Features of academic writing

Complexity

Nominal groups

Formal written English uses nouns and nominal group (noun-based phrases) more than verbs.

One simple example is:

Like all other forms of life, we human beings are the product of evolution.

Like all other forms of life, we human beings are the product of how we have evolved.

The noun "evolution" is preferred to the verb "evolve" and the "wh" clause.

Another example is:

Premack used a set of plastic chips to teach a chimpanzee named Sarah the meaning of a set of symbols.

Premack used a set of plastic chips to teach a chimpanzee named Sarah what a set of symbols mean.

"The meaning of the symbols" is preferred to "what the symbols mean"

Try this exercise: Exercise 4

Structure of nominal groups

Written English is lexically dense - there is a higher proportion of content words per clause. This can be done by modification of nouns to form nominal groups.

A typical nominal group is structured in the following way:

determiner	premodifier	head	postmodifier
a	complicated	solution	to the problem

Nouns (which themselves can be nominalisations) can be premodified or postmodified (qualified):

premodifier + noun

adjective - the constitutional aspects

ed-participle - a balanced budget, from the confused events of 19-24 August, the emitted light

ing-participle - growing problem, one striking feature of the years 1929-31, existing structures

noun - market forces, cabinet appointments

noun + postmodifier

relative clause - students who have no previous experience

to-clauses - the solution to the problem of inflation, the question to be debated

ing-clauses - a brake consisting of a drum divided into twelve compartments

ed-clauses - canoes preserved by a hard plaster, a brake consisting of a drum divided into twelve compartments, the curve shown

prepositional phrase (preposition + nominal group)- we need to bring to the box a special tool with a ready-compressed spring

adverb (or adverbial group) - the road back, the people outside

adjective (or adjectival group) - varieties common in India, the festival proper, something different

Nominal groups can function as subjects, complements or objects of prepositions.

Subject:

A more detailed life of Lord Reading, Liberal leader in the House of Lords and an important actor in the events of 1931, would be of great value.

Complement:

There are plans to extract a much greater harvest from the timber resource.

Object of preposition:

The information very properly reached the files of the survey for antimalarial compounds under the Survey Number SN-183.

A nominal group can also be qualified by another nominal group in apposition.

Dr. Maurice Aumont, the Director of the Berlitz School at Bordeaux, looked after him in an efficient and kindly way.

The first National Government, the government which forms the focal point of most historical writing on the crisis, followed the collapse of the Labour government in August 1931.

Sir Shridath Ramphal, former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, addressed the close connection between environmental protection and economic-development issues of critical importance for developing countries.

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A more complex description (Halliday, 1985, pp. 159-175) is:

Premodifier				Head	Postmodifier
Deictic	Numerative	Epithet	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier
these	three			methods
these	three	rather different		environments
these	two	old	volume	controls
these	three			forms	of co-ownership
this				discussion	of the primacy of communal property
the	two		domestic	products	available
the	many	large	oil	companies	in operation
the		complete		reorganisation	of the company
the	several		active	substances	which were activated
the			keyboard	designs
the				resistance	shown by structures such as the rate of recruitment
the		important		contributions	made to production by different groups in society
	several	dirty		ones
	several		possible	explanations	for the effect
	two	large		gaps	to be filled
a		careful		discussion	of this issue
an		important	test	phase	consisting of reinforced training
an		effective	promotion	scheme

Or even:

Premodifier					Head	Postmodifier
Pre-Deictic	Decictic	Numerative	Epithet	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier
some of	the		important	research	methods	that are used in the laboratory
one of	the	many	large	oil	companies	in operation
some of	the				compounds	being manufactured in New York

Deictics can also be possesive nous (e.g. his, my, IBM's) or quantifiers (e.g. some, each, every, both, all).

Examples

The exception is David Marquand's splendid biography of Ramsay MacDonald.

Meanwhile, in 1942 another committee was working on Britain's postwar civil aviation policy.

More Examples

Many of the suggested benefits of group living have been concerned with avoiding being eaten by predators.

French is also spoken by a large number of the African immigrants in the UK.

This chapter is a brief distillation of a few of the themes in that book.

In the United States, most of the outstanding men who first made their name in the amateur game turned professional.

While the ozone hole has been considered a solved problem, we are now finding it has caused a great deal of the climate change that has been observed.

Exercise

Read the following text. Notice how the word "need" is used. Notice how it is modified (premodified and postmodified) and how the nominal group it is the head of functions in the clause.

The fundamental human need to belong comes from the desire to associate with others, to cooperate, to accept group norms. However, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) shows that the need to belong can also be perverted into excessive conformity, compliance, and in-group versus out-group hostility. The need for autonomy and control, the central forces toward self-direction and planning, can be perverted into an excessive exercise of power to dominate others or into learned helplessness.

Consider three more such needs that can cut both ways. First, needs for consistency and rationality give meaningful and wise direction to our lives. Yet dissonant commitments force us to honor and rationalize wrong-headed decisions, such as prisoners remaining when they should have quit and guards justifying their abuse. Second, needs to know and to understand our environment and our relationship to it lead to curiosity, scientific discovery, philosophy, the humanities, and art. But a capricious, arbitrary environment that does not make sense can pervert those basic needs and lead to frustration and self-isolation (as it did in our prisoners). And finally, our need for stimulation triggers explorations and adventurous risk taking, but it can also make us vulnerable to boredom when we are placed in a static setting. Boredom, in turn, can become a powerful motivator of actions as we saw with the SPE night shift guards to have fun with their "playthings."

(The Lucifer Effect, by Philip Zimbardo, 2007, Rider Books)

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