A Corpus-based Study on Chinese and American Scholars' Use of Nominalizations in English Scientific Research Articles

Nominalization plays a very significant role in written English, especially in the scientific articles. However, it is distinctfor Chinese and English scholars in the use of nominalization in English scientific papers. In order to find the differences in the useof nominalization in English scientific research papers between Chinese writers and native English scholars(American scholarsherein) and help Chinese scholars understand the proper use of English nominalization and write more idiomatic English scientificresearch papers, this paper does a research based on a corpus. In this corpus, there are two sub-corpora, one by American scholarsand the other by Chinese scientists. The research results show that American scholars adopt more nominalizations than Chinesescholars in English scientific papers and there are some differences in the use of nominalization derived from verbs, adjectives tonouns, and formed by gerunds and non-predictive verbs with"-ing"forms between Chinese and American scholars.