Use Of Nominalization In English Research Articles

As a prominent feature of academic writing,nominalization is endowed with the function of enhancing coherence,brevity and objectivity.Nominalization is often used in various grammatical structures to pack high-density information in texts with few words.The introduction section of research articles(RA)serves multiple functions,such as introducing the research purpose,reviewing the research background and presenting the present work,which makes it rich in nominalizations.The majority of studies on nominalization have focused on its use and distribution in academic discourse.However,the lexico-grammatical features and discourse distribution of nominalization and its patterns have not been fully investigated.This study,based on a corpus of introductions of English RAs,investigates the linguistic features,distribution and function of nominalization and its prominent patterns in materials science and linguistics.The following research questions are addressed:(1)What is the distribution of nominalization and its patterns in the introduction section of linguistics and materials science RAs?(2)What are the features of prominent nominalization patterns in linguistics and materials science RAs?What are the similarities and differences of nominalization and its patterns in linguistics and material Science RAs?(3)How are the complex nominalization patterns distributed across the move structure of the introduction in linguistics and material Science RAs?To address the above research questions,the corpus was manually annotated for the nominalization patterns,including NN,PNP and adj N,and the move structure of introductions.On the basis of the annotation,data extraction,statistics,and analysis were conducted.The results of this study show that the use of nominalization and its patterns have both commonality and disciplinary characteristics in materials science and linguistics English RAs.The main findings of this study are:(1)The two disciplines show the similar trend that the frequency of complex nominalization patterns is much higher than that of simple nominalization patterns.However,differences are also found between the two disciplines in the distribution of nominalization and its patterns.Nominalized material processes take up a higher percentage in materials science than in linguistics,while nominalized mental and verbal process occupy a higher percentage in linguistics.Materials science employs simple patterns and complex patterns with higher frequency than linguistics,and the differences in frequency between the two disciplines is statistically significant.(2)High-frequency complex nominalization patterns in both disciplines are NN,Adj N and PNP.In materials science,the structure of the NN pattern is more complex than that in linguistics.NN pattern is used to refer to events or physical objects in materials science,while the most common use of NN pattern in linguistics is to define theoretical concepts.In the Adj N pattern,descriptive adjectives are more common in linguistics than materials science,while classifying adjectives are more prominent in materials science,which are often used to specify the nature of the research process.In addition,compared with linguistics,the PNP pattern in materials science is more complex,involving multi-layer embedding and with longer average length.The distinct structural and functional features of nominalization patterns in materials science and linguistics may be related to the way knowledge is constructed and transmitted in the two disciplines.(3)The distribution of nominalization patterns across the moves of material science and linguistics introductions follows the decreasing order of Move 1 “Establishing a Territory”,Move 3 “Presenting the Present Work”,and Move 2 “Identifying a niche”.The move distribution of the nominalization patterns is closely related to the rhetorical function of each move.The above findings demonstrate that the simple and complex nominalization patterns both play an important part in academic discourse and knowledge construction in different disciplines.The findings of the present study have pedagogical implications and will also help the researchers in these two disciplines better understand the phenomenon of nominalization and improve their academic writing skills.