چکیده:
This paper investigates a special type of recurrent expressions, lexical bundles, defined as a sequence of three or more words that co-occur frequently in a particular register (Biber et al., 1999). Considering the importance of this group of multi-word sequences in academic prose, this study explores the forms and syntactic structures of three- and four-word bundles in English abstracts written by Iranian scholars in three disciplines; business studies, history, and linguistics. Applying a frequency-based approach suggested by Biber et al. (1999), the data were drawn from a corpus consisting of 660 English abstracts of research articles published by various leading academic journals. As regards syntactic structure, the structural characteristics of the lexical bundles were first explored through careful analysis and then classified using a modified version of Biber et al.’s (1999) structural framework. The study also compares the forms, frequencies, and structures of the lexical bundles in the corpus to those found in Hyland’s (2004) research article corpus. This comparison shows that not only are there relatively large differences between the two corpora in the forms and frequencies of bundles employed, but also there are some discrepancies in terms of distribution of the different structural types and tokens.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Considering the importance of this group of multi-word sequences in academic prose, this study explores the forms and syntactic structures of three- and four-word bundles in English abstracts written by Iranian scholars in three disciplines; business studies, history, and linguistics.
The present study intends to investigate a particular type of formulaic expressions, lexical bundles, defined as a sequence of three or more words like the nature of, as a result of, and in the presence of that co-occur frequently in a particular register, which are not idiomatic nor complete structural units (Biber et al.
With regard to possible generic variations in the use of bundles, Hyland (2008) investigated the frequency, forms and functions of lexical bundles in a large corpus composed of research articles, master theses, and doctoral dissertations in four different disciplines (i.
(1999), in order for a recurring lexical sequence such as on the other hand, in the case that to count as a bundle, it must occur at least ten times in a corpus made of one million words with the additional requirement that this rate of occurrence be realized in at least five different texts in each register (Biber et al.
In fact, Biber and colleagues (1999) identified frequently occurring lexical sequences in the conversation and academic sections of the Longman Spoken and Written English Corpus (LSWE), with each section containing around five million words using a computer program and they found that the longer the bundle, the lower was its frequency.