Collins Cobuild English Grammar (219 page)

BOOK: Collins Cobuild English Grammar

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Nuttall and Gipps (1982)
estimate
that the direct cost of the APU was £800,000 per year.
Collins and Ellis (2001) also
challenge
the traditional concept of the individual.

Note that the verbs that you use will depend on your academic discipline. Research-related verbs are more common in technical and scientific writing; mental and verbal activity verbs are more common in the humanities and social sciences.

These verbs indicate your attitude to the reported material:

If you think it is:	valid	not valid	neutral
use:	show	fail to	discuss
establish	overlook	respond
demonstrate	ignore	comment
		suggest

Wenger’s data
show
that 43 percent of elderly people named as a confidant someone they had known for at least 50 years.
This evidence
fails to
acknowledge the importance of the children’s diet.

These verbs indicate the cited author’s attitude to the material:

If the author is:	positive	negative	neutral	tentative
use:	argue	refute	state	suggest
maintain	object	write	believe
see	challenge	discuss	imply
hold		comment	allude to

Both Smith and Goodman (2000)
maintain
that skilled adult reading is far from error-free.
Bly
argues
that the process of initiation into adulthood is easier for women than for men.

Note that verbs that indicate attitude are more commonly used in the humanities and the social sciences.

Expressing degrees of certainty

When you are formulating your message, you need to consider how strongly you want to make your claim. Different structures express different degrees of certainty, and allow you to establish a position that you can defend if you are criticized.

For example, it is possible to defend the following statement:

Certain
researchers have
attempted
to show that
some
underprivileged children cannot engage in play.

The following would be less easy to defend:

~~Researchers have shown that underprivileged children cannot engage in play.~~

not being precise

You can use the following adverbs when the available information is not precise.

quantity	frequency	degree	limitation
roughly	often	rather	predominantly
approximately	frequently	quite	mostly
around	occasionally	somewhat	partly
seldom
	rarely		partially

Increased risk of infection is
predominantly
linked to poor sanitation.

cautious language

You can use more cautious language when you think that other people may disagree with your statement, or when you want to express uncertainty about whether or not a proposition is true. This may be because you really are uncertain, or because you want to create opportunities for readers to decide for themselves.

The following lists show distancing structures that are commonly used for making stements sound more cautious.

modal verbs	semi-auxiliary verbs	adverbs	prepositional phrases	adjectives
could	seem	possibly	in some respects	uncertain
might	appear	seemingly	in a sense	possible
may		arguably	in most cases
can		likely	in general
		apparently	in principle
		evidently
		generally
		normally
		typically

There is,
arguably
, a common thread in all these positions.
As will be seen later, current models are inadequate
in some respects
.

Note that if you express too much uncertainty, or if you repeatedly show that you are not sure if something is true, your message will have less worth, and it will be difficult to interpret.

Emphasizing

In general English, you can use strong words to emphasize a point. In academic English, you often show emphasis by changing the normal word order of a statement.

subordinate clause in first position

Subordinate clauses normally occur in first position in academic texts. The main clause carries the new or most important information.

You can use the following structures to show that something important is going to be announced at the end of the sentence.

nominal relative clauses (see
8.112
to
8.116
)

What is now required
is a systematic investigation of the data.

prefacing structures (see
9.73
to
9.78
)

The question we now need to consider is
whether the dosage should be reduced.

split sentences (see
9.25
to
9.30
)

It was this declaration
which triggered the events that followed.

Index

Note:
entries in
bold
are grammatical terms; entries in
italics
are lexical terms. At certain entries (for example,
nouns
and
verbs
), there is a list of terms with the • symbol; these lists will help you to quickly find all the main categories in a long section of the book. A number preceded by R refers to a paragraph in the Reference Section.

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