The present study analyses the lexical bundles (LBs) used by scholars of PhD linguistics in Pakistani universities. For this purpose, a small corpus of the abstracts of 73 PhD linguistics theses ranging from 2017 to 2022 was built. Antconc software was used to get the frequencies of the LBs. The objectives of the study were to examine the structural and functional taxonomies of those LBs. Biber’s (1999) classification was used for the structural analysis, while Hyland’s (2008) classification was used for the functional analysis. The study found there is a less tendency toward the use of 4-word LBs. It was disappointing to observe a low frequency of structural analysis for 4-word LBs. On the other hand, the functional classification of the LBs was relatively satisfactory due to the discovery of a higher number of 4-word LBs.The study stresses the importance of teaching the structure and functions of LBs from the intermediate level so that when these students reach the postgraduate level, they should be able to adhere to the rules of cohesion and coherence.
The present study investigates the variation in the long English vowels among native English speakers and non-native Pakistani speakers of the English language. The recordings have been collected through e-mail from different regional speakers of Pakistani languages, from U.K. and the U.S., using social-networking. The analysis of the recordings is done using PRAAT software. The long vowel /i:/ was delimited for the study. Durations quoted by the renowned phonetician Danial Jones (1976), were used as a reference for the native speakers of the English language. The initial hypotheses were built to analyze the data. The study reveals that native speakers tend to follow the pattern introduced by Danial Jones with just a slight idiolectal difference. The non-native Pakistani speakers differentiate themselves in the duration of long vowels from the native speakers. Female native speakers have shown significant variation when compared with male native speakers.
The present study focuses on the frequency, collocations, noun modification, and semantic similarities and differences of three English adjectives: wondrous, prodigious, and stupendous to compare and contrast the similarities and differences in terms of meaning and collocation. The data was collected from Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English and The British National Corpus. The three adjectives were found to have the same fundamental meaning but differ in terms of specific meanings, degrees of formality, noun modification, and collocational patterns. Consequently, the three Adjectives cannot be used interchangeably in all situations. In addition, it was found that the corpus provides some additional data which is non-existent in the dictionary.
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