A Corpus-based Study on the Frequency and Usage of English Relative Clauses in Two Science Journals

This paper presents the frequency and usage of the relative clause in two representative science journals, Cell and Physical Review Letters. This linguistic feature functions as an effective cohesive device connecting clauses. A total of 400 journal papers, 200 published in Cell from August 22, 2008 to May 29, 2009 and 200 published in Physical Review Letters from September 5, 2008 to September 19, 2008 were analyzed by a computer program developed for this study. The results generally support previous studies in that the OS structure occurred most frequently, followed by OO, SS and SO sentences, in both journals. The frequency of OS sentences, however, is much higher than that found in previous studies while the frequency of SO is much lower. In addition, the frequency of N,+which+V sentences turned out to be as high as OS sentences, reflecting the characteristics of science journal papers. Pedagogical implications are made for the teaching of non-native speakers of English working in the field of science and technology.