A Contrastive Study On Nominalization In The English Abstracts Of Doctoral Dissertations Written By Chinese Writers And American Writers

The paper adopted functional approach for a contrastive study on nominalization between the English abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and that written by American writers with the aim of revealing the characteristics of the use of nominalization and its application effects. The study took the English abstracts written by Chinese writers and American writers as the subjects and made a contrastive analysis on the use of nominalization from the frequency of nominalization, the choice of nominalization types and functions achieved through the use of nominalization. 150 English abstracts were collected from 2010 to 2013 as the subject of the study from Doctoral Dissertation Database in China and digital libraries of some universities in the United States, 75 from each. The sample abstracts were analyzed in the light of grammatical metaphor theories proposed by Halliday.The research result showed that the application of nominalization was common in the English abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and American writers and it was mainly distributed in the "Introduction" and "Result" Move and the number of nominalization that occurred in the "Method" and "Discussion" Move was relatively low. The nominalization types were in the same order by frequency in the two corpora: process nominalization, quality nominalization, zero nominalization, circumstance nominalization, the relator nominalization. The two dominant types were process nominalization and quality nominalization both in the English abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and American writers. Specific analysis and contrast indicated that the nominalization types were more frequently used in the English abstracts by American writers than in the English abstracts by Chinese writers. For the application purpose and effects, the functions achieved through the use of nominalizations in the two corpora were condensing function, expanding function, formality function, optimality function, objectivity function and cohesive function. The dominant functions achieved through the use of nominalization were densification function and expanding function both in the English abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and American writers. Compared with Chinese writers, American writers use more nominalizations achieving the above mentioned functions.The study made a contrastive analysis on the use of nominalization in the English abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and American writers by adopting quantitative and qualitative research method from the perspective of systemicfunctional grammar, which clarifies the characteristics of the use of nominalization and similarities and differences in the use of nominalization in the abstracts of doctoral dissertations written by Chinese writers and American writers, gives deep knowledge of operation process of nominalization in the academic papers, and meanwhile provides references for thesis writing and teaching.