COMPRESSED AND IMPLICIT SYNTACTIC FEATURES OF L2 ENGLISH ACADEMIC RESEARCH WRITING BY FILIPINO RESEARCH WRITERS ACROSS DISCIPLINES: A CROSS-ANALYSIS

Hjalmar Punla Hernandez

DOI Number
https://doi.org/10.22190/JTESAP2201051H
First page
051
Last page
073

Abstract


Compressed and implicit nominal phrases as syntactic features of academic writing (Biber & Gray, 2010, 2016) are underexplored in L2 academic research writing. In this study, I cross-examined attributive adjectives, nominal prepositional phrases, noun premodifiers, and appositive nouns phrases in qualitative and quantitative research articles (RAs) authored by Filipino research writers (FRWs) across Applied Linguistics, Measurement and Evaluation, and Sociology using Biber, Johansson et al.’s (1999, 2021) framework. Major results revealed that attributive adjectives, nominal prepositional phrases, and noun premodifiers extremely co-occurred across the disciplinary RA sub-registers. A significant difference exists between the three nominal phrases and appositive noun phrases. Nonetheless, their frequencies of use also differed in RA sub-registers across disciplines. In conclusion, the three leading embedded phrasal modifiers are universal and the most functional compressed and implicit syntactic features of the five disciplinary RA sub-registers. FRWs employ the three nominal phrases as they are much more flexible than appositive noun phrases. Overall, they characterize L2 academic research writing and make it a highly nominal academic written discourse regardless of its disciplinary origin and research nature. In line with these, the study’s implications for academic writing pedagogy are emphasized.


Keywords

compressed and implicit syntactic features, disciplinary research articles, Filipino research writers, L2 English academic research writing, nominal phrases

Full Text:

PDF

References


Al Fajri, M. S., & Okwar, V. (2020). Exploring a diachronic change in the use of English relative clauses: A corpus-based study and its implication for pedagogy. Sage Open, 1-10. doi: 10.1177/2158244020975027

Ansarifar, A., Shahriari, H., & Pishghadam, R. (2018). Phrasal complexity in academic writing: A comparison of abstracts written by graduate students and expert writers in applied linguistics. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 31, 58-71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2017.12.008

Biber, D. (1988). Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621024

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2010). Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9, 2-20. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2010.01.001

Biber D., & Gray, B. (2011). Grammatical change in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics, 15(2), 223–250. https://doi.10.1017/S1360674311000025

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2016). Grammatical complexity in academic English: Linguistic change in writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511920776

Biber D., Gray, B., & Staples, S. (2016). Contrasting the grammatical complexities of conversation and academic writing: Implications for EAP writing development and teaching. LIF – Language in Focus Journal, 2(1), 1-18. https://doi: 10.1515/lifijsal-2016-0001

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow, England: Longman.

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (2021). Grammar of spoken and written English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/z.232

Brezina, V., Weill-Tessier, P., & McEnery, A. (2021). #LancsBox v. 5.x. [software package]. http://corpora.lancs.ac.uk/lancsbox.

Cheusheva, S. (2021). How to calculate percentage in Excel –formula examples. https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2015/01/14/calculate-percentage-excel-formula/#:~:text=Enter%20the%20formula%20%3DC2%2FB2,Done!%20%3A%20)

Cho, D. W., & Lee, K. (2016). English relative clauses in science and engineering journal papers: A comparative corpus-based study for pedagogical purposes. Ampersand, 3, 61-70. doi: 10.1016/j.amper.2016. 03.002

Crystal, D. (2003). English as a global language (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Crystal, D. (2008). ‘Two thousand million?’, English Today, 24(1), 3–6.

Dayag, D. T. (2012). Philippine English. In E. L. Low & A. Hashim (Eds.), English in Southeast Asia: Features, policy, and language in use (pp. 91-100). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/veaw.g42

Dayag, D. T. (2014). Preposition stranding and pied-piping in Philippine English: A corpus-based study. In G. Leitner, A. Hashim & H. Wolf (Eds.), Communicating with Asia: The future of English as a global language (pp. 102-119). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9781107 477186.008

Egbert, J., Larsson, T., & Biber, D. (2020). Doing corpus linguistics with a corpus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108888790

Flowerdew, J. (2013). English for research publication purposes. In B. Paltridge & S. Starfield (Eds.), The handbook of English for specific purposes (pp. 301-322). Hoboken: NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi: 10.1002/97811183 39855

Gray, B. (2015). Linguistic variation in research articles: When discipline tells only part of the story. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.71

Halliday, M. A. K., & Martin, J. R. (1993/1996). Writing science: Literacy and discursive power. London: Falmer Press. (Vol. first published in 1993, republished in 1996).

Hernandez, H. P. (2020). Comparative analysis of the textual resources in academictexts in Philippine and American Englishes from systemic functional linguistic perspective. Journal of English as an International Language, 15(1), 17-43. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1259909

Hernandez, H. P. (2021). Syntactic description of research articles across disciplines [Doctorate dissertation]. Philippine Normal University-Manila.

Hutter, J, (2015). A corpus-based analysis of noun modification in empirical research articles in applied linguistics. (Paper 2211) [Master’s thesis, Portland State University]. Higher Education Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, and the Technical and Professional Writing Commons.

Hyland, K. (2006). Disciplinary differences: Language variation in academic discourses. In K. Hyland & M. Bondi (Eds.), Academic discourse across disciplines. Pieterlen and Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang. doi: 10.3726/978-3-0351-0446-2

Hyland, K. (2007). Applying a gloss: Exemplifying and reformulating in academic discourse. Applied Linguistics, 28(2), 266-285. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amm011

Hyland, K. (2008). As can be seen: Lexical bundles and disciplinary variation. English for Specific Purposes, 27, 4-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esp.2007.06.001

Hyland, K., & Jiang, F. (2017). "We believe that . . .": Changes in an academic stance marker. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 38(2), 1-29. doi: 10.1080/07268602.2018.1400498

Jenkins, J. (2015). Global Englishes: A resource book for students (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Kim, C., & Crosthwaite, P. (2019). Disciplinary differences in the use of evaluative that: Expression of stance via that-clauses in business and medicine. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 41, 1-32. doi: 10.101 6/j.jeap.2019.100775

Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. New York, NY: Routledge.

Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2016). Academic writing for publication in a multilingual world. In R. M. Mancho n & P. K. Matsuda (Eds.), Handbook of second and foreign language writing (pp. 201-222). Boston/Berlin: Walter de Gruyter Inc. doi: 10.1515/9781614511335

Lu, X., Casal, E., & Liu, Y. (2020). The rhetorical functions of syntactically complex sentences in social science research article introductions. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 44, 1-16. doi: 10.1016/j.jeap. 2019.100832

Malakhovskaya, M., Beliaeva, L., & Kamshilova, O. (2021). Teaching noun-phrase composition in EAP/ESP context: A corpus-assisted approach to overcome a didactic gap. Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 9(2), 257-266. https://doi.org/10.22190/JTESAP2102257M

Menghini, M. (2017). Supporting multilingualism in academic writing. International Journal of Language Studies, 11(4), 107-130.

Paltridge, B. (2013). Genre and English for specific purposes. In B. Paltridge, & S. Starfield (Eds.), The handbook of English for specific purposes (pp. 347-366). Hoboken: NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. doi: 10.1002/9781118339855

Ruan, Z. (2018). Structural compression in academic writing: An English-Chinese comparison study of complex noun phrases in research article abstracts. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 36, 37-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2018.09.001

Swales, J. M. (2004). Research genres: Explorations and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139524827

van Enk, A., & Power, K. (2017). What is a research article? Genre variability and data selection in genre research. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 29, 1-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2017.07.002

Wu, Z., Mauranen, A., & Lei, L. (2020). Syntactic complexity in English as a lingua franca academic writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 43, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2019.100798

Yakut, I., Yuvayapan, F., & Bada, E. (2021). Lexical bundles in L1 and L2 English doctoral dissertations. Journal of Teaching English for Specific and Academic Purposes, 9(3), 475-49. https://doi.org/10.22190/JTESAP2103475Y

Yin, S., Gao, Y., & Lu, X. (2021). Syntactic complexity of research article part-genres: Differences between emerging and expert international publication writers. System, 97, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102427




DOI: https://doi.org/10.22190/JTESAP2201051H

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


ISSN 2334-9182 (Print)
ISSN 2334-9212 (Online)