A Contrastive Study On Transitivity In English Abstracts Of Academic Papers Written By Chinese And Western Writers

English abstract plays an indispensable role in academic papers. The present thesis madea contrastive study of transitivity, attempting to explore the overall distributional similaritiesand differences of transitivity features in English abstracts and the distributional similaritiesand differences of process types of transitivity in the four moves(Introduction-Method-Result-Discussion/Conclusion) of English abstracts written by Chineseand Western writers.One hundred English abstracts by Chinese and Western writers in the field of appliedlinguistics were selected and analyzed, all of which contained four moves(Introduction-Method-Result-Discussion/Conclusion), and were150-word to200-word long.Statistical package (SPSS), quantitative approach and contrastive analysis were adopted.Similarities and differences were found in the use of the process type between Chineseand Western writers. The similarities was manifested by the finding that both of thememployed five process types of transitivity, namely, material, relational, mental, verbal andexistential processes in the English abstracts of academic papers, with the exception ofbehavior processes. Material processes enjoyed the largest proportion of all the process types,followed by relational and mental processes. Of the five process types, material, relationaland existential processes were not significantly different in frequencies between Chinese andWestern writers, and the first two types were preferred by both Chinese and Western writers.Significant differences were found in the frequencies of mental and verbal processes; andthese two process types were preferred by Western writers more than by Chinese authors.The study also found differences and similarities concerning the distribution of processtypes and the dominant types in different moves. The Introduction, Method and Result Movespresented a similar tendency. There was no distributional difference of material, relationaland existential processes, but significant differences of mental and verbal processes werefound in these three moves of English abstracts. Among the three moves, the dominantprocess types were material and relational processes. In the Conclusion Move, there was nodistributional difference of process types between Chinese and Western writers, in which, material processes became the only dominant process type.The results demonstrated similarities and differences of transitivity features in Englishabstracts written by Chinese and western writers, which can help the readers have a betterunderstanding of English abstracts.