摘要
English gerund construction is a system composed of 3 variants, including "Gerund + Φ", "Gerund + of + NP", and "Gerund + NP". The noun and verb attributes of the 3 variants are recursive, and in theory their frequencies vary regularly in different styles. An abstract is placed before the beginning of an academic papers, which has the basic characteristics of conciseness and generalization, and has special requirements for the use of gerunds. The purpose of this study was to empirically explore the system of gerund construction in abstracts of natural science and social science papers, and to specifically explore the inherent characteristics of noun and verb properties of the 3 variants. For this purpose, two corpora were constructed, one is about abstracts of natural science papers, and the other is about abstracts of social science papers. Finally, the results of chi-square test showed that there was no significant difference in the frequencies of the 3 variants in the abstracts of natural science and social science papers, and the two corpora can be studied as a whole. In the combined corpus, there were significant differences in the frequencies of the 3 gerund variants. The frequencies of these 3 variants and their gerund properties showed a recursive change.
英语的动名词构式是一个拥有三种变体的系统,包含"Gerund+Φ""Gerund+of+NP"和"Gerund+NP"三种构式结构。三种变体的名词属性和动词属性表现出递归性,理论上它们的使用频率在不同类型的文体中呈现有规律的变化。摘要是学术论文的开始部分,具有简洁和概括的基本特点,而且对动名词的使用具有特殊的需求性。本研究的目的是在自然科学和社会科学论文的摘要中,实证探究动名词构式的系统,具体探究三种变体的动词性质和名词性质内在的变化特点。为此建设了两个语料库,一个是关于自然科学论文摘要的语料库,另一个是关于社会科学论文摘要的语料库。最终卡方检验的结果表明,动名词构式的三种变体在自然科学和社会科学论文的摘要使用频率上并无显著的差异,据此两个语料库可以作为一个整体来研究。在合并的语料库中,三种动名词变体的使用存在显著的差异,三种变体的使用频率和动名词的属性呈现递归变化。
基金
supported by the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Planning Fund of Ministry of Education for Western and Frontier Areas(14XJA740001)。
