A Corpus-Based Study of the Distributions of Adnominals Across Registers and Disciplines

Abstract

ABSTRACT Adnominals are an important resource of noun modification in written registers, especially in academic writing. This study compares the frequencies of adjectival adnominals and nominal adnominals across two registers (Fiction and Academic writing) by calculating T-values and conducting Welch’s t-tests on the adnominal subtypes. It is found that the preference for nominal adnominals exists in both the two registers and the mean frequencies of adjectival adnominals, premodifying nouns and postmodifying nouns increase as the register moves from Fiction to Academic writing. We further investigate the frequencies of adnominals in the research article abstracts across three disciplinary groups by conducting Welch’s ANOVA test. No significant difference is revealed in T-values in the research article abstracts across disciplines. The difference of adjectival adnominals, nouns as postmodifiers and appositive nouns lacks practical applications, while the effects of disciplines on the frequency of premodifying nouns cannot be rejected. It is the mean frequencies of premodifying nouns that show the significant difference in the research article abstracts across disciplines. Premodifying nouns are more prevalent in hard science texts than in soft science texts.