¿Cuán gramaticalmente complejos son los títulos de los artículos científicos en las ciencias naturales?

Authors

  • Johanna Entralgo Universidad de Los Andes
  • Françoise Salager-Meyer Universidad de Los Andes
  • Marianela Luzardo Briceño Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

Keywords:

Titles, research papers, natural sciences, English, , grammar, morphosyntax, compound words, lexical density

Abstract

This paper examines a corpus of 150 titles of research articles published between 2010 and 2013 in Anglo-American natural sciences journals (physics, chemistry and biology) in order to determine their lexical density and grammatical and morphosyntactic features. Towards that end, the frequency of present and past participles, prepositions, coordinating and subordinate conjunctions, and the frequency and length of compound words was recorded in each title. The total number of content and function words was also recorded so as to determine title lexical density. ANOVA tests were applied in order to assess whether statistically significant differences in the frequency of the above mentioned variables were detected within and across disciplines and in the whole corpus. Our results showed that, in the three disciplines, the frequency of the past participle is higher than that of the present participle (p = 0,04). They also disclosed that prepositions are the most frequently used function words and that they outnumber coordinating conjunctions (p = 0,02). Compound words were found to be very frequent, especially 2- and 3-word ones. As for title lexical density, it was found to be similar across disciplines (3,1).  The only statistically significant cross-disciplinary difference detected was that present participles are more frequently used in chemistry than in biology (p= 0,001). Our findings reflect the complexity of the scientific concepts expressed in natural sciences research article titles. Because titles are frequently the only section of a paper scientists read so as to decide whether to read on or not, we present a few pedagogical tips that could be applied in reading and/or writing ESP courses.

DOI: 10.20420/rlfe.2015.0012

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Author Biographies

Johanna Entralgo, Universidad de Los Andes

Johanna Entralgo Obtuvo su licenciatura en Idiomas Modernos en la Universidad de los Andes (ULA) (Mérida, Venezuela). Realizó estudios de Postgrado y obtuvo el grado de Magister Scientiae en Enseñanza/Aprendizaje de las Lenguas Extranjeras en esa misma universidad. Desde mayo de 2012 hasta abril de 2015 fue profesora becada en la ULA, en la Facultad de Ciencias, Escuela de Química. Actualmente se desempeña como Profesora en la Universidad Experimental de las Fuerzas Armadas (UNEFA), Núcleo Mérida.

Françoise Salager-Meyer, Universidad de Los Andes

Françoise Salager-Meyer obtuvo su maestría en lengua y literatura rusa de la Universidad de Lyon (Francia) y su Ph.D en linguística aplicada de la Universidad de Austin (Texas, EEUU). Actualmente, se desempeña como Profesora de ingles médico en los cursos de Postgrado de la Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Los Andes donde coordina el Grupo de investigación multilingúe y multidisciplinario sobre análisis del discurso científico. Ha publicado numerosos artículos científicos sobre el análisis del discurso científico y es editora de la sección “Language and Medicine” de la segunda edición de la Encyclopedia or Language and Linguistics publicada en 2006 por Elsevier. También ha publicado dos libros con la editorial Suiza, Peter Lang, ambos sobre el discurso médico. En dos ocasiones, recibió el Premio Horowitz (otorgado por la revista English for Specific Purposes, Elsevier): en 1998 por su trabajo sobre los “hedges” y en 2004 por su investigación sobre la crítica académica. En 2005, le fue otorgado el Premio Nacional (Venezolano) Francisco de Venanzi por su trayectoria académica. Es miembro del comité editorial de 8 revistas científicas dedicadas a la enseñanza e investigación de lenguas con fines específicos y es miembro del Advisory Board de la Linguistic Series de Peter Lang.

Marianela Luzardo Briceño, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana

Marianela Luzardo Briceño es Doctora en Estadística de la Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida (Venezuela). Actualmente se desempeña como Profesora Asociada en la Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana en Bucaramanga (Colombia). Es integrante del Grupo de Investigación GeeTIC-UPB (Bucaramanga, Colombia) e Investigadora Asociada de Colciencias (Colombia). Ha dictado cursos de Estadística a nivel de pregrado y de postgrado por más de 20 años, ha asistido a numerosos congresos nacionales e enternacionales y ha sido autora y coautora de una decena de artículos en revistas indexadas.

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Published

2015-11-25

How to Cite

Entralgo, J., Salager-Meyer, F., & Luzardo Briceño, M. (2015). ¿Cuán gramaticalmente complejos son los títulos de los artículos científicos en las ciencias naturales?. Revista De Lenguas Para Fines Específicos, 21(2), 70–97. Retrieved from https://ojsspdc.ulpgc.es/ojs/index.php/LFE/article/view/394

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 2 (2015): Revista de lenguas para fines específicos

Section

Artículos/Articles

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