A Study On The Types And Functions Of Chinese Non-SP Sentenees In Research Articles

Research articles (RAs) is an important form for researchers to get their research findings published. It is also a platform for information sharing in the field of science and technology (ST). Scholars at home and abroad have done much study on RAs, including the macro and micro structures of Chinese and English RAs, composition of Chinese and English RAs, the C-E translation of RAs. However, there has been few studies done concerning the language of Chinese RA itself, and this is particularly true with Chinese Non-Subject Predicate Sentences (NSPS)—a very common language phenomenon in the field of ST—including its types, functions and relationship between types and functions.This research aims at studying NSPS types, distribution features in the respective four sections (Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion) in the RA, their functions, and the relationship between NSPS types and functions. In this study, altogether56RAs were randomly collected from five ST fields of study, namely Physics, Computer Science, Forestry, Medical Science and Architecture. All of them are from the first volume of the year2010. Data processing was done with the help of Microsoft Word2003. Taking Functional Linguist Halliday’s view as one of the theoretical foundations and the Chinese NSPS patterns proposed by Liu Miqing as the framework, the author carefully examined each of the RA, identified and recorded all the NSPS types appeared in the RAs. Then comparison was made between the author’s finding and Liu’s framework to examine the linguistic features of Chinese language in the ST field. In this present research, all together13types of NSPS were identified, including NSPS-VO and NSPS-SV. NSPS-CVAW takes up32.33%of all NSPS and NSPS-CVI accounts for0.15%, which ranks first and the last respectively, among other NSPS types. The author’s model differs from the framework suggested by Liu, which partly reflects the differences between Chinese language in the ST field and for general purpose; most importantly, it is a revision and enrichment of Liu’s framework. The most frequently employed NSPS type in the Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Conclusion sections are NSPCPS, NSPCPS, NSPS-CVAW, and NSPS-VO. A tentative summary was also made about the function each NSPS type carries in the RAs. Besides, through careful examination of their forms and functions, it is found that different correspondent relations between NSPS forms and functions exist, namely, one form—one function; one form—more than one function; one function—one form and one function—more than one form.Taking Functional Linguistics as one of its theoretical foundations, this present research chooses Chinese NSPS as the research object and examines Chinese language used in the ST field. Theoretically, this research revised and enriched Liu’s model of Chinese NSPS and paved the way for the study about combining form and function for Chinese language; meanwhile, this research enriched Functionalism from "Chinese for science and technology", confirmed functionalist view about relationship between language form and function. In practice, this research will serve as a frame of reference for the teaching and composition of Chinese RAs, and will provide basic materials for studying translation strategies for NSPS C-E translation strategies.