基于语料库的英语博士论文摘要中元话语but和however的用法研究

A Corpus-Based Study on “but” and “however” as Metadiscourse in English Doctoral Dissertation Abstracts

本文以实证研究的方法收集了文学、教育、经济、物理等十门学科2007年至2012年间发表的英语本族语者博士论文摘要共600篇,对其中出现的两种表示转折关系的元话语but和however进行了学科间的对比分析。结果显示,虽然整体上but的出现频率高于however,但它更多是用作句内成分的连接词,而当被用作元话语功能更显著的句外连接词时,however的使用频率比but更高,而且这种趋势不存在明显的学科差异性。这项研究对非英语本族语者的论文写作有着一定的实用价值和启示意义。

The article scientifically collects a total of 600 English abstracts of doctoral dissertations published between 2007 and 2012 written by native speakers, covering 10 disciplines including literature, education, economics, and physics and so on. It conducts a comparative analysis of “but” and “however” used in the abstracts of different disci-plines as a pair of metadiscourse both denoting an adversative relation. It is found that though “but” appears far more frequently than “however” as a whole, it actually acts more as a linking word between smaller parts within a sentence. When it comes to the link of two sentences, a more metadiscoursal function, “however” is much more often used by native speakers. And the tendency shows no difference among different disciplines. This study is of some theoretical and practical value to the academic writing of non-native English speakers.