Make sure you can answer these questions. 1. What morphological peculiarities of a scientific text result from general impersonality and stereotypeness of expression in it?

1. What morphological peculiarities of a scientific text result from general impersonality and stereotypeness of expression in it?

2. Characterize the grammar of academic and scientific writing in terms of the categories of Tense and Mood and the non-finite forms.

3. Comment on the peculiarities of the syntactic structure of the language of science and account for its complexity.

4. What syntactic means contribute to the explicit character of the logical relations between words in a sentence and between clauses and sentences in a ST?

5. What syntactic constructions serve to present scientific information in a ST in an as complete and detailed way as possible?

6. Comment on the unusual word-order in certain emphatic construction typical of a ST.

7. What makes any scientific text visually manageable, and what is the logical sequence of utterances ensured by?

8. What nonverbal means of conveying information is a ST characterized by?

9. What devices can the volume of the scientific information conveyed be enlarged by in a ST?

10. Discuss the difference between references and footnotes of a digressive character as bearers of additional information in a ST.

1.7. The categories of informativity, presupposition and segmentability in a scientific text.

· Since the main functional-communicative aim of a scientific text is that of conveying purely intellective information, the category of informativity is confined to the factual information only.

· Like in any functional variety of the language the volume of the factual information in a scientific text can be widened at the expense of some facts relevant in terms of another textlinguistic category, that of presupposition. As any scientific or humanities text is addressed to the specialist reader, the category of presupposition finds specific forms of expression, namely, through references, foot-notes and quotations.

· In terms of the category of segmentability the structure of a scientific text can be described through two basic units of its logico-semantic divisibility – physical and conceptual paragraphs.

· The conceptual paragraph within a scientific text may coincide with the corresponding physical paragraph marked on a page by spacing or indentation. But more often than not, the size of the conceptual paragraph extends across the boundaries of more than one physical paragraph, as several physical paragraphs may be united and held together by some common idea. So, the conceptual paragraph can be considered the main unit of the logico-semantic analysis of a scientific text as an integral structural-semantic whole.

1.8. The rhetorical organization of a scientific text. A scientific text is characterized by certain rhetorical organization which finds its expression in the use of various rhetorical patterns, i.e. functionally significant syntagmatic sequences expressed by general scientific units and closely associated with certain reasoning processes of scientific communication. Rhetorical patterns have been worked out by the language of science as the optimum stereotype forms of expression which serve to reflect certain recurrent types of content, on the one hand, and certain compositional stereotypes of a scientific text, on the other.

· The following two main types of traditionally used rhetorical patterns can be distinguished in a scientific text: 1. those concerned with certain stages and procedures of scientific cognition as such and 2. those pertaining to the structural-compositional arrangement of a scientific text.

· Rhetorical patterns connected with the process of scientific cognition comprise rhetorical patterns of definition, classification, generalization, experiment description, formulating a hypothesis and others.

· Structural-compositional rhetorical patterns are expressed by general scientific units which serve as scientific text organizers for ordering and arranging different parts of scientific reasoning:

1. aims and purposes, e.g. we shall consider briefly (in detail) the problem of …; this book is meant to show …; what we are aiming at is …;

2. generally recognized facts, e.g. it is common knowledge …that…; it is generally believed that…; it is commonly held that…;

3. beginning of reasoning, e.g. we shall begin by saying that …; we will begin with a brief consideration of …; the first point to be made is …;

4. connection with the above said, e.g. as has been already pointed out …; it has already been stated above …; we began by saying that …; so far we have considered only …;

5. transition to the ensuing part of reasoning, e.g. we shall now proceed to show…; it follows from what has been said that…; the next point to be made is that …; we now move to …; let us now consider …;

6. adding on information, e.g. it should be added in this connection that…; it requires an additional remark…; in addition it may be useful (necessary) to…;

7. digression, returning to the above said, e.g. here a digression is called for…; to see the point we must go back to…; it brings us back to…;

8. specification of information, e.g. by this we mean (don’t mean) that…; this is not to say that…; in other words…; to clarify the point…;

9. drawing conclusions, e.g. we may now summarize… by saying that…; it enables us to make a conclusion that…; in conclusion we would like to say that…;

10. bringing out the most important points, e.g. we should lay special emphasis on…; it should be borne in mind that …; it is noteworthy that…; it is worth pointing out that…; it seems essential to emphasize that…;

11. exemplification, e.g. this may serve as a good illustration of…; here are some examples of…; two or three examples will suffice to show that…;

12. expression of certainty, e.g. it can hardly be doubted that…; it goes without saying that …; we have every reason to believe that …;

13. expression of doubt, e.g. it is doubtful that…; it is hardly acceptable…; there is no reason to think that …;

14. expression of possibility/impossibility, e.g. it is quite possible that…; we are now in a position to show …; it is easy enough to show…; it would be no less erroneous to believe that …;

15. expression of necessity/absence of necessity, e.g. it is necessary, therefore to …; we find it necessary to …; it is pointless to state that …;

16. expression of desirability, usefulness, e.g. it would be most helpful to begin with…; it seems worthwhile to remind that….

The rhetorical patterns of both types are regularly correlated with certain lexical units which serve as their direct markers, e.g. it is common knowledge …; it is a matter of common observation …; we would like to focus on …; this book is intended to show …; as has been explained above …; a further point to be made …; to clarify the point; by this we mean to say that…, etc.

1.9. The category of cohesion in a scientific text. It is generally held that among various means of text cohesion it is lexical means of cohesion that, first and foremost, contribute to the logico-semantic integrity of the text, as they appear to be the most explicitly expressed means of cohesion which facilitate the identification and the establishment of logico-semantic links between different informationally significant parts of a text.

It is also common knowledge that the lexical cohesion of any text finds its expression in:

8. the recurrence of key-words which reflect the most important content points of a text;

9. the use of words pertaining to certain lexico-semantic groups united by some common notions;

10. the use of words and word-combinations making up certain thematic groups on the basis of common underlying notions;

11. the use of words logically associated with the key-words;

12. the use of synonyms proper and contextual ones;

13. the use of antonyms, both antonyms proper and contextual ones;

14. the use of words built up by some common word-building elements (derivatives, compounds, conversion pairs, etc.).

But it should be specially stressed that a scientific text is characterized by one more means of lexical cohesion inherent only in this functional variety of language and very important from the point of view of explicit logico-semantic integration of different parts of a scientific text. These linking devices can be referred to as coheremes which function as certain discourse markers to ensure that a scientific text is coherent and cohesive.

Coheremes can be grouped according to their usual functions in a scientific text into: 1. coheremes of immediate linear joining which reflect the progressive development of the author’s reasoning; 2. coheremes of deictic character based on the close association between an antecedent, i.e. the primary designation of something in a text, and a means of its secondary nomination.

As far as coheremes of immediate linear joining are concerned, they can be expressed by certain ‘guide words’ and ‘guide word-groups’ which serve:

a. to sequence ideas, e.g. firstly, secondly, finally, first of all, next, lastly;

b. to express contrast, e.g. but, however, nevertheless, yet, in spite of, as distinct from;

c. to state results, e.g. thus, as a result, consequently, therefore, hence;

d. to provide reasons, e.g. in order to…, so as not to…, so that…, the reason for this is…;

e. to add further support, e.g. besides, furthermore, moreover, in addition;

f. to generalize the above said, e.g. in brief, in a word, generally speaking;

g. to express similarity, e.g. similarly, likewise, in the same way, on analogy.

Some coheremes of immediate linear joining are directly correlated with their counterparts among structural-compositional rhetorical patterns, the former serving as means of lexical cohesion, the latter used as traditional formulae of scientific speech, e.g. we shall begin by saying that…; another point to be made is…; from this we can conclude that…; it is a matter of common observation that….

The sum total of coheremes of immediate linear joining expressed both by guide words and guide word-groups forms the logico-semantic network of a scientific text, which ensures proper and complete comprehension of the scientific information conveyed.

As for coheremes of deictic character, they are closely connected with the process of secondary nomination of something mentioned in the previous part of a scientific text.

The nomenclature of deictic coheremes is presented by:

1. some guide words and guide word-groups, which in a compressed form, correlate the above said (i.e. the antecedent) with its secondary designation, e.g. the former, the latter, the above-mentioned, the above example, etc.

2. nouns of broad semantics, which in a generalized form, refer the reader to the antecedent which they replace, among them the nouns: thing, problem, picture, phenomenon, practice, theory, procedure, case, question, approach, etc., e.g. This is not merely a question of…, but…, as long as this legal theory is maintained, there seems to be little difficulty in maintaining the distinction between the two approaches to the problem in question.

The characteristic features of the language of science described above do not cover all the peculiarities of the functional style of scientific prose, but they are the most essential ones.

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