This paper presents a corpus-based analysis of the form, function, and frequency of introductory it plus that-clause and to-clause complementation. These structures are said to be particularly important in academic English. We examined disciplinary variation in 288 research articles across eight disciplines, four science and four non-science — Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Environmental Science, Business, Language and Linguistics, Law, and Public and Social Administration. We examined all 6,008 occurrences of it, recorded 110 different forms of the patterns, and investigated function. Results indicate that Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Science writers used the structures significantly less frequently than non-science writers, while Law used them more often. Numerous other statistically significant disciplinary differences were found. Conclusions are that the structure performs the important functions of evaluating the likelihood or validity of propositions, evaluating or commenting on the difficulty of procedures and evaluating or commenting on the necessity of procedures.
2024. Usage events and constructional knowledge: A study of two variants of the introductory-it construction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 46:2 ► pp. 355 ff.
Zhang, Penghua & Yi Pan
2023. An Intercultural Comparison of Authors' Self-mention and Identity Construction in English Agricultural Abstracts by Chinese and International Writers. Journal of Contemporary Language Research 2:2 ► pp. 72 ff.
Gong, Heng & Michael Barlow
2022. A corpus-based analysis of research article macrostructure patterns. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 58 ► pp. 101138 ff.
Jiang, Yi & Jing Chen
2022. Understanding Chinese Ma Students' Interpersonal Stance of Anticipatory it Patterns: Using Corpus Results to Guide the Questionnaire and Discourse-Based Interview. SSRN Electronic Journal
Lin, Yen-Yu & Siaw-Fong Chung
2021. A Corpus-Based Study on Two Near-Synonymous Verbs in Academic Journals: PROPOSE and SUGGEST. English Teaching & Learning 45:2 ► pp. 189 ff.
2019. Construing Evaluation Through Patterns: Register-specific Variations of the IntroductoryitPattern. Australian Journal of Linguistics 39:1 ► pp. 32 ff.
Yoon, Choongil
2019. Stance in the Introductory it Construction: A Comparative Study of Argumentative Writing by Korean EFL and English L1 Students. Lanaguage Research 55:3 ► pp. 601 ff.
2016. The introductory it pattern: Variability explored in learner and expert writing. Journal of English for Academic Purposes 22 ► pp. 64 ff.
Larsson, Tove
2017. A functional classification of the introductory it pattern: Investigating academic writing by non-native-speaker and native-speaker students. English for Specific Purposes 48 ► pp. 57 ff.
Larsson, Tove
2018. Is there a correlation between form and function? A syntactic and functional investigation of the introductory it pattern in student writing. ICAME Journal 42:1 ► pp. 13 ff.
Deroey, Katrien L.B. & Miriam Taverniers
2012. Just remember this: Lexicogrammatical relevance markers in lectures. English for Specific Purposes 31:4 ► pp. 221 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 august 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.