Logic-Semantic Relations in English and Lithuanian Scientific Discourse

Abstract

Cohesion and coherence are inseparable features of any text and discourse. There are several grammatical and lexical devices by which cohesion can be reached. Conjunction is one of them and it is assigned to the intermediate — lexico-grammatical category. Usage of conjunctions and other connecting words for expressing the logic-semantic relations in different languages can vary due to different reasons. One of them is the common norms of a language and certain types of discourse that are not necessarily equally settled among languages. The analysis has been based on the purposeful selection of the scientific (linguistic) English (3articles — 28815 words) and Lithuanian (10 articles — 29421 word) articles. In order to count the average value of the units of the conjunctive relations in the articles, the quantitative measurements have been performed. The investigation of such issues requires performing an interlanguage analysis of these elements, which has shown such general trends: within the English academic discourse additive conjunction has had the largest expansion, and organizational conjunction — the smallest; conjunctive devices have been used less frequently in Lithuanian research articles; the largest index of variety of connectives in both languages belongs to additive conjunction, the lowest diversity has been demonstrated by adversative conjunctions. The analysis of connectives found in English and Lithuanian research articles has led to some certain conclusions about their use preferences in the field of linguistic academic discourse. It has been revealed that the constitutional conjunctions is the biggest (42 %) and the most variable group of all cohesion relations both in English and Lithuanian articles. The opposing conjunctions of the semantic subgroup in the English articles (27 %) is bigger than in the Lithuanian (14 %) ones. The conjunctions of reason comprise 33 % in the Lithuanian and 17 % in the English texts. The scientific discourse of both languages has expletive means of the sentence conjunctions that make the text coherent and logical.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.20.1188