国内硕博士学位论文摘要语言复杂度发展特征研究

A Study of Developmental Features of Language Complexity in Master’s and Doctoral Dissertation Abstracts

本文采用语料库对比的方法,从词汇和语法两个维度探讨硕士至博士阶段软硬学科学位论文摘要语言复杂度的发展特征。软硬学科分别选取语言学与物理学为代表学科。研究发现:(1)词汇方面,语言学论文摘要中,测量词汇复杂度的四项指标从硕士至博士阶段无显著变化,词汇复杂度在硕士阶段进入高原期;物理学论文摘要中,测量词汇复杂度的三项指标从硕士至博士阶段变化较为显著,博士的词汇复杂度明显提高;(2)句法方面,语言学摘要的句法复杂度各项指标呈上升趋势,表明语言学博士与硕士相比,其句法水平显著提高;物理学论文摘要中,从属子句比例使用较多,并列句占比显著下降,其余指标均无显著变化,这表明物理学博士使用复杂句式的能力提高,但使用长句及复杂名词短语的能力有待提升。研究结果对不同学科学位论文英文摘要写作具有一定的参考价值。

By employing the corpus-based approach,this study compares the developmental features of language complexity of dissertation abstracts in soft and hard disciplines from master to doctoral candidates in both lexical and syntactic dimensions.Linguistics and physics are selected as representative disciplines for hard and soft disciplines respectively.The findings are:(1)In linguistics abstracts,four indexes of lexical complexity exhibit no significant change from master to doctoral candidates,and lexical complexity of masters has entered a plateau period;in physics abstracts,three indexes of lexical complexity change significantly from master to doctoral candidates,and lexical complexity of physics doctoral candidates increases significantly.(2)In linguistics abstracts,indexes of syntactic complexity show an upward trend,indicating an obvious syntactic progression in doctoral candidates;in physics abstracts,the proportion of dependent clauses increases significantly,and that of coordinate sentences decreases significantly;other indexes show no significant changes,demonstrating that the ability of doctoral candidates in physics to use complex sentence patterns has improved,while their ability to use long sentences and complex noun phrases needs to be enhanced.The research results might hold some reference value for dissertation abstracts writing of different disciplines in English.