A Corpus-based Study on the Frequency and Usage of Participial Clauses in Two Science Journals

This study presents the frequency and usage of participial clauses in two representative science journal, Cell and Physical Review Letters, PRL This linguistic feature functions as an important cohesive device connecting clauses, making the relationships clear and straightforward A total of 300 journal papers, 150 published in Cell and 150 published in PRL, were analyzed using a computer program developed for this study Sentence-ending participial clauses with the Main Clause, V+ing structure were most frequently found in both journal papers, with the proportion of 51% of sentences in Cell papers and 25% in PRL papers Verbs used in snetence-ending participial clauses represent the characteristics of each journal The other types of participial clauses did not differ much in terms of frequency Some pedagogical implications for the teaching of non-native speakers of English working in the field of science and technology are made

[1]  Guang-chun Ge,et al.  A corpus-based lexical study on frequency and distribution of Coxhead’s AWL word families in medical research articles (RAs)☆ , 2007 .

[2]  Yu Ren Dong,et al.  Non-native Graduate Students' Thesis/Dissertation Writing in Science: Self-reports by Students and Their Advisors from Two U.S. Institutions , 1998 .

[3]  Nicholas Groom.  Pattern and meaning across genres and disciplines: An exploratory study , 2005 .

[4]  Maggie Charles,et al.  Reconciling top-down and bottom-up approaches to graduate writing: Using a corpus to teach rhetorical functions , 2007 .

[5]  Françoise Salager-Meyer,et al.  Referential Behavior in Scientific Writing: aDiachronic Study (1810–1995) , 1999 .

[6]  Lois Malcolm,et al.  What rules govern tense usage in scientific articles , 1987 .

[7]  K. Hyland,et al.  Hooking the reader: a corpus study of evaluative that in abstracts , 2005 .

[8]  Diane Belcher,et al.  Seeking acceptance in an English-only research world , 2007 .

[9]  Peter Master,et al.  Generic the in scientific American , 1987 .

[10]  John Flowerdew,et al.  Writing for scholarly publication in English: The case of Hong Kong , 1999 .

[11]  Mike Nelson.  Semantic associations in Business English: A corpus-based analysis , 2006 .

[12]  M. Cargill,et al.  Introduction to the Special Issue: English for Research Publication Purposes , 2008 .

[13]  V. Soler.  Analysing adjectives in scientific discourse: an exploratory study with educational applications for Spanish speakers at advanced university level☆ , 2002 .

[14]  Maggie Charles,et al.  Argument or evidence? Disciplinary variation in the use of the Noun that pattern in stance construction , 2007 .

[15]  Examining Present Tense Conventions in Scientific Writing in the Light of Reader Reactions to Three Dutch-Authored Discussions. , 2003 .

[16]  Sylviane Granger,et al.  Learner corpora: The missing link in EAP pedagogy , 2007 .

[17]  I. A. Martínez,et al.  Aspects of theme in the method and discussion sections of biology journal articles in English , 2003 .

[18]  John Flowerdew,et al.  Scholarly writers who use English as an Additional Language: What can Goffman's ''Stigma'' tell us? , 2008 .

[19]  Pedro A. Fuertes-Olivera.  A corpus-based view of lexical gender in written Business English , 2007 .

[20]  Peter Master,et al.  Active Verbs with Inanimate Subjects in Scientific Prose. , 1991 .

[21]  Chih-Hua Kuo,et al.  The Use of Personal Pronouns: Role Relationships in Scientific Journal Articles. , 1999 .

[22]  John Flowerdew,et al.  Attitudes of Journal Editors to Nonnative Speaker Contributions , 2001 .

[23]  Ramesh Krishnamurthy,et al.  Issues in creating a corpus for EAP pedagogy and research , 2007 .

[24]  Philip Hubbard,et al.  The Writing Assignments and Writing Problems of Doctoral Students: Faculty Perceptions, Pedagogical Issues, and Needed Research. , 1992 .

[25]  Maria Freddi,et al.  Arguing Linguistics: Corpus Investigation of One Functional Variety of Academic Discourse. , 2005 .

[26]  John M. Swales,et al.  A corpus-based EAP course for NNS doctoral students: Moving from available specialized corpora to self-compiled corpora , 2006 .

[27]  Dongin Cho,et al.  Science journal paper writing in an EFL context: The case of Korea , 2009 .

[28]  J. Flowerdew.  Signalling nouns in discourse , 2003 .