Deverbal Nominalisations across Written-spoken Dichotomy in the Language of Science

Abstract

Scientific language has always been both a source of difficulty for the students of science and, in the recent decades in particular, a theme for speculation for the scholars seeking to describe and analyse language as it is used and conceived. The language of science has always been presumed to be more difficult than the language used in other fields. Scientific concepts and their sophistication are one source of its difficulty. The writing style and dynamics preferred by writers in the fields of science is commonly considered another source of such difficulty. Nominalisation, the use of derivative nouns of verbs and adjectives, which is more prevalent in the language of science compared with the language used elsewhere, is another feature attested to by many scholars. The present study aimed at comparative investigation of the phenomenon of deverbal nominalisations (nominalisations with verb origin) across written and spoken scientific language. The spoken samples were chosen from BBC’s programs in the genre of science and the written samples from science textbooks and credited science magazines (different issues). The samples in each modality included 400,000 words (for each modality) amounting to 800,000 words as the total size of the corpora considered. The findings showed a higher frequency of verbs in spoken modality and of nominalisations in written. Another interesting point was the highest frequency of material process type in both verbs and deverbal nominalisations. (The typology of processes from the Hallidayean systemic functional grammar framework was the basis for classification of verbs and their respective nominalised editions.) Relational process type which claimed the second highest frequency among verbs showed a much lower frequency among nominalisations. The consideration of the slots accommodating the nominalisations in the sentences also revealed insightful points about possible differences between spoken and written language (of science) in terms of the concentration of semantic and lexical density.