A contextual study of lexical verbs in two types of medical research report: Clinical and experimental

Abstract This paper analyses lexical verb use in two types of medical research articles (clinical and experimental). The corpus consists of two groups of four articles. Finite and non-finite forms of verbs occurring at a frequency of over 4 per 10,000 words were included. Lists were drawn up of verbs meeting this criterion in both groups and in one group only. For the contextual study, verbs were classified into seven categories: reporting, observation, relations, defining, cause and effect (C&E), change and growth (C&G), and methods. Differences in the overall distribution by rhetorical section and in individual verb functions between the groups were assessed statistically. Analysis of the reporting function showed clinical reports to be more assertive while experimental studies were more tentative. Certain reporting verbs coincided with moves in the Discussion cycle in both series.