Gramatinių formų vartojimas lietuvių kalbos moksliniame stiliuje

ACTA LINGUISTICA LITHUANICA XLVI (2002), 173-183 VIDA ZILINSKIENE Lietuvos teisės universitetas, Vilnius The article presents frequency data for the basic parts of speech (substantives, adjectives, verbs) and their inflectional forms used in Lithuanian scientific writing. It is based on the Frequency Dictionary of Modern Written Lithuanian (Grumadiené & Zilinskiené 1997) and, more specifically, on its electronic version providing data for the language of science (Grumadiené & Žilinskienė 1996). Furthermore, the frequency of the parts of speech in the language of scientific writings is compared with their frequency in the language varieties used in business and in publicistic writing. At the present time, when Lithuanian language is increasingly encountered in the information society, the study of certain styles, even of texts of a specific thematic group of one style, in various linguistic domains is becoming more and more relevant. This is especially true of statistical studies of individual language domains (lexical, morphological, word formation). Having described the morphological structure of Lithuanian publicistic and subjective styles and shown the differences between them (Žilinskienė 2002: 106-116), it is important to bos dalių ir pagrindinių jų gramatinių formų vartojimo skirtumus ir tapatumus (žr. clarify the use of these forms in scientific style. If it were found that the use of certain grammatical forms is stable in texts of different styles, while the use of others is obviously different, then it would be clear what needs to be the focus of attention when explaining automatic recognition, translation and other related issues. Both in the investigation of the morphological structure of the journalistic and subjective style, as in this case, a computerized version of the scientific style of the “Frequently used dictionary of the current written Lithuanian language” (Grumadienė, Žilinskienė 1997) was used (Grumadienė, Žilinskienė 1996). The texts for this style of common dictionaries were collected from scientific publications (monographs, articles, reports, scientific journals) or works approved by scientific institutions (dissertations, doctoral dissertations, reports, patents) published in Lithuania in 1990—1995. One other text had to be taken from a slightly earlier period, because there were scientific fields where very few works were published in Lithuanian, for example, there were no scientific articles and conference theses in Lithuanian from the mentioned period from some chemistry, biology! A strict provision was observed that samples (full-text excerpts after 1000 words) for the common dictionaries will be collected only from purely scientific publications and will not be taken from textbooks, science popularization publications, etc. 174 | VIDA ŽILINSKIENĖ I did not find any monographs in Lithuanian language from theology, so I had to take only articles. The scientific style was represented by eight thematic groups: 1) agricultural sciences (agronomics, forestry, veterinary, zootechnics- ); 2) natural sciences (astronomy, biology, chemistry, geography, geology and mineralogy, physics); history, linguistics, literature, musicology, theatrology- ); 4) mathematical sciences (mathematics, logic, statistics, computer 3) humanitariniai mokslai (architektūra, dailėtyra, etnologija, filosofija, folkloristika, science, systems science), 5) medical sciences (medicine, pharmacy, dentistry); 6) social sciences (education, economics, political science, psychology, sociology, law, management, librarianship and bookkeeping- ); 7) technical sciences (agricultural and environmental engineering, chemical technology, electronics and electrical engineering, energy and thermal technology, control and information technology, mechanics, materials science, metrology and measurements, transport technology, construction); 8) theological sciences (fundamental theology, dogmatic theology, moral theology, scriptural studies (Holy Scripture), patrology (old Church traditions), Church history, pastoral theology, canon law). These thematic groups were selected according to the classification of scientific fields and directions approved by the Government of the Republic of Lithuania Decision No. 739 of October 7, 1992. From the publications of the listed fields of science and directions (taking into account the fact that there were a lot of publications of certain sciences, e.g., humanities, technology, and very few of others) 300 samples, i.e., 1000 words of uses of “cohesive text” excerpts were randomly selected and the frequent dictionaries of each sample were counted, from these — the dictionaries of each thematic group, and from these — the frequent dictionaries of scientific style. When counting the frequencies of words (lexema), the frequencies of the grammatical forms of these words were also counted, which we will discuss. First, let’s look at the use of parts of speech in Kalbos dalis Žodžių pavartojimų skaičius Žodžių pavartojimas (%) scientific texts (see Table 1). TABLE 1. USE OF PARTS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE Noun 121 696 43,73 Verb 50 958 18,31 Adverb 32 806 11,79? In the past, many scientists in certain fields published their works only in Russian, and now some of them are writing only in English. Thus, a twofold problem arises: on the one hand, no scientific texts are written or almost not written in Lithuanian, and therefore the terminology of the relevant field is not developed and created, and on the other hand, it would be interesting to know what level of English these texts are written. i A coherent text is precisely what shows the real use of parts of speech and their grammatical forms. USE OF GRAMMATIC FORMS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE | 175 ConjunctiKalbos dalis Žodžių pavartojimų skaičius Žodžių pavartojimas (%) on 21 247 7.63 Pronoun 18 899 6.79 Preposition 12073 4.34 Adverb 11753 422 Particle 5963 2.14 Numeral* 2 863 1.03 Emoticon 48 0.02 IStimulus 5 0.002 As we can see from these data, in scientific style mainly nouns are used, i.e. almost half (43.7396) of the words in the scientific text are nouns. Another significant part of the scientific texts (30.10%) is occupied by words that complement the other two parts of the language — the verb and the adjective. Thus, words of only three parts of the language occupy almost three quarters (73.83%) of the texts examined. Using the computer- -generated glossaries of scientific, subjective and publicistic styles (Žilinskienė 2002: 106-116), prepared according to the same methodology (for more details see Žilinskienė 1998: 219-227) from texts published in 1993-1995, let us compare the use of parts of speech in these styles of texts, since only comparison can best show the real situation (see table 2). From the data of this table we can see: 1) in the texts of all three styles nouns are very clearly predominant, i.e. noun language is characteristic of all comparable styles, only in the publications there are fewer nouns than in the texts of the other two styles; 2) the diversity of the vocabulary of all these styles is mainly determined by the two parts of the same language — the noun and the verb; pronouns (it always behaves as a pronoun from a statistical point of view), whose different words (non-word uses) are found only a few dozen times in all styles of texts, i.e., which make up a very small part of the vocabulary, occupy about a quarter to a fifth of the texty (20.90% in scientific style, 22.59% in professional style and 26.13% in publicistic style); 3) in texts of all styles, the second part of speech according to use is verb4 As is usual when compiling frequency dictionaries, only those digits that were written in words are recorded here, 0 digits written in Arabic or Roman digits were only included in the description of the statistical structure. 176 | VIDA ŽILINSKIENĖ dis, in comparable styles its use differs little; 4) the use of adjectives differs, they are mainly in scientific texts, and obviously less in the journalistic and subjective style; 5) visi vardažodžiai moksliniuose, dalykiniuose ir publicistikos tekstuose atitinkamai užima 63,34 96, 62,34% ir 56,54 96; 6) apskritai visų kalbos dalių vartojimo požiūriu moksliniai tekstai yra artimesni dalykiniams tekstams. 2 LENTELĖ. KALBOS DALIŲ VARTOJIMAS MOKSLINIAME, DALYKINIAME IR PUBLICISTINIAME STILIUOSE Mokslinis stilius Dalykinis stilius Publicistinis stilius Kalbos dalis Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių pavartojipavartopavartojipavartopavartojipavartomy skaicius jimas (%) mų skaičius jimas(96) mų skaicius ~~ jimas (%) Daiktavardis 121 696 43,73 126 520 45,27 109 724 38,54 Veiksmazodis 50 958 18,31 54 491 19,50 59 814 21,01 Būdvardis 32 806 11,79 22 462 8,04 20175 7,09 Jungtukas 21 247 7,63 23 706 8,48 22973 8,07 Ivardis 18 899 6,79 22438 8,03 27 346 9,61 Prielinksnis 12073 4,34 12 354 442 14 272 5,01 Prieveiksmis 11 753 4,22 9817 3,51 16 541 5,81 Dalelytė 5963 2,14 4629 1,66 9 806 3,44 Skaitvardis 2 863 1,03 2778 1,00 3695 1,30 Jaustukas 48 0,02 299 0,11 328 0,12 Ištiktukas 5 0,002 11 0,005 13 0,005 3 Kaip matome, Sie rezultatai atitinka A. Bitinienés (Zr. Bitiniené 1995: 11-19) padarytą išvadą, kad moksliniame stiliuje teksto informatyvuma, be daiktavardžio, didina ir būdvardis, t. y. abi šios kalbos dalys padeda perteikti faktinę informaciją. USE OF GRAMMATIC FORMS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE | 177 Let us consider the use of syllables in the most common part of speech — the noun — as shown in Table 3. TABLE 3. USE OF SUBSTANTIVE SUBJUNCTIONS Noun MOKSLINIAME STILIUJE Vienaskaita Daugiskaita Words Words Words Words Number linksnis pavartojimų pavartopavartojimų pavartoof words jim (96) number jim (96) Pronoun 37 703 46.47 18546 45.85 Noun 18 391 22.67 9 355 23.13 Adjective 10 763 13.27 5828 14.41 Pronoun 5534 6.82 2 068 5.11 Inagininkas 5 488 6.766 2939 7.27 Utilitarian 3234 3.999 1 685 4.17 Adverb 19 0.022 29 0.07 IS Table 3 shows that in scientific texts the usage of the noun subjunctive is very clearly distinguished from the noun pronoun usage — just over half of all subjunctive nouns are pronouns. Such a high frequency of adjective forms is mainly related to the fact that in texts adjectives usually perform the function of relative adjectives, and this is evident from the fact that the frequency of adjectives of some nouns (some of them are used very often, e.g., culture, data, Lithuanians, science, activity, country, energy, etc.) exceeds the frequency of other adjectives of the same noun. The other two verbs — the noun and the adjective — are also more common, although, as can be seen from the table, the noun is almost twice as common as the adjective. Thus, in scientific texts, the three most common verbs make up over 80 out of 96 verbs of all nouns. A more uniform group of three less frequently used vowels (except for the vowel). In addition, 113 uses of unverbal nouns were found in the researched scientific texts. When comparing the absolute frequencies of singular and plural verbs (table 3), it can be seen that each singular verb is approximately twice as frequent as the corresponding plural verb. The overall ratio of singular and plural forms of nouns is as follows: singular —81 132 (66.73 96), plural —40 450 (33.26 96), plural — 1 (0,001 90). 178 | VIDA ŽILINSKIENĖ Thus, singular forms of nouns are used twice as often as plural forms in scientific style texts. Secondly, although a number of nouns are used in both singular and plural forms, there is a tendency to use the singular for many words, especially those that refer to the names of substances, processes or abstract concepts, and the plural of which often acquires a specific meaning (e.g., element, substance, water, culture, activity, measurement, relation, management, layer, mass, production, society, etc.). In texts of the style under consideration, the masculine gender of nouns is used much more often than the feminine gender: masculine gender — 73 296 (60.28 96%), feminine gender — 48 287 (39.72%). This usage, of course, is also related to the fact that the male gender is the insignificant member of the opposition. As we have seen from the data in table 1, the second most frequent part of speech in scientific style texts is the verb. The most common verbs of the objective style are: be, be able, have, call, make, use, determine, present, assign, not be, belong, perform, receive, need. From a few of these verbs we can understand what is mostly written about in texts of scientific style. The ratio of individual verb forms is shown in Table 4. TABLE 4. USE OF VERB FORMS Verb form Use of word forms Use of forms(%) Number of personifiMOKSLINIAME STILIUJE ed forms 20 483 41,20 Participants 19180 37,64 Total 7266 14,26 Dividers 3365 6,60 Semi-participants 659 1,29 Ordinals 5 0,01 From this table we can see that in scientific texts personified forms are used most and only a little less participants. Such a fairly frequent use of the participants in the scientific style, apparently, shows that these texts use a lot of compounds USE OF GRAMMATIC FORMS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE | 179 times, e.g. : Some of the Baroque-- style complexes were built on the sites of buildings or quarters destroyed during the war. In order to determine the range of measurement values, the ratios of the longitudinal resistances of the zones were changed. As expected, the direct forms of the aamenable forms clearly predominate: direct form — 19 328 (94.36%), predicative form — 1 015 (4.96 96%), imperative form — 1 015 (4.96 96%), imperative form — 1 015 (4.96 96%). — 140 (0,68 96). From the studies of the use of grammatical forms of different Lithuanian language styles, it can be expected that different styles are characterized by a certain use of verb tenses (see Žilinskienė 2002: 106-116). The ratio of direct narrative times of scientific style texts is shown in Table 5. TABLE 5. USE OF VERB TENTS Use of MOKSLINIAME STILIUJE Verb Forms Use of Forms (96) time number Current 12 901 66.75 Former 5475 28,33 Future 780 4.04 Effective frequency 172 0.89 As can be seen from this table, the present tense forms are the most commonly used in scientific texts, i.e. they are more than twice as common as the other main form of the present tense — the past tense. This is apparently related to the fact that the scientific style usually captures the corresponding phenomena of reality that exist all the time, their relationships and laws, describes production processes or experiments, etc. For example: : The most affected by the deforestation are the degraded communities of lakes, gullies and dunes, where there is a thick cover of fragile chimneys. To the east of the palace there is a parterre, to which the workshop adjoins from the north, the barn from the south, and next to the barn there is a horse stable. If a crime is not prevented by an official who is obliged to do so... Similar results, i.e. that in scientific texts the present tense is much more frequent than the past tense, have been published by A. Bitinienė, who has examined 38,5 thousand words (see 2008). Bitinienė 1995: 11-19). In addition, Latvian linguists found 93.1% present tense in scientific-technical texts (292 thousand words used) examined in 1966 (cf. Jakubaite et al.1968: ir 122). Tiesioginės nuosakos laikų asmenų formų vartojimas pateiktas 6 lentelėje, iš kurios it is clear that the third person is dominant, which indicates its special position in the system of persons. Therefore, apparently, the opinion of some linguists (Žulys 1974: 83— Page 180 | 92), that this form is not to be regarded as a personal form; moreover, the first-person frequency of the plural of the other persons falls into the eye. This is probably related to the fact that in scientific texts, even one author, when describing an experiment, commenting on the results of the research or drawing conclusions, often uses the plural, e.g.: we combine, we form, we observe, we call, we examined, we determined. TABLE 6. PERSONS UNDER DIRECT MANAGEMENT VARTOJIMAS MOKSLINIAME STILIUJE Current time Past tense Future tense Frequency Veiksmalaikas laikas laikas žodžio Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių Žodžių asmuo pavartojimų pavartopavartojimų pavartopavartojimų pavartopavartojimų pavartoskaičius jimas (96) skaičius jimas(7o) skaičius jimas (%) skaičius jimas (96) Vns. 1 a. 45 0,35 27 0,49 7 0,89 - — Vns. 2 a. 19 0.15 4 0.07 8 1.03 —— Dgs.1a. 522 4,05 190 3,47 275 35,26 7 4,07 Dgs. 2a 2 0.02 2 0.04 3 0.38 — — 3a. 12313 95,44 5252 9593 485 62,44 165 95,93 As we have seen i$ 4 table data, asmenuojamuyjy be forms, in scientific style a lot of participants. ir Jų the distribution by species is as follows: target species participants — 4539 (23,67 96), participants of the non-active species — 14 641 (76,33 96). Thus, it is obvious that in scientific texts, participants of the inactive species are used three times more than those of the active species. Abiejų rūšių The use laikų of present tense forms by participants shows a similar trend as the use of aamenable tense forms (see Table 7), i.e. present tense forms are used more than past tense, but the prevalence is not as pronounced here. USE OF GRAMMATIC FORMS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE | 181 7 TABLE. TIME USE OF PARTICIPANTS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE Adjective race Non-adjective species Participant time Words Words Words Word uses usesnumber of uses number (%) number (96) Current 2 608 57.46 8275 56,52 Bitasis kartinis 1923 42.37 Low frequency 3 0.07 Butasis 6 060 41.39 Busimasis 5 0.11 30 0.20 276 1.89 Let us consider another important part of speech — the adjective. In texts of scientific style, the following adjectives are most often used: large, diverse, main, new, important, general, small, social, separate, different, true, characteristic, high, equal, scientific, political, recent, economic, good, special. Let's discuss the frequency of grammatical adjective categories. The use of adjectives is shown in Table 8. TABLE 8. USE OF PRONOUN LINKS IN SCIENTIFIC STYLE Vienaskaita Daugiskaita Adjective Words Words Words Words linksnis pavartojimų pavartopavartojimų pavartoNumber of words jim (76) number of jim (%) Denominator 6 406 34,23 4136 30,52 Originator 6 066 32,41 4962 36,62 Rear axle 2992 15,99 2102 15,51