| This thesis attempts to study a special kind of abstract nouns-shell nouns,such as thing,change,fact,idea,point,problem,position,etc.Shell nouns have a very high frequency in English.Their meanings are abstract in essence but can be made specific by the shell content connected through lexico-grammatical constructions.Research on shell nouns is one of the hot topics in the field of linguistics.Up till now,different scholars have studied shell nouns from various perspectives.And different scholars use different terms referring to such nouns,such as signalling nouns,general nouns,packet nouns,etc.Generally speaking,current research on shell nouns focuses on functional analysis,comparative analysis,genre analysis and lexicography.Functional analysis and comparative analysis are mostly conducted on small self-built corpora and research based on large online corpus is rare.Then previous studies tend to focus on a few high-frequency shell nouns and constructions such as this/these + N and N-be-that.Based on the sub-corpora MAG: Sci/Tech and ACAD: Sci/Tech of COCA,this study explores a less-studied construction N-that in depth and attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What are the total frequencies and semantic distributions of shell nouns in academic and popular science articles? What similarities and differences can be revealed by the total frequencies and semantic distributions?(2)Which are the core members of shell nouns in different semantic categories indicated by the collostructional strength in academic and popular science articles?Which shell nouns show salient difference in two genres?It is indicated by the results that shell nouns are more frequently-used in popular science articles and the frequencies exist significant discrepancies in academic and popular science articles.And in different semantic categories and sub-types,distinctions on frequencies in two genres vary,for example,frequency distinction on mental shell nouns is the most salient and it is the least in modal shell nouns.In terms of the overall semantic distributions,factual shell nouns and mental shell nouns are the predominant categories in two genres,with linguistic,modal and circumstantial shell nouns following subsequently.All the four categories above present a similar proportion.Thus,the overall semantic distributions of shell nouns show great consistency in two genres.But in some sub-types such as creditive uses,the variation of shell nouns on semantic distribution is distinct.In every semantic category discussed in this thesis,core members of shell nouns with relatively larger collostructional strength in both academic and popular science papers can be found and common shell nouns showing significant difference in collostructional strength can also be compared.Core members of factual shell nouns include fact,evidence,proof,indication.Shell nouns like finding,clue,sign,proof exist significant differences in two genres.The words finding and proof are popular in academic science articles.The shell noun sign is more prevailing in academic science articles while its synonym clue is used more often in popular science papers.The typical representatives of mental shell nouns are idea,notion,etc.Words like theory,surprise,fear show salient genre differences.The word theory is more opt for popular science articles.Words fear and surprise from emotive uses have a much stronger relation in popular science articles,which may express subjectivity to some extent.As for the linguistic shell nouns,words like argument,observation,etc are used with large collostructional strength.All the words excerpt observation and assurance have a closer relation with N-that in popular science articles.The two words indicate deliberate consideration of the author and such words preferred by popular science papers like argument or news in propositional uses can provide better news-worthiness and entertainment value.Epistemic uses dominate modal shell nouns.Typical shell nouns of this type include possibility,probability,etc.Some words of this uses are of great importance in academic science articles and academic writers can use them to hedge their propositions and achieve the goal of self-protection. |
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