Thematic Progression Patterns In Research Article Abstracts: A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese

As one of the most important ways to explain the relationship between sentences and realize the coherence of the text, in recent years, the thematic progression (TP) pattern has been studied by many scholars. Danes (1974) puts forward three basic TP patterns and then many other scholars at home and abroad have furthered the study of TP patterns. In China, TP patterns have been adopted in the field of discourse coherence analysis, especially Huang Guowen's (1988) six TP patterns have been frequently adopted to analyze how the text to be organized from the perspective of discourse to make it coherent, and many conceivable results have been concluded.However, studies, covered all kinds of discourses, such as news, advertisements, novels and short massages , have little referred to the research articles'abstracts, especially studies which have adopted TP patterns to make a contrastive analysis between English and Chinese abstracts in the field of Applied Linguistics.Therefore, the present thesis is based on the theoretical contributions made by Halliday (1985) and Danes (1974), the six TP patterns by Huang Guowen (1988), Zhu Yongsheng's (1994) analysis procedures, inspired by the hypothesis made by Fries P.H. (1983) and both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted with the aim to contrast the differences and compare the similarities between English and Chinese abstracts from the perspective of sentences organization to better guide abstracts'writing and understanding. Data collected in this study are from major linguistic journals at home and abroad.The following research questions are expected to be solved: 1) what are the characteristics of the theme choice in English abstracts and Chinese abstracts respectively? 2) What are the characteristics of the thematic progression patterns in English and Chinese abstracts? Are there any similarities and differences between them in terms of thematic progression patterns? 3) What kind of factors would possibly influence the theme choices and thematic progression patterns'adoption both in English and Chinese abstracts?After making a contrast for 30 abstracts in English and Chinese respectively, the major findings are summarized as follows:1) For the theme choices. The research articles'abstracts are dominated by simple themes and unmarked themes. Nominalization of verb and adjective is often thematized in unmarked themes; textual themes are used more frequently than interpersonal themes in multiple themes; prepositional or participial phrases used for the expression of temporal, place and manner, which introduce research background and theoretical framework, often are thematized in markedness in English abstracts. Compared with English abstracts, lack of the introduction of research background is a character in Chinese abstracts. At the same time, marked themes in English abstracts are linked to direct the way of manner, however, in Chinese, the way of angle is more adopted. Besides, lack of themes in Chinese abstracts can be found.2) For the adoption of TP patterns. Parallel progression pattern and linear progression pattern are preferred by both English and Chinese abstracts. However, the TP sequence in English abstracts is Parallel>Linear>Constant>Derivative; in Chinese abstracts, it is Linear>Parallel>Derivative>Constant. Moreover, the occurrences of Non-specific progression patterns in Chinese abstracts are more than those in English abstracts.3) Different thinking patterns and language systems respectively are the main factors which influence the choice of themes and TP patterns both in English and Chinese abstracts.The study also proves that TP patterns are closely related to the genre (Fries, 1983).The present thesis is made up of six parts:Part one provides a brief introduction to the present research background; Part two is referred to literature review about abstracts and TP patterns applied to different genres at home and abroad; Part three presents the theoretical framework of the study, namely, Halliday's (1985) view about the classification of theme and rheme, Huang Guowen's (1988) six TP patterns and Xu Shenghuan's (1985) proposal of seven logical semantic relations; Part four is about research methodology; Part five pays attention to statistical analysis and contrastive study and Part six goes for the conclusion of the research.Based on this study, some suggestions and implications for abstract writing could be offered. It is helpful for students to improve the sense of cross-cultural communication and the ability of abstract writing and understanding.