A Contrastive Study On Thematic Choice In Scientific Papers' Abstracts In English And Chinese

This study was undertaken to make a eontrastive analysis of the thematic choicebetween English and Chinese scientific papers' abstracts. Its objectives are to find out thesimilarities and differences in choices of Themes in English and Chinese scientificpapers' abstracts so as to disclose the regularity of the abstracts in discourse constructionand to provide some help for writing and translation in scientific abstracts.The Brown's stratified random sampling strategy was employed in this study toselect 60 article abstracts from five prestigious and representative journals in the field ofscience both in English and Chinese. These journals include: Chinese Journal ofComputer (计算机学报), Scientia Agricultura Sinica(中国农业科学), Acta MathematicaSinica(数学学报), Acta Physics Sinica(物理学报), and Acta Chemica Sinica(化学学报). Aeontrastive study of these 60 scientific abstracts was carried out, by applying Halliday'sTheme-Rheme theory. A qualitative and quantitative analysis was conducted on thepercentage of types of Themes and on the semantic categories in the head of unmarkedThemes and circumstantially marked Themes.There are four major findings in this study:1) In both English and Chinese scientific paper abstracts, simple Themes dominate,and multiple Themes are realized by 'textual Theme+Topical Theme'. No interpersonalThemes are found in English abstracts and in Chinese abstracts.2) Conjunctive adjuncts dominate in both English and Chinese scientific papers'abstracts in terms of textual Themes. And the number of textual Themes in English andChinese scientific papers' abstracts is almost the same.3) As for markedness, unmarked Themes dominate in both English and Chinesescientific abstracts. With regard to unmarked Themes, both English and Chinesescientific abstracts are dominated by 'Epistemic nouns'. The Themes of 'object ofresearch' are used much more frequently in English scientific abstracts than in Chinesescientific abstracts. 'Elliptical Themes' are only found in Chinese scientific abstracts.4) Most of marked Themes are practically circumstantial, and the marked Theme of'Time' has almost the same frequency in both English and Chinese abstracts.The findings of this study can be applied to language teaching, especially to the teaching of writing, helping students know how to write a good abstract from theperspective of thematic choice. By applying our research findings to translation, theChinese renderings can be made more accurate and fluent in SP abstracts.