基于語料庫的學術期刊論文摘要時態(tài)的對比研究.pdf

1、 1Chapter 1 Introduction 1.1 Research Background English, “the world’s predominant language of research and scholarship” (Swales, 1990: 99), has been assuming an ever-increasing pivotal role in recent years. Academic re

2、searches in various disciplines are resorting to English for international recognition; scholars of diverse cultural and academic backgrounds are keeping pace with world’s leading academic researches and exchange in Engl

3、ish. Academic Journal Research Articles (henceforth RA), serving as the latest carriers of academic researches, not only build platform to exhibit the up-to-date achievement to researchers in time, but also allow access

4、for the lay people to the latest development of science and technology. As an indispensable part of a RA, the abstract is an “essential writing form” (Swales, 2004) in today’s research world. Well-prepared abstracts can

5、“equip scholars to summarize their work in clear and compelling ways” (Swales, 2004). As it captures the essence of the whole article, the abstract tends to be the first part of a journal article to be read (Hartley, 200

6、3; Salager-Meyer, 1990); Very few journals would not require an abstract to be submitted with the main RA (Martín-Martín, 2003). Many journals published in languages other than English also require the submissi

7、on of an English version of the abstract (Lorés, 2004; Ventola, 1994). Researchers often communicate their findings with others in academic community and the common way of transmitting academic achievement is to pub

8、lish their RAs. Similarly, graduates and postgraduates are also required to submit articles for publication. In China, most journals require academic papers to be published with an abstract both in Chinese and in English

9、. Writing an abstract in a foreign language is not for a non-native writer without its problems, even when the writers are very experienced in their field (Ventola, 1994). Using a foreign language when writing an 3engine

10、ering, financial economics and surgery papers; Teng Wang and Song (2002) formulate the general application of tense, voice and person of abstracts in medical papers. So far, none study has shed light on one specific lin

11、guistic feature across disciplines based on a relatively large corpus. Swales’ (1990) seminal study of the structure of academic discourse specifies that the uses of grammar features, such as tenses, aspects and the pass

12、ive voice, are highly conventionalized. While the perfect aspect, for example, can be found in introductory or literature review sections of academic papers, the progressive aspect is hardly ever found in written academi

13、c genre. Thus, CLEs have to adapt to some commonly accepted principles in academic communications. Although the principles are not necessarily fixed and minor changes can be made within a certain range given that no majo

14、r principles should be violated, a better knowledge of the abstracts in English patterns will surely help the researchers both in writing RA and RA abstracts. However, in instructional texts dealing with academic writing

15、, the meanings, functions and uses of various English tenses and aspects are not addressed with any degree of detail. Nor are these important features of academic prose usually or prominently connected to the production

16、of academic writing and the contexts appropriate for them (Hinkle, 2004a). A study by Vann, Meyer and Lorenz (1984) reported that US university lecturers asked to assess the acceptability of English written by NNS studen

17、ts of sciences or social sciences put tense errors into the ‘‘least acceptable’’ category of errors. Besides, tense and aspect choice does pose some challenges to intermediate learners, even advanced scholars. Detailed

18、contrastive study of English RA abstract by native speakers of English (NSEs) and Chinese learners of English (CLEs) still remains unexplored, especially in terms of tense and aspect,. In particular, whether or not tense

19、 and aspect choice has something to do with other linguistic categories, such as reporting verbs, subjects-predicate collocations, is seldom covered in previous contrastive studies. Research papers in journals often atta