Prepositional phrases as noun postmodifiers in disciplinary research articles authored by Filipino researchers: A cross-examination

Nominal prepositional phrase is one of the under-researched compressed syntactic features of academic research writing. Employing Biber, Johansson et al.’s (1999) prepositional phrases as noun postmodifiers framework, with the aid of Hernandez’s (2021) syntactic patterns, I cross-examined of-, in-, on-, and for-phrases in qualitative and quantitative research articles in Psychology, Sociology, and Curriculum and Instruction. Main findings revealed that of-phrases outnumbered other prepositional phrases across disciplinary research article sub-registers. A significant difference exists between of-phrases and other prepositional phrases. Thus, of-phrases are phrasal characteristics of Filipino-authored disciplinary research articles regardless of their research nature. Through of-phrases, Filipino researchers across the three disciplines frequently convey to what or to whom certain entities belong when writing qualitative and quantitative research. Implications for research writing curricula and academic research writing instruction are highlighted by the end of the study.