotactic clause complex of expansion through hypotactic clause complex of projection to single verbal groups.
Adnominals are an important resource of noun modification in written registers, especially in academic writing. This study compares the frequencies of adjectival adnominals and nominal adnominals ...across two registers (Fiction and Academic writing) by calculating T-values and conducting Welch's t-tests on the adnominal subtypes. It is found that the preference for nominal adnominals exists in both the two registers and the mean frequencies of adjectival adnominals, premodifying nouns and postmodifying nouns increase as the register moves from Fiction to Academic writing. We further investigate the frequencies of adnominals in the research article abstracts across three disciplinary groups by conducting Welch's ANOVA test. No significant difference is revealed in T-values in the research article abstracts across disciplines. The difference of adjectival adnominals, nouns as postmodifiers and appositive nouns lacks practical applications, while the effects of disciplines on the frequency of premodifying nouns cannot be rejected. It is the mean frequencies of premodifying nouns that show the significant difference in the research article abstracts across disciplines. Premodifying nouns are more prevalent in hard science texts than in soft science texts.
•We can identify nominal group and participle adjectivizations in English.•Adjectivizations have the potential to shift from modifier use to predicative use.•Nominal group adjectivizations tend to ...occur more in formal academic texts.•Participle adjectivizations tend to occur more in informal spoken texts.•Noun classifiers are more prevalent in hard science texts than in soft science texts.
This study investigated the diachronic and synchronic distributions of the two types of adjectivization in English: nominal group adjectivization and participle adjectivization. The research based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) finds that -ion nouns will be adjectivized to the classifier use, then to the epithet use in nominal groups and finally to the predicative use, and that participles have the potential to be adjectivized to the epithet use and then to the predicative use. However, not all the modifier uses of the nominal group adjectivizations will shift to the predicative uses because nominal group adjectivizations typically function as classifier in nominal groups. The research based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) finds that nominal group adjectivizations tend to occur in formal academic texts because nominal group adjectivizations increase the lexical density whereas participle adjectivizations are oppositely distributed because participle adjectivizations function mostly as interpersonal epithet and the speaker involvement is not a characteristic feature of academic writing. The reason why the classifier uses of the nominal group adjectivizations do not have priority over the predicative uses in the hard science texts is that noun classifiers prefer to occur more in the hard science texts than in the soft science texts.
•VdeO clefts can be classified into specificational VdeO clefts and predicational VdeO clefts.•The development of specificational VdeO clefts involves constructionalization.•The development of ...predicational VdeO clefts involves constructional change.•The focus change of predicational VdeO clefts is governed by the Focus-Shift Principle.
Previous studies of Chinese VdeO clefts mainly focus on the function of shì and attribute the meaning of the VdeO clefts to the focus marking feature of shì without considering their functions and developments as independent constructions. This paper classifies VdeO clefts into specificational VdeO clefts (Variant1) and predicational VdeO clefts (Variant2) and analyzes the formation and development of these two types of Chinese VdeO clefts with a diachronic constructionist approach. The constructionalization of specificational VdeO clefts undergoes a series of function shifts from membership-inclusion to properties-predicating and then to value-specifying. It is the micro-step changes that finally lead to the mismatched pseudo-modifer VdeO element. The context-absorption of contrastive context is the source for the construction meaning specifying an exclusive value for the variable. In contrast, the development of predicational VdeO clefts only involves constructional changes from V-focus to VdeO-focus and then to O-focus. The change of focus is governed by the Focus-Shift Principle, according to which, the focus of a sentence tends to fall on the more complicated and specified information.
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