英汉医学论文讨论部分中模糊限制语的对比研究

A Comparative Study of Hedges in Discussion Sections of English and Chinese Medical Research Articles

本文根据Salager-Meyer等对模糊限制语的分类,建立一个英、汉语医学论文讨论部分中的模糊限制语的语料库,并对其进行定性和定量对比研究。通过对相关语言现象的数据统计分析发现,相应模糊限制语在使用类型、出现频次上存在显著差异,而在种类分布上则有相似之处。汉语文本明显缺乏英语文本中存在的情感加强型模糊限制语;汉语文本中的模糊限制语总体及各类模糊限制语的观察频次明显低于英语文本。文章探讨这些异同点。

Based on the categorization by Salager-Meyer et al. , we performed a comparative study of hedges in discussion sections （DSs） of English and Chinese medical research articles （MRAs）. A corpus was established and a qualitative and quantitative comparative analysis was conducted of the types, frequencies, and categorical distribution of the hedges in the corpus. Results of our study indicate that between DSs of English and Chinese MRAs, there are significant differences in the types and frequencies of hedges whereas there is some similarity in the distribution between the two. In Chinese DSs, no emotional intensifying hedge is observed as that found in English DSs. Besides, the total frequency and individual categorical frequencies of hedges in Chinese DSs are remarkably lower than that in English ones. We also tentatively discuss the above findings.