This study investigated the use of lexical bundles in research articles written in English by Turkish scholars. For the purpose of the study, a corpus of published research articles produced by Turkish scholars in six different academic disciplines was collected. The four-word lexical bundles that appeared at least twenty times in this one million word corpus were identified and further analyzed both structurally and functionally based on the previous taxonomies developed by Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad and Finegan (1999) and Biber, Conrad and Cortes (2004). The results of this study revealed that the lexical bundles found have structural correlates as well as strong functional features that help to construct discourse in academic writing. The conclusions drawn from this study could be applied to the teaching of academic genres to researchers in English as a Foreign Language context and are expected to provide insights for further corpus-based studies in academic writing.

The study presents a contrastive analysis of learner language which is represented by written English of the Lithuanian EFL learners and native speakers of English. The material for the study comes from three corpora of learner language: two Lithuanian corpora consist of student essays written by first-year students and third-/fourth-year students of English Philology while the native speaker corpus is a selection of argumentative essays from the LOCNESS corpus. The study involves structural and functional analyses of lexical bundles retrieved from the three corpora. The findings of the study show that written English produced by the learners of the lower proficiency levels bears more features typical of spoken English. As the level of proficiency increases, the number of verbal bundles gives way to bundles incorporating noun and prepositional phrases which are more characteristic of the written variety of the language. As regards the distribution of lexical bundles across the functional types, the study proves that the Lithuanian learners pay more attention to discourse organization and expression of stance while in the native speaker material the proportion of referential lexical bundles, used to express propositions, is much more prominent. The study also involves an analysis of phrasal expressions recurring in the lexical bundles. The conclusions and implications of the research may be particularly useful to the practice of ELT/EFL in Lithuania while certain insights of... [to full text] / Disertacijoje aprašomas gretinamasis leksinių samplaikų tyrimas lietuvių gimtosios kalbos vartotojų ir gimtakalbių anglų kalbos vartotojų rašytinėje anglų kalboje. Tyrime naudoti trys skirtingų kalbos mokėjimo lygių vartotojų anglų kalbos tekstynai: pirmakursių studentų ir vyresniųjų kursų studentų, kurių gimtoji kalba – lietuvių, rašiniai, bei anglų gimtosios kalbos vartotojų, t. y. įvairių Didžiosios Britanijos ir JAV universitetų studentų rašiniai. Leksinių samplaikų struktūrinė analizė parodė, jog žemesnio mokėjimo lygio mokinių kalboje dažniau pasitaiko veiksmažodinių samplaikų, o aukštesnio lygio mokinių kalboje – vardažodinių. Tai rodo, jog žemesnio mokėjimo lygio mokinių kalba artimesnė sakytinei anglų kalbai, kuriai būdingos veiksmažodinės leksinės samplaikos. Kylant kalbos mokėjimo lygiui, mokinių rašytinėje kalboje randasi daugiau vardažodinių leksinių samplaikų, kurios dažnesnės rašytiniame diskurse. Funkcinė leksinių samplaikų analizė atskleidė, jog kylant mokinių kalbos mokėjimo lygiui nuosekliai kinta ir tam tikrų kalbos funkcijų raiška: žemesnio lygio mokiniai daugiau dėmesio skiria diskurso organizavimo ir autoriaus pozicijos raiškai, o aukštesnio lygio mokinių kalboje dažnesni referentiniai pasakymai, perteikiantys teksto propozicinį turinį. Leksinių samplaikų analizė pagal jose realizuojamus frazinius junginius atskleidė lietuvių gimtosios kalbos vartotojams būdingų frazinių junginių vartojimo ypatumų. Tyrimo išvados ir taikomoji vertė siejamos su anglų... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

Applied linguistics has lately been seen in studies of formulaicity of language operating through recurrent word combinations. The present study deals with one type of word combinations, namely lexical bundles (LBs), which are defined as a sequence of three or more words that frequently co-occur in a particular register (Biber et al., 1999). The present study is a corpus-based analysis of four-word lexical bundles extracted from Music research articles (RAs). The Corpus of Music Research Articles (CMRA) of one million words was created in order to perform structural classification of the retrieved lexical bundles and an analysis of their functions. The CMRA includes 110 articles collected from international music journals from various music subdisciplines. In order to find which lexical bundles were characteristic of music research specifically, the findings were compared to previous research based on other academic disciplines. The list of 218 lexical bundles was compared to the one of three different subject areas (Jalilifar et al., 2016) with the purpose of identification of discipline-specific LBs (n=102) which included 20 topic-specific bundles; and general lexical bundles (n=116) which included 56 core bundles shared among Music and three subject areas (Art and Humanities, Sciences and Social sciences). Structurally and functionally, the analysis of the extracted lexical bundles demonstrated that native English expert writers predominantly used preposition-based phrases (50%), with respect to structure; and research-oriented bundles (74%), with respect to function. The findings have pedagogical applications and could be used in courses in English for Specific Purposes.

This dissertation involves the research of lexical bundles, sequences of three or more words likely to co-occur in a register, or situational variety of English. Bundles vary by register. The research is grounded in the study of a corpus, a collection of texts. Essays written by both professional and student writers were analyzed for four-word bundles to determine how bundles might vary. Student essays were categorized by writing level, determined by the exam for which the students were writing the essays. Results suggest that both professional and student writers use bundles more associated with the academic than the conversational register and that both the professional writers as well as the college proficient writers, those scoring higher on the exam, were more likely to use bundles to structure discourse than nonproficient college writers. Results also indicate that the proficient college writers were more likely to quote and paraphrase the source material than the nonproficient college writers. Findings are limited due to the small corpora size. Included are implications for instruction and further research.

UNICEF and WWF are leading nonprofit organizations in their field. They work globally with different projects and programs, trying to make a change for the better. This study examines and discusses the communication strategies used by nonprofit organizations in their Facebook posts by answering following questions: What communication strategies can be identified in UNICEF and WWF's Facebook posts in their aim to attract followers? Are there any linguistic patterns associated with those strategies? Are there any differences/similarities between the two organizations? The method used is based on corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, categorizing messages into the categories Information, Community and Action. The results show that both organizations mainly produce messages that are information based. They use less of the Community building and Action strategies. Some linguistic patterns were found to be associated with these strategies. These patterns were mostly connected to the communication strategy of Information.

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Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:24:09Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Luciene Novais Mazza.pdf: 2077236 bytes, checksum: ab60b489f57494f9b4bd86ae30c618c1 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-29 / Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / The present study explored a specific document of the pharmaceutical segment called Site Master File through the investigation of words combinations defined as lexical bundles (Biber et al.,1999). The aim of the study was to draw out the bundles so that to verify the degree of conformity of the linguistic features the use of lexical bundles may achieve, as being part of a document organized in a similar way, produced by different authors at different locations around the world. The theoretical-methodological approach was developed on the principles of Corpus Linguistics (Stubbs, 1996; Scott and Tribble, 2006; Berber Sardinha and Barbara, 2008; amongst others), an approach that makes use of a vast variety of authentic texts of language in use supported by computational tools. We compiled for this study fifteen samples of the Site Master File document stored in machine-readable form that belong to the same multinational pharmaceutical company based in Europe, which has more than a hundred of plants situated across the world. The Site Master File is a document prepared by pharmaceutical manufacturers that contains specific information about the quality assurance, the production and quality control of pharmaceutical manufacturing operations carried out at a named site/plant in order to be submitted to a regulatory authority. In addition, all documents must be officially certified in English. The analysis of the corpus data was performed to extract three-word bundles by using scripting languages such as Perl and Cygwin. Besides, a computer application was also designed to provide the cross-reference of data. The results of data analysis showed that although the samples of Site Master File bring a large range of similarity in its organization, we have not found regularity on the use of recurrent lexical bundles across the Site Master File documents. Thus, considering the absences of common lexical bundles across documents, we observed that, in each operating area of the pharmaceutical business unit there are some typical characteristics in relation to the type of product manufactured in the site, the processes engaged in the unit pharmaceutical operations as well as the geographic nearness relationships to the linguistic choices made by the different authors. Therefore, this study offers a contribution to the knowledge of variation in English use in preparing the Site Master File by authors allocated in a specific site. Moreover, the present study involves further research into the field of English for Specific Purposes based on corpora and into the studies of terminology / O objetivo deste trabalho foi examinar o documento Site Master File do setor farmacêutico a partir da investigação de uma combinação de palavras denominada lexical bundles (Biber et al. 1999) com o propósito de verificar o grau de conformidade com elementos lingüísticos que um documento com a mesma organização estrutural, escrita por diferentes autores em diferentes partes do mundo pode atingir. A presente pesquisa teve como principal suporte teórico e metodológico a Lingüística de Corpus (Stubbs, 1996; Scott e Tribble, 2006; Berber Sardinha e Barbara, 2008; entre outros), uma abordagem que permite investigar como a língua ocorre naturalmente no discurso por meio de ferramentas computacionais. Para esta investigação foram compilados quinze exemplares do documento Site Master File pertencente a um mesmo grupo farmacêutico multinacional com sede na Europa e com unidades de negócios espalhadas em mais de 100 países. O documento Site Master File é um conjunto de textos produzidos pelas indústrias farmacêuticas para atender as exigências de garantia e controle da qualidade dos medicamentos, a fim de se obter certificação internacional junto aos órgãos de vigilância sanitária. Ademais, todos os documentos devem ser oficialmente produzidos em língua inglesa. Para a análise dos dados foram utilizadas as linguagens de programação Perl e Cygwin, como também foi desenvolvido um aplicativo para gerar a extração dos lexical bundles de três palavras. Os resultados da análise dos dados indicaram, que embora o documento Site Master File apresente semelhanças em sua organização, não há uma regularidade de lexical bundles recorrentes entre as amostras dos quinze exemplares. Assim, dessa ausência de bundles semelhantes, foi possível observar traços característicos do tipo de negócio que cada unidade da empresa está envolvida, dos processos e produtos fabricados e, ainda, a relação da proximidade geográfica com as escolhas lingüísticas feitas pelos autores. Portanto, este estudo além de contribuir para o conhecimento das variações de uso da língua inglesa por autores de diferentes localidades na elaboração do documento Site Master File, também implica em futuras pesquisas no ensino de línguas para fins específicos baseado em corpora e nos estudos sobre terminologia

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-28T18:22:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Telma de Lurdes Sao Bento Ferreira.pdf: 1966548 bytes, checksum: 4927002dcad2829f0a024191c2c1990d (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-09-13 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This study aims to show the results of an analysis of a textbook, of which I am coauthor, for the teaching of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL) (Fernandes et al., 2008). The main aim of the research was the investigation of indicative aspects of authenticity in the teaching material analyzed, starting from the premise that even non-authentic texts may show characteristic elements of authenticity, and that these elements can be detected using the methods from Corpus Linguistics. As such, this research is based on Corpus Linguistics and the concepts of authenticity (Berber Sardinha, 2007; Nunan, 1989), idiomaticity (Sinclair, 1991), and lexical bundles (Biber et al., 1999). We developed and applied a methodology for identification of authenticity in corpora that, in summary, is based on the lexico-grammatical analysis of the texts involved in a search for patterns that might provide evidence of authenticity (or otherwise) of teaching material, given that the frequency and quantity of the patterns found are expected to reflect the actual usage of language. Results indicated that not every non-authentic text is a bad example of lexicogrammar, since this kind of text included in the teaching material showed many instances of lexical bundles recurrent in authentic language. At the same time, the mere fact of being authentic does not guarantee that the lexical bundles contained in a text are typical of spoken or written language. The research aims to contribute to the area since to date there has been no research focusing the analysis of authenticity in teaching materials for PFL / Esta pesquisa pretende mostrar os resultados da análise de um material didático, de cuja autoria participo, para o ensino de Português como Língua Estrangeira (PLE) (Fernandes et al., 2008). A pesquisa teve como objetivo principal a investigação dos aspectos indicativos de autenticidade do material didático analisado, partindo do pressuposto de que mesmo textos não autênticos podem apresentar elementos característicos de autenticidade e que tais elementos podem ser detectados por meio de metodologia de Linguística de Corpus. Para tanto, a pesquisa está embasada na Linguística de Corpus e nos conceitos de autenticidade (Berber Sardinha, 2007; Nunan, 1989), idiomaticidade (Sinclair, 1991) e de pacotes lexicais (Biber et al., 1999). Desenvolvemos e aplicamos uma metodologia de identificação de autenticidade em corpora, que, em síntese, baseia-se na análise da lexicogramática dos textos envolvidos em busca dos padrões que possam fornecer evidências de autenticidade (ou não) do material didático, visto que se espera que a frequência e a quantidade dos padrões encontrados reflita o uso real da linguagem. Os resultados da análise indicaram que nem todo texto não autêntico é um mau exemplo de lexicogramática, visto que os textos não autênticos do material didático apresentaram muitas ocorrências de pacotes lexicais recorrentes na linguagem autêntica. Ao mesmo tempo, o simples fato de ser autêntico não garante que os pacotes lexicais que o texto contenha sejam típicos da linguagem falada ou escrita. A pesquisa pretende contribuir para a área visto que não há, até o momento, nenhuma pesquisa que enfoque a análise de autenticidade em materiais didáticos para o ensino de PLE

This thesis investigates the relationship which both academic vocabulary and lexical bundles have to academic performance at university. While academic vocabulary is defined in terms of the University Word List (Coxhead, 2000), lexical bundles are identified as groups of four words that commonly co-occur, such as on the other hand and as a result of. A corpus of student essay writing in a single discipline, psychology, was developed over the course of a three-year undergraduate degree. To provide a benchmark against which to compare the student academic writing, a corpus of published articles in the same discipline was developed. The VocabProfile program (Cobb, 2002) was used to establish the density of academic vocabulary in the student essays. Similarly, the density of lexical bundle use was analysed by means of WordSmith Tools (Scott, 2012). The densities were then correlated against students’ academic performance as measured by their essay results. Comparisons were also made between the use of academic vocabulary and lexical bundles by first- and additional-language speakers, and by first- and third-year students. A keyness analysis enabled comparisons of academic vocabulary and bundle usage by high and low achievers. An additional aspect of this study was the comparison of densities of academic vocabulary and lexical bundles found in the IELTS writing test and in student essays, and the correlation of IELTS reading and writing test scores to students’ academic performance. The students’ vocabulary knowledge was also tested by the application of receptive and productive vocabulary tests, and the results compared to their academic performance. Results indicate that the 10 000-word level is a stronger predictor of academic performance than either the 5000-word level or academic vocabulary, and that there is a significant relationship between the density of lexical bundle use by students and their academic performance. Both vocabulary measures are therefore arguably better predictors of academic performance than the IELTS test scores. / Linguistics and Modern Languages / D. Litt. et Phil. (Linguistics)

The present dissertation is a corpus-based investigation of the frequency, structure and functions of lexical bundles in published scientific writing in English, whose main objective is the creation of an inventory of the most frequent and pedagogically useful lexical bundles in scientific prose, one that can be utilized in a variety of teaching applications. In this study, three- to six-word lexical bundles were extracted from a 1.3 million word sample from the Health Science Corpus, a collection of published articles in biology and biochemistry. This initial list was filtered and enhanced through the application of the Mutual Information (MI) statistic and of a set of exclusion criteria established to satisfy the pedagogical objectives of the study. Following the SciE-Lex investigation (Verdaguer et al., 2009) the remaining lexical bundles were grouped together using like keywords. The present study additionally used the concept of prototypical bundle, which is based on Sinclair’s (2004) notion of canonical units of meaning, to tackle the semantic and structural connections between similar bundles. The structural and functional characteristics of the lexical bundles were explored through careful concordance analysis, which made it possible to categorize the bundles using modified versions of Biber et al.’s (1999) structural framework and Hyland’s (2008a) functional taxonomy. These quantitative and qualitative analyses reveal how native expert writers employ recurrent word strings in the construction of a coherent, well-structured and convincing scientific text that conforms with the conventions of the genre. They bring to light the different functions that lexical bundles perform in scientific discourse, and how these functions enable writers to address their research concerns, achieve their communication goals and elicit the desired reaction from their target audience. They also show the typical structural realizations of these bundle functions, as well as important aspects of usage that non-native writers need to be aware of to be able to incorporate these expressions in their own writing. The study also compares the results obtained from the corpus of published scientific articles to the lexical bundles found in a smaller corpus of biomedical research articles written by native Spanish-speaking scientists, who are all non-native users of English. In accordance with the methodology proposed by Cortes (2004), the lexical bundles identified in the HSC were treated as target bundles and subsequently searched for and analyzed in the corpus of non-native writing. This comparison uncovered non-native writers’ overuse of certain bundles, a tendency that results in unnecessary repetitiveness and lack of variation, as well as their restricted use of participant- oriented bundles, which points to their limited awareness of the usage and importance of this particular function. The dissertation also discusses the pedagogical implications of its final product, a practical list of lexical bundles in scientific English for use in teaching applications, and how it addresses the six major challenges that hinder the successful introduction of lexical bundles in EAP classrooms and teaching materials, as identified by Byrd and Coxhead (2010). / La presente tesis es una investigación de la frecuencia, la estructura y las funciones de los “lexical bundle” en artículos científicos escritos en inglés, con la finalidad de crear un inventario de los “lexical bundle” más frecuentes y pedagógicamente rentables en la prosa científica, una lista que se puede utilizar en varias aplicaciones didácticas. La investigación empezó con la identificación de combinaciones léxicas de tres a seis palabras en una muestra del “Health Science Corpus” que contiene 1,3 millones de palabras. Después, se filtró la lista inicial con la aplicación de la estadística de la información mutua y de un conjunto de criterios de exclusión. Se organizó la lista a través de la agrupación de los “lexical bundle” mediante las palabras clave que tenían en común y la utilización del concepto de “prototypical bundle” o combinación prototípica (Sinclair, 2004), que permitió tratar las conexiones semánticas y estructurales entre los “lexical bundle” similares. Finalmente, se investigaron las características estructurales y funcionales de las combinaciones léxicas a través del análisis de listas de concordancia, lo que hizo posible clasificar los “lexical bundle” según versiones modificadas del marco estructural de Biber et al. (1999) y la taxonomía funcional de Hyland (2008). Los análisis cuantitativos y cualitativos revelan cómo los científicos nativos y con largas trayectorias de publicación científica, emplean combinaciones léxicas en la construcción de un texto científico coherente, bien estructurado y convincente que se ajusta a las convenciones del género. Ponen de relieve las distintas funciones que realizan las combinaciones léxicas en el discurso científico y muestran las típicas realizaciones estructurales de estas funciones. El estudio también compara los resultados obtenidos del “Health Science Corpus” a un corpus más pequeño de artículos de investigación biomédica escritos por científicos de habla española, que son todos usuarios no nativos de inglés. Esta comparación resaltó las diferencias entre los autores nativos y los no nativos, y permitió averiguar las dificultades que los científicos no nativos pueden tener en el uso de combinaciones léxicas, y cómo estas dificultades pueden abordarse en el aula de idiomas, así como en los materiales didácticos.