不同水平英语学习者科技论文摘要名词化对比研究

An Empirical Study on the Use of Nominalization in Abstracts by Learners of Different Proficiency Levels

名词化结构既是扩展语言意义潜势的一种主要资源,也是语言使用者作出的一种语法选择,因此名词化结构不仅与语篇类型有着密切的关系,也与使用者息息相关。本文以中国中、高级英语学习者和英语本族语作者的英语科技论文摘要为语料,对三组摘要进行对比统计分析,发现不同水平英语学习者和本族语者在名词化的使用频率方面存在显著差异,水平高的学习者使用名词化结构较多,水平低的使用则较少;不同水平学习者使用名词化类型也存在差异,中级学习者使用名词化结构的类型比较单一。

Nominalization is not only a central resource for expanding the meaning potential of language, but also a grammatical choice made by language users. Therefore, nominalization is closely related to the variants of genres as well as the proficiency levels of language users. By contrasting the abstracts by intermediate - advanced Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers in the corpus approach, the present study analyzes the use of nominalization both quantitatively and qualitatively. It is found that there is statistically significant difference between the frequency distribution of the nominalization used by intermediate - advanced Chinese EFL learners and native English speakers. The use of types of nominalization is also different among three groups. Nominalization is underused by intermediate Chinese EFL learners. The findings are significant for the teaching of academic writing in China.