Evaluative Meanings and Disciplinary Values - eTheses Repository ...

Tables 7.2 and 7.3 above indicate that the pattern A DJ PR EP N occurs more frequently in
both ALC and BC than it does in general English (or more precisely, in the BNC as a
representation of general English). This is largely attributable to much higher frequencies in
five kinds of high-frequency patterns (viz. from, in, on, to, with) and five kinds of
low-frequency patterns (viz. against, as, as to, between, toward(s)). This seems to support
Oliveira (2003) contention that some structures are used much more often in (specific)
disciplinary contexts than they are in general English.
However, Tables 7.2 and 7.3 above also indicate that the distinction between
high-frequency and low-frequency patterns in two corpora is also applicable to the data from
BNC (i.e. general English) since eight kinds of high-frequency patterns in ALC and BC are
also likely to occur frequently in the BNC whereas eight kinds of low-frequency patterns in
ALC and BC are rarely likely to appear in the BNC. What these observations suggest is that
the distributional differences in the use of the pattern A DJ PR EP N may not be influenced by
genre differences (i.e. RAs vs. general English).
As also seen in Tables 7.2 and 7.3, the token of each adjective is likely to sharply
decline as it goes lower in rank. In other words, the high-frequency adjectives (or LSPs) in
Tables 7.2 and 7.3 may account for the large ratio in the total tokens of each pattern. 31 That is,
the token frequencies shown in Table 7.1 may be skewed by a consequence of several
particular high-frequency adjectives (or LSPs) in Tables 7.2 and 7.3. For this reason, Table 7.4
below summarizes the proportion of these top 5 high-frequency adjectives in Tables 7.2 and
7.3 for the total token of each pattern presented in Table 7.1.
8 High-frequency Patterns 8 Low-frequency Patterns
ALC BC BNC ALC BC BNC
about 40.48% 32.76% 26.40% against 100% 100% 15.76%
for 54.88% 57.28% 25.31% as 63.46% 68.42% 11.32%
from 73.95% 77.11% 49.08% as to 100% 55.56% 75.86%
in 47.79% 49.54% 24.24% at 78.18% 82.05% 20.63%
of 61.06% 50% 33.72% between 100% 100% 16.94%
on 97.43% 96.30% 26.95% by 58% 70.97% 12.39%
to 43.79% 48.27% 21.21% over 100% 100% 14.93%
with 80.91% 89.14% 26.43% toward(s) 100% 100% 23.57%
Table 7.4. Proportion of the top 5 high-frequency adjectives for all pattern tokens
31 For example, such high-frequency LSPs of the pattern A DJ to N are due to N, related to N, similar to N, sensitive to N,
relevant to N in ALC, but related to N, due to N, similar to N, subject to N, equal to N in BC.
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