| The abstract, as an essence and concentration of the whole English academic writing, is an essential carrier to introduce the basic idea and major research issues. Its special patterns and semantic features have enjoyed a great concern in the circle of English for Specific Purpose (ESP). The researchers home and abroad have carried out the investigation on the research article abstracts from various perspectives. However, the previous studies are mostly carried out from a macro perspective, the genre analysis in particular, whereas little attention are paid to corpus-based studies on the verb patterns in the abstract at a micro level.The patterns of a word can be defined as all the words and structures which are significantly associated with the word and which contribute to its meaning. A pattern can be identified if a combination of words occurs relatively frequently, if it is dependent on a particular word choice, and if there is a clear meaning associated with it (Hunston,2002:12). Compared with traditional grammar, pattern emphasizes the co-selection between the lexis and its grammatical environments and the relationship between the pattern and meaning.However, there are few studies on the verb patterns in the research article abstracts. Therefore, pos-tagging the corpus and using WordSmith4.0, this study mainly focuses on the patterns of research-announcing verbs with high frequency in the textile research article abstracts based on the Corpus of English Abstracts of Textile Research Articles (CEATRA). Research-announcing verbs refer to lexical verbs which are semantically closely connected with the process of academic research investigation and communication, denoting research acts, discourse acts and cognitive acts in the research article. Specifically, the research-announcing verbs can be used to outline purposes, announce present research or elaborate the principle findings. The exploration of the research-announcing verbs in this study aims to answer three main research questions as follows:1. What are the most frequent research-announcing verbs in the textile research article abstracts? And how to classify them semantically?2. What are the typical patterns of the research-announcing verbs?3. What are the discourse functions of the patterns of the research-announcing verbs?The results of the study show that there are32research-announcing verbs with the frequency above100times in the CEATRA. According to the semantic and collocational similarities of the verbs, they can be classified into experimental verbs, discourse verbs and cognitive verbs. The experimental verbs can be subcategorized into procedure verbs and finding verbs. The typical patterns of the three categories of research-announcing verbs are as follows:the procedure verbs frequently occur in the pattern:"be V-ed prep."," be V-ed.","be to V","be V-ed to v","V n"; five major patterns of finding verbs are found:"V that","it be V-ed that","be V-ed to belv","be V-ed prep.","V n"; discourse verbs are frequently used in five patterns:"V that","V n","-it be V-ed that","be V-ed.","be V-ed prep."; cognitive verbs are frequently used in three patterns:" it be V-ed that";"be V-ed to be/v";"as V-ed".The discourse functions of the patterns of research-announcing verbs are concluded as follows:first, the patterns of procedure verbs are frequently used to express the focuses of the research or to describe the experimental process; second, the patterns of the finding verbs are used to state the objective research results derived from the experimental process; third, the patterns of discourse verbs can be used to make a discussion on the research results or make a suggestion for the future use of the research achievements; forth, the cognitive verbs are used to show the expectation for the research results.It is expected that this research can have implications and provide guidance for the ESP research and non-native speakers’ ESP teaching and learning. |
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