Page 207 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

LEXICAL CLASSES OF VERBS 193
The most common copula/linking verbs are be and become, and be is em- ployed over 20 times more frequently than any other linking verb. Be often marks stative constructions (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002; Quirk et al.,
1985)—that is, states and/or existence, but not actions, activities, or men- tal/emotive processes.
Other linking verbs prevalent in academic prose include seem and appear, which refer to likelihood or strong possibility (e.g., the economy seems stable). In addition, seem and appear refer to the process of reasoning or conclusions from reasoning that may not be completely certain (Chafe, 1985, 1986). In academic texts, these verbs are usually employed as hedges (Huebler, 1983; Hyland,
1998; see chap. 12 on hedges). Various linking verbs that refer to continuation, such as remain, keep, and stay, are far less common than be,become, seem, and ap-
pear (e.g., This definition might seem simple enough; Mankiw, 2001, p. 208).
T h e v e r b s b e a n d become a r e f o l l o w e d b y a d j e c t i v e c o m p l e m e n t s i n a v a s t majority of their uses (e.g., be important, become necessary). According to the Biber et al. (1999) corpus analysis, the most common adjectives that accom-
pany linking verbs in academic text are:
true important possible necessary present different difficult likely available useful
On the other hand, adjectives of subjective evaluation such as nice, good, wonderful, terrible, good, pleasant, terrific, or terrible are not employed in aca- demic writing.
In academic prose, the verb be is very frequently followed by a noun phrase. Additionally, linking verbs can be followed by complement noun clauses and, rarely, prepositional phrases (Leech & Svartvik, 1994).
The reason that an economy's income is_the same as its expenditure is_that every transaction has twoparties.... (Mankiw, 2001, p. 206)
Gross domestic product (GDP) is_the market value of all final goods and ser- vicesproducedwithinacountryinagivenperiodoftime.... Usually, theinter- val is_a year. (Mankiw, 2001, p. 208)
Although domestic quantity supplied and domestic quantity demanded differ, the steel market is_still in equilibrium.... (Mankiw, 2001, p. 182)
Impersonal it-cleft constructions prevalent in academic writing are almost always followed by a linking verb (Quirk et al., 1985; see chap. 6 on pronouns):
It is the existence of values that underlies facts.
... and it is reasonable to conclude that there is some "higher" being that is the ra-
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