Дискурсивно-стилистический анализ английской письменной научной речи. Учебное пособие

(3c) Please, for your convenience find attached a copy of the paper.

(4a) Please could you let me know how I can change the status of my paper.

(4b) Please you could let me know how I can change the status of my paper.

(4c) Please could you let me know how can I change the status of my paper.

(5a) I resubmitted my manuscript, revised according to the Editor’s and Referees’comments, onApril 3 of this year.

(5b) Revised according to the Editor’s and Referees’ comments, onApril 3 of this year I resubmitted my manuscript.

(5c) On April 3 of this year I resubmitted my manuscript, revised according to the Editor’s and Referees’comments.

Exercise 23. Correct any mistakes in the following sentences. The mistakes are all related to word order.

1.This leaves intact for at least six weeks the sample.

2.Many are the substances that are harmful to human beings.

3.This book shares with the previous one several aspects.

4.For several years with this system we have had problems.

5.After the written examinations each student has between May and June an oral exam.

6.The presence in written English of long sentences can cause problems for the reader.

7.In English is not commonly found a sentence construction that does not reflect the following order: subject verb object.

8.In the USA farmers have inadvertently introduced into the environment several dangerous species of insects.

9.One way to avoid such behavior in adults is treatment before the age of 16 with a high dose of insulin.

Nouns Keeping Foreign Plurals

Plurals of the nouns of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew origin are often used in English scientific writing even though their English plurals

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may exist in general use. The nouns widely used in academic texts are presented in the Table.

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Exercise 24. Identify the sentences with a mistake and correct it.

1.Anumber of U.S. lecturers comes to our University next week.

2.Critically he studied the article on transgenic food products.

3.As the annual report of the Mesa Garden states, these cactuses grow exclusively in the northern parts of Mexico.

4.Either the journalist or the witness know the truth about this mysterious event.

5.Elaborated will be in this paper the model of corrosive destruction of metals under lacquer-paint coatings.

6.The teacher asked the students if they knew the health effects of insecticides.

7.The premises of the library is cleaned every day.

8.Twenty dollars are not enough to buy this book.

9.Many mathematical symposiums are held in Europe every year.

10.Bile acids contains significant amounts of cholesterol.

11.In no ease the work on the project will be terminated.

Articles

The most basic rules of using articles are summarized below.

The IndefiniteArticle

1. The indefinite article a/an is used with countable nouns in the singular, meaning “member of a class of objects”, “one of”, “some”.

The four centers lie in a plane.

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She was a gifted researcher. An octopus has eight legs.

2. It may be used with uncountable nouns to mean “a kind of”, or with kind of, or certain.

This person has an integrity that we all appreciate.

The pictures of British romantic painter Joseph Turner reveal a great love of the sea.

The DefiniteArticle

1. The definite article the is used with countable nouns in the singular/plural and uncountable nouns in the meaning “contextually known”, “mentioned earlier”.

A flatbed scanner is similar to a photocopier. Once the scanner is activated, it reads images as a series of dots.

Do you see the men standing near the door? They are our new research assistants.

2. In the so-called “of – phrases”.

The existence of test functions is not evident.

The preliminary results of the investigation are promising.

BUT: the is not used with the first mention of the constructions that denote part of a whole: a molecule of hydrogen, a layer of ozone, a piece of advice.

3. The is not used in generalizations with uncountable nouns.

He is very interested in nature. What is the nature of this strange disease?

People have to live in society. People have to observe the laws and norms of the society they live in.

4. The is used in generalizations with singular countable nouns to refer to a class of things.

The computer has replaced the typewriter. The brain is a complex biological system.

5. The is used with the superlative degrees of adjectives, ordinal numerals, and specifiers (such as same, only, chief, principal, etc.).

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The best results were obtained during the second experiment. The only paper on this problem was published ten years ago.

6. With the names of unique objects.

The Universe is thought to contain 1011 kilograms of matter. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.

7. With the names of theories, effects, and devices modified by a proper name used as an adjective: the Dirichlet problem, the Celsius scale.

BUT: when a proper name is used in possessive form, no article is used: Einstein’s theory of relativity; Marx’s “Capital”; Taylor’s formula.

The ZeroArticle

Usually, no article is used when a plural or an uncountable noun is mentioned first (unless the special conditions for definite article use apply).

Exercise 25.Fill in the blanks with missing articles (for convenience, mark the absence of the article as 0.

When ____ Charles Morris proposed his famous trichotomy of ___

syntax, ___ semantics, and ___ pragmatics, he defined ___ last as “___

study of ___ relation of ___ signs to ____interpreters”, but he soon generalized this to “___ relation of ___signs to their users”. One year later ___ Rudolf Carnap proposed to “call ____ pragmatics ___ field of all those investigations which take into consideration ... ___ action,

___ state, and ____ environment of ___ man who speaks or hears [a linguistic sign]”. However, this characterization of ____ pragmatics is so broad that it includes all studies of ____ language users, from

_____ neurolinguistics to ____ sociolinguisties, and would preclude

____ possibility of formulating ____ contentful general pragmatic principles. Therefore, we will take ____ term pragmatics to cover

____ study of ____ language use, and in particular _____ study of

____ linguistic communication, in ____ relation to ____ language structure and ____context of _____ utterance. For instance, ______

pragmatics must identify _____ central uses of ____ language, it must specify ____ conditions for ____ linguistic expressions (words,

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phrases, sentences, discourse) to be used in those ways, and it must seek to uncover ______ general principles of ______ language use. Much of this work was originally done by _____ philosophers of ____

language such as Wittgenstein, Austin, Searle, and Grice, in _____

years following _____World War II. In ___ 1970s ____ linguists such as Ross and Lakoff attempted to incorporate much of ______ work on

_____performatives, ____ felicity conditions, and ____ presupposition into _____ framework of ____ Generative Semantics. With _____

breakdown of ______Generative Semantics, ________ pragmatics was left without ______ unifying linguistic theory, and ________

research is currently being carried out on _______ number of _____

topics, across ______ number of _______different disciplines including linguistics, philosophy, psychology, communication, sociology, and anthropology. In what follows we will focus on ____ central use of _______ language communication. We will see what problems it poses to _____ pragmatics and what structure it has.

Relative clauses

Relative clauses modify a word, phrase, or idea in the main clause. In the following examples, that and who modify the subject:

The student who works in the computer center has just arrived to his workplace.

I am interested in the collaboration with the scholars that investigate this problem.

The type of clause determines what kind of relative pronoun to use. Generally, there are two types of relative clauses: defining clauses and non-defining clauses. In both types of clauses, the relative pronoun can function as a subject, an object, or a possessive pronoun.

Defining relative clauses add essential information about the antecedent in the main clause. The information is crucial for understanding the sentence's meaning correctly and cannot be omitted. In other words, without the restrictive relative clause, the sentence does not make sense. Relative pronouns that introduce a restrictive relative clauseARE NOT separated from the main clause by a comma.

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Psychology is a branch of science which studies the mind and its processes.

The library did not have the book that I wanted.

This is the house where/in which I lived when I first came to the United States.

Formal English usually includes the relative pronoun in the sentence. When the relative pronoun is the object of a preposition, which is used instead of that, for example, “in which”, “for which”, “about which”, “through which”, etc.

Non-defining relative clauses provide non-essential information about the antecedent in the main clause. The information is not crucial for understanding the sentence's meaning correctly and can be omitted without affecting the sentence's meaning. In other words, non-restric- tive relative clauses are an aside that adds extra information. Typically, which is the preferred relative pronoun for indicating that a relative clause is non-restrictive. Relative pronouns that introduce a non-defin- ing relative clausesARE separated from the main clause by a comma (in most instances).

Professor White, who is well-known for his medical research, gave a talk at conference last week.

The science fair, which lasted all day, ended with an awards ceremony.

That/Who/Which in relative clauses

The relative pronoun that can only be used in defining clauses. It can also be substituted for who (referring to persons) or which (referring to things) in informal English. Whereas that is often used while speaking, who and which are more common in formal written English.

When speaking about a particular person in formal language, who is preferred:

The old lady who lives next door is a teacher.

In defining clauses that is more appropriate than which in the following cases:

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1) After the pronouns all, any(thing), every(thing), few, little, many, much, no(thing), none, some(thing):

The police usually ask for every detail that helps identify the missing person.

2) After the noun modified by an adjective in the superlative degree:

This is the best resource that I have ever read!

All relative pronouns except that can be used in non-defining clauses; however, the pronouns may not be omitted.

Albert Einstein, who was born in Germany in 1879, discovered the equivalence of mass and energy.

Nuclear magnetic resonance, which doctors use to obtain images of internal organs, is a relatively recent invention.

Which is used to refer to the previous clause as a whole.Of whom (for persons) and of which (for things or concepts) are used after numbers and words such as most, many, some, both, none.

I saw a lot of new people at the conference, some of whom seemed familiar.

Exercise 26. Choose the correct relative pronoun.

I am currently working on a paper that/which/, which I would like to submit to the journal’s special issue for the conference. The paper is the extension of the work that/which/, which I presented as a poster during the conference that/which/, which I think you saw.

I know that you have a lot of expertise in this area that/which/, which I am sure my paper would really benefit from. Obviously I don’t want to take up too much of your time that/which/, which is why I would ask you just to focus on the Discussion and Results. Also, if you could quickly browse through the Literature Cited that/ which/, which also includes some of your papers, and just check that I haven’t missed any other important papers.

I am sending you a Word version that/which/, which means that you can make the changes directly using Track Changes. The deadline

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for submission is on Oct 10 that/which/, which I am aware is quite close, so please do not hesitate to let me know if you don’t have the time.

Exercise 27. Read the following essays written by students. Analyze vocabulary use, grammar, sentence structure and style. Suggest your revisions.

Essay 1

“Daydreamer” – every person in his life has called himself in that way at least once. However, the loss of one thing cannot be compared with the loss of oneself, one’s essence, one’s place in culture, and, finally, the culture that is truly yours.

Perplexity is an emotion, which is some kind of borderline, as one may think, and which for many people seems to mean nothing. However, it may be the emotion that prevails in the modern global culture and in national cultures. It is simply foolish to deny the catastrophic and almost all-consuming influence of globalization on our lives. One of the fruits of globalization is perplexity. The claim to unify all cultures, bringing them under a common denominator represented by one dominant culture and the obtrusive realization of this claim led to the fact that almost any national or even ethnic culture was confused: it lost some of its features and values and lost its music in the world melody of cultures, one can say it lost its landmark. Moreover, a person who is, in varying degrees, the creator of culture, is also confused. Often he cannot understand exactly who he is, whether he is in his place or in that cultural environment. It is no coincidence that more than a century ago, the famous artist Paul Gauguin painted a picture with the “speaking” title “Where did we come from? Who are we? Where are we going?”.

Of course, a person asked such questions from time to time throughout the history, but now they are particularly acute, since their potential insolubility is felt and at the same time their pressure on a person, who is also lost, like a needle in a haystack, is felt too. A person is literally lost in the flow of information and information

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noise, in any other emotions (fear, anxiety, resentment, indifference, joy, surprise and anger). He does not know what to choose: what to consider to be the truth, what to get out of his head, what to remember; how to behave in each particular situation, it is better to show joy or indifference, surprise or calm. In this endless whirlpool is not difficult to get lost.

The emotion of perplexity is also transmitted by the modern art. So, for example, is the work of the modern Polish artist Alexander Balos, which is filled with uncertainty, bewilderment and confusion. Or the music of the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki, who was greatly influenced by the musical expressionism of Arnold Schoenberg. The music of Penderetsky is full of confusion, blurriness, and perplexity, masterly transmitted by atonality. So, the emotion of confusion, or perplexity, despite its imaginary inconspicuousness, affects the entire emotional background and determines the life of people, their contribution to the development of culture and cultures, leaving their sometimes unpleasant, but indelible and noticeable mark on art.

Essay 2

Nowadays, in the age of globalization, learning a foreign language has become extremely popular. In both processes – as well in learning as in teaching a foreign language, attention should be paid to several aspects simultaneously: listening, writing, speaking, phonetics. If one of these aspects, for example, writing, is neglected, then a student will experience difficulties in writing foreign words.

In any teaching practice, one may very often encounter the fact that one of the language aspects, namely, writing, is much more difficult for a student than others. He can easily verbally reproduce one or another foreign word, recognize it in speech, know its translation, but not know how to write it. What are possible solutions to this problem?

It is believed that the only possible option is to permanently write a foreign word. A student can be given a task, in which he will need

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