Gabriella Jenei: Referential Cohesion in Academic Writing • A descriptive and exploratory theory- and corpus-based study of the text-organizing role of reference in written academic discourse
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8. STAGE 4: THE REPRESENTATION OF ERRORS IN THE COHESIVE REFERENCE ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ACADEMIC WRITING
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8.3. Taxonomy: reference errors in academic writing
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8.3.4. Non-existent forms

8.3.4. Non-existent forms

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Most non-existent forms occurred in intended s-genitives and of-phrases. According to Biber et al. (1991), of-phrases have the highest frequency in academic prose while s-genitives are surprisingly rare. They explain this characteristic feature of the academic register partly by its subject matter, which rarely focuses as much on human beings and their relationships as the other registers they studied (i.e., conversation, fiction and news). Another explanation for the excessive use of of-phrases is their capacity to provide additional clarity to a structure by producing “a less dense and more transparent means of expression” (Biber et al., 1991, 302). The possibilities of clarification opened up by using an of-phrase instead of a genitive are: 1. using coordination (e.g., the execution of a senior officer and two dogs), 2. an appositional construction (e.g., the celebration of the birth of a famous writer, Jack Kerouac.), 3. a post-modifying prepositional phrase (e.g., the withdrawal of US military forces from Iraq) or 4. a relative clause (e.g., contemporaries of John, who would certainly have…). In addition, of-phrases were found to be about three times as likely to present new, rather than given information and introduce new entities into the discourse (Biber et al., 1991, 305), while s-genitives tended to maintain reference to previously mentioned entities.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Learners of English trying to mimic the characteristics of academic writing seem to notice this high frequency of of-phrases but go too far and overuse them. Possessive of constructions with a person or pronoun as head are not used in English according to Biber et al. (1991), but were found in the corpus, for example, the final goal of it, the characteristics of them, in the opinion of Ágnes.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Other uninterpretable items included examples such as in the examples below:

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

the how it will happen (TH14, s. 249), in the one chapter of (TH14, s. 108), organized along the following the lines (TH3, s. 20), the there is (TH5, s. 361), the filling in the questionnaires
(TH10, s. 306).

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The remaining sentence-internal problems – those which could be identified as any of the error types above but occurred within sentence boundaries – were listed under non-cohesive errors.
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