Syntactic and semantic analysis of verbs in chemistry research article introductions: case of papers published in an Algerian journal of multidisciplinary research

الملخص EN

This study is concerned with the analysis of the semantic and syntactic features of verbs used in the introduction section of chemistry research articles published in a multidisciplinary Algerian journal and in an international journal of chemistry.

a corpus of 24 research article introductions (12 from each journal) was selected.

the corpus was analyzed for semantic meaning of verbs and their syntactic features.

semantically, existence verbs were the predominant class in research articles from the Algerian journal followed by activity and mental verbs respectively.

nevertheless, existence and activity verbs occupied the head of the rank followed by causative verbs.

syntactically, for both group it was found that the verbs of different tenses, aspects, and voices were used with mainly the same tendency to present tense, simple aspect and active voice.

statistically, means, standard deviation and t-test were used.

calculations have proven the heterogeneity between and inter the two corpora and due to unpaired T-test values, mainly the null hypotheses were rejected (H0).

as implication, a proposal was made for using these findings in a more practical manner by novice non native writers and by ESP designers for material designated to those novice scholars from chemistry and physics that helps them to write more appropriate research article introductions.