A Corpus-Based Study Of The Structures And Functions Of Lexical Bundles In Academic Writings Of Native Scholars In Various Disciplines

With the advent of corpus linguistics, the study of lexical bundles is gaining more andmore attention from scholars. Lexical bundles are regarded as the basic unit of languageand a significant symbol of proficient language use. Unnatural or unprofessional languagecould occur if learners fail to use bundles appropriately.The study established linguistic corpus, physics corpus and energy corpus, based onwhich all the qualified bundles are classified and analyzed structurally and functionally indetail so as to discover similarities and differences of the bundles used among the threecorpora. The findings are as follows: structurally, bundles with “NP+of” structure enjoythe highest percentage in linguistics and energy. Compared to bundles in linguistics,bundles in physics and energy have heavy reliance on passive structure. Functionally,participant-oriented bundles take up the least proportion in three corpora. Text-orientedbundles won the greatest popularity in linguistics and energy while research-orientedbundles are most favored in physics. The study further explores the possible reasons of thedifferences. The main reason may be due to the different characteristics of differentdisciplines. It is well known that linguistics and energy emphasize much on theory studiesand interpretations while physics focuses mainly on empirical studies.The characteristics of the structural and functional distributions of bundles in threecorpora further strengthen the findings of previous studies, which conclude that bundles inacademic proses are more phrasal than clausal in nature, and in writings of hard sciences,research-oriented bundles take up the largest proportion while in writings of softknowledge, text-oriented bundles take up the largest proportion. The findings regarding tothe structural and functional characteristics of bundles in three corpora enrich studies onthe bundles used in various disciplines, make the establishment of core AcademicFormulas List possible and provide significant guidance for ESP or EAP teaching.