ZHAO Yi-yang,ZHANG Le
The use of reporting verbs is a common way in the collaborative construction of new knowledge by academic writers and readers. Most researches that concerns reporting verbs are limited to mono-lingual studies. Contrastive Phraseology is a newly emerging subfield of Contrastive Linguistics from the perspective of Phraseology， which aims at comparing the multi-lingual phrases in form， meaning and function. This research analyzed the Chinese equivalents of English reporting verbs aided by the comparable corpora. It is found that there is no equivalence of Chinese and English reporting verbs in research articles， and evaluative reporting verbs is more frequently used in English research articles. This study fundamentally shed light on the contrastive study of reporting verb phrases cross language.
Keywords： academic writing， reporting verbs， comparable corpora， translation equivalents， contrastive phraseology
Introduction
Based on a view of writing as a social and communicative engagement between writers and readers， a large number of researches focused on how academic writers achieve effective interaction with the readers while maintaining the integrity of their data and expressing their attitude （Hyland， 1999）. Hedges （Hyland， 1996）， reporting conventions （Hyland， 2000； Thomas Hawes， 1994）， evaluation （Hunston， 1993； ThompsonYe， 1991） and self-mention （Hyland， 2001） are among the features that have been examined for the ways such writer-reader interactions are realized in journal articles.
With the development of comparable corpus and contrastive phraseology， many studies of the forementioned interactive strategies have been conducted to the cross-linguistic comparison under the framework of the contrastive phraseology， including meta-discourse （Mu et al.， 2015）， hedging （Hu Cao， 2011； Yang， 2013）， authorial stance markers （Wu， 2010）， and self-mention （Wu， 2010）. However， the study of reporting verb is still limited to the mono-lingual research. To be more specific， most of the studies compared the use of native and non-native writers， focusing on the master of English language learners （Lou， 2011， 2013； Zhang， 2012）. Few studies have made comparisons at a phrasal level. Therefore， within the framework of contrastive phraseology， this paper aims to explore reporting verb phrases concerning their form， meaning and function in English journal articles and tries to identify their Chinese equivalence in order to shed light on the English-Chinese contrastive study on reporting verbs.
Reporting Verb
Reporting verb is defined as reporting marks that convey relevant academic information （Thomas Hawes， 1994）. Swales maintained that reporting verb is employed by academic writers who rely on the previous research to state facts and clarify their own research views， and the proper use of reporting verb can help enhance the persuasiveness of the writers’ argument （Swales， 1990）.
Thompson and Ye （1991） firstly categorized reporting verb into denotation verb and evaluation verb. Based on this categorization， Hyland gave a more comprehensive one to provide a clearer boundary concerning the attitudinal stance embraced in reporting verb （see Figure 1， Hyland， 1999）. This study will refer to the second categorization given by Hyland.
Contrastive Phraseology
Phraseology has been established as a separate discipline in linguistics （Wei， 2011）. The corpus-based study of phraseology mainly focuses on the collocational behavior of phrases， especially on form， meaning and function （Lu Wei， 2014）. Sinclair argued that much of what appears in spoken or written texts follows what he calls the idiom principle， that is， each word in the text is used in a common phraseology， meaning is attached to the whole phrase rather than to the individual parts of it， the hearer or reader understands the phrase as a parts of it， and the hearer or reader understands the phrase as a phrase rather than as a grammatical template with lexical items in it （Sinclair， 1991）. According to Sinclair， the extended units of meaning consists of five elements， core， semantic prosody， semantic preference， collocation and colligation， among which semantic prosody weighs the most by expressing the writers’ attitude in a specific context. These two basic concepts， idiom principle and the extended units of meaning are the principal theoretical framework in corpus-based study of phraseology.
Contrastive Phraseology integrates corpus linguistics， phraseology， contrastive linguistics， translation studies and other disciplines， which aims to examine the similarities and differences of the collocational behavior of words or phrases cross languages， especially the comparison and equivalence of the phrases in terms of the form， meaning and function. （Wei， 2011） Since it is the newly emerging sub-direction of phraseology， it shares the classical theories in phraseology： idiom principle； extended unit of meaning and co-selection （Sinclair， 1991）.
Methodology
Corpus
Aiming at exploring the Chinese equivalence of English reporting verb phrases， this research adopts both quantitative and qualitative research methods and the data are collected from the Corpora of Chinese-English Academic Papers （CCEAP） （Zhang， 2021）， comprising 800 articles in English and Chinese journals in both hard and soft sciences. The English journal articles are extracted from SCIEX， SSCI， and AFeng， C. （2011）. Hedging and boosting in abstracts of applied linguistics articles： A comparative study of English？ and Chinese？ medium journals. Journal of Pragmatics， 43（11）， 2795-2809.
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