A Contrastive Study Of Theme And Thematic Progression In English And Chinese Abstracts Of Research Articles

Taking abstracts of English and Chinese research articles as the object of study, the thesis makes a contrastive study of theme choices and thematic progression patterns in those abstracts, aiming to find out the differences and similarities in the choice of theme and thematic progression patterns between English and Chinese abstracts of research articles and provide some help for writing and translation of abstracts of research articles.The study is made to solve the following questions:⑴What are the similarities and differences of theme choices in English and Chinese abstracts of research articles? What accounts for the similarities and differences?⑵What are the similarities and differences of unmarked themes in English and Chinese abstracts of research articles? What accounts for the similarities and differences?⑶What are the similarities and differences of marked themes in English and Chinese abstracts of research articles? What accounts for the similarities and differences?⑷What are the similarities and differences of thematic progression patterns in English and Chinese abstracts of research articles? What accounts for the similarities and differences?The corpus of the study consists of 40 abstracts of both English and Chinese research articles, which are selected randomly from eight core journals of linguistics. Quantitative analysis is made for all the abstracts. The major findings are:⑴In both English and Chinese abstracts, simple themes dominate;⑵The usages of textual themes in English and Chinese abstracts are almost same. Conjunctive adjuncts dominate in both English and Chinese abstracts;⑶Unmarked themes dominate in both English and Chinese abstracts, and both English and Chinese abstracts prefer object of research and epistemic nouns;⑷The marked themes of manner are used more frequently in English abstracts and the marked themes of angle are used more frequently in Chinese abstracts;⑸As for TP patterns, Both English and Chinese abstracts use parallel progression pattern and continuous progression pattern more frequently.The findings can be applied to language teaching for writing and translation of abstracts, helping students know how to write a good abstract and make accurate translation from the perspective of thematic choices and thematic progression patterns.