A Corpus-based Study On Nominalization In English Of Science And Technology

Because of its high complexity and abstraction, English of Science and Technology (EST) often acts as an obstacle for the language learners in the process of English study. As one of the functional varieties in modern English, EST has the characteristics of objectivity in language, accuracy in expression and formality in style, which determine that the nominalization plays a vital role in scientific discourses. Nominalization can increase the lexical density of texts, which makes the texts possess a sense of objectivity and formality. Therefore, it is of great importance to study the nominalization in EST.The functionalists, represented by Halliday, associate the nominalization with Grammatical Metaphor from the view of textual and communicative function, providing a new approach to the study of nominalization. While the previous studies on nominalizations in EST are mostly based on the functions of nominalizations in the discourse construction and only a few scientific discourses are employed, lacking the empirical support. Three corpora with different text styles are employed to make the quantitative studies to compensate for this defect. Through the quantitative analyses of frequencies of nominalizations in JDEST and two sub-corpora of BNC (written language and spoken language), it is found that the nominalization is most commonly used in EST. What's more, most of scholars don't make a clear classification about the realizations of the nominalization and only analyze the functions of nominalizations as a whole in EST. Not only the overall frequencies and functions of nominalizations are investigated, but also the distributions and functions of nominalization endings are explored thoroughly based on the theory of Grammatical Metaphor in functional grammar in three corpora in the present study. For the frequencies of nominalizations are significantly different in three corpora, the relationship between nominalization and text formality is also investigated: the more nominalizations appear, the more formal the text is.It is found that the nominalization is a distinguished feature in EST in the present study. In the process of analyzing, teaching and translating scientific discourses, the nominalization should be emphasized. The study on nominalizations is of great value and importance for us to have a better study of the features of scientific discourses to comprehend or translate scientific discourses accurately.