Nominalizations: from Features to Applications in Abstracts of Linguistics Academic Papers

Abstract

This article analyzes several features and applications of five types of nominalizations in abstracts from linguistics academic papers under the guidance of grammatical metaphor raised by Halliday. By adopting a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, frequencies of each type of nominalization were calculated and features of these nominalizations were discussed. Results revealed that process nominalization occupied 84.8% and quality nominalization accounted for 13.4%. However, circumstance nominalization and relator nominalization only accounted for 0.2% and 1.1%, respectively. Furthermore, the author only found 6 instances of zero nominalization. Additionally, it is found that process nominalization can condense information, increase the level of abstraction of abstracts and form fixed collocation patterns in abstracts. Quality nominalization can achieve impersonalization, but meanwhile increase the distance between readers and writers. Circumstance, relator and zero nominalization are rarely used in abstracts, because they increase the complexity of abstracts, weaken the logical link and add some unnecessary information. On the basis of the findings, practical implications are discussed.