In addition to the appearance of single words, the present study also looks into how words are combined. Table 4.9 reveals the top 25 used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters of the research articles from Applied Linguistics (1980-2010). As indicated in Table 4.10, there are different types of clusters. The present research categorized them according to Biber et al. (1999). This categorization is shown later.
Table 4.9 shows that the top 3 most used 3-word clusters are second language acquisition, the use of and in terms of. The top 3 most used 4-word clusters are in
second language acquisition, on the other hand and Cambridge Cambridge
University press. The top 3 most used 5-word clusters are studies in second language
acquisition, English as a second language and in the case of the.
It should be noted that some of the proper nouns, such as the name of the publishing house, appear in the table mainly because they occur very often in the references, which were not excluded when compiling the corpus of research articles.
Furthermore, the reason why, for example, in the cluster of Cambridge Cambridge University press, the word Cambridge is repeated, is because the software does not take punctuation into consideration. The first ‗Cambridge‘ indicates the city where the article was published, and the second ‗Cambridge‘ is the name of the publishing company according to the APA (American Psychological Association) style of
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citation. The other point that should be noted is the symbol ‗#‘ which may be a
number, but which is seen as a word unit by the software.
Table 4.10
Top 25 used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters of the research articles from Applied Linguistics (1980-2010)
rank 3-word freq. 4-word freq. 5-word freq.
1 second language
acquisition 2531 in second language
acquisition 1007 studies in second language
acquisition 386 7 the fact that 1407 Oxford Oxford University
press 511 on the part of the 145
University Press 1258 the extent to which 407 English as a foreign
language 109
acquisition 280 native and non native
speakers 70
Table 4.11 shows the same items: the top 25 most used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in the introductions of the research articles. Since the corpus used for analysis here consists of just the research article introductions which do not contain references, there is no issue considering the name of the press or the number of the volume. As shown in Table 4.10, the top 3 used 3-word clusters are the use of, in terms of and a number of, two of which overlap with the results of the top 3 most used
3-word clusters in the research articles as a whole. The top 3 used 4-word clusters are on the basis of, in the context of, on the other hand and in the case of. As for the
5-word clusters, English as a second language, native and non-native speakers, of this paper is to are the top 3 most used clusters.
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13 a second language 80 second language acquisition
SLA 27 on the basis of a 8 21 of the language 67 in second language learning 22 non native speakers of
English 7
The results of the clusters again demonstrate that the fields most researchers pay attention to are second language acquisition, English as a second language and learning English. Additionally, the most used clusters serve as great examples for both
students and researchers to use when writing their own research papers.
Different clusters can be classified into different categories, so in the study we then further categorized the top 25 used clusters into different types. We divided the clusters above into seven categories: noun phrase + of, other noun phrase, prepositional phrase + of, other prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adj., be
+noun/adjectival phrase, and others (Biber et al., 1999). Examples of this
categorization of the most widely used 3-, 4- and 5-word clusters in research articles
can be seen in Table 4.12.
Table 4.12
Categorization of the top 25 most frequently used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters of research articles from Applied Linguistics (1980-2010)
3-word 4-word 5-word
noun phrase + of the use of the nature of the the point of view of a number of
the role of the case of the number of
other noun phrase the fact that the extent to which the extent to which the one of the the ways in which an earlier version of this part of the the fact that the
the other hand prepositional phrase
+ of
in terms of in the case of in the case of the on the basis of at the end of the in terms of the on the basis of the in the context of on the part of the
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as in the case of in the context of the other prepositional
phrase
in second language in second language acquisition
on the other hand the in order to on the other hand on the one hand and on the other at the same time of English as a second of second language in a second language
in which the as a second language
a second language Chicago University of
Chicago press prepositional phrase, anticipatory it + verb/adj., be +noun/adjectival phrase, and
others.
Table 4.13
Categorization of the top 25 most frequently used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters of the introduction of research articles from Applied Linguistics (1980-2010)
3-word 4-word 5-word in this paper of second language
acquisition
in this paper we will of second
language
at the same time on the one hand and of the language in this paper we between native and
non native on the other in this paper I of English as a
second in second
language
on the one hand of second language acquisition SLA
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others as well as second language
acquisition SLA a second language English as a second English as a foreign
language
The result shows that over 50% of the top 25 3-, 4-, and 5- word clusters in both the research articles as a whole and the introductions fall into the categories of noun phrases and prepositional phrases. Table 4-14 shows the distribution of the structural types of the top 25 most frequently used 3-, 4-, and 5- word clusters in genre A:
research articles. The percentages in bold represent the highest rates next to that of the category of others. The number which appears before each percentage is the number of occurrences in the specific structural type. It reveals that aside from the category of others, noun phrase + of occupies the biggest proportion of the top 25 3-word clusters;
other prepositional phrase occupies the most in the 4-word clusters, while
prepositional phrase + of takes up the most part of the 5-word clusters.
As can be observed from the table, the examples of others are mostly proper nouns. The reason why the names of the publication, such as Cambridge Cambridge
University, Chicago University of Chicago press, New York Oxford University press,
Cambridge Cambridge University press, Oxford Oxford University press, etc. are also
widely used items in the research articles may be that they appear with high frequency in the references of each article, since the data collected did not exclude the
references.
Table 4.14
The distribution of the structural types of the top 25 most frequently used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in genre A: research articles.
Clusters Structural types
3-word clusters (No.) %
4-word clusters (No.) %
5-word clusters (No.) %
Noun Phrase + of (6) 24% (2) 8% (1) 4%
Other noun phrase (4) 16% (3) 12% (2) 8%
Prepositional phrase + of (1) 4% (5) 20% (7) 28%
Other prepositional phrase (5) 20% (8) 32% (3) 12%
Anticipatory it + verb/adj (1) 4% (1) 4% (2) 8%
Be + noun/adjectival phrase (0) 0% (0) 0% (1) 4%
Others (8) 32% (6) 24% (9) 36%
Total (25) 100% (25) 100% (25) 100%
A similar result can be seen from the distribution of the structural types of the top 25 most frequently used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in genre B: introductions (see Table 4-15). Similarly, the percentages in bold represent the highest rates next to that of the category of others. This table shows that for 3-word clusters, the category of noun phrase + of is used most often; for 4-word clusters and 5-word clusters, other preposition phrases are extensively used.
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Table 4.15
The distribution of the structural types of the top 25 most frequently used 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in genre B: introductions.
types
Both Table 4.14 and Table 4.15 demonstrate a result that the most used category of cluster for 3-word clusters is noun phrase + of. The most used category of cluster for 4-word clusters is other prepositional phrase. The most used category of cluster for 5-word clusters is prepositional phrase + of in the research articles selected from Applied Linguistics, 1980-2010 (See Table 4.16).
Table 4.16
The most used category of 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in genre A: research articles
Clusters Most used category of cluster %
3-word Noun phrase + of 24%
4-word Other prepositional phrase 32%
5-word Prepositional phrase + of 28%
The result of the most used category of clusters in research article introductions is similar to that of the research articles, as seen in Table 4.17 in that both the 3-word
and 4-word clusters are mostly noun phrase + of and other prepositional phrase.
However, the most used type of cluster in research article introductions is not prepositional phrase + of, but other prepositional phrase, accounting for 40% of the
top 25 most used clusters.
Table 4.17
The most used category of 3-word, 4-word and 5-word clusters in genre B: research article introductions
Clusters Most used category of cluster %
3-word Noun phrase + of 32%
4-word Other prepositional phrase 48%
5-word Other prepositional phrase 40%