چكيده فارسي :
The present study aimed at investigating the lexical density as well as the frequency of action nominalizations in the introduction sections of research articles across the so-called soft and hard disciplines. . To determine the frequency of nominalizations, the introduction sections of 42 research articles from both soft (n = 21) and hard (n = 21) disciplines were textually analyzed. Research articles from the disciplines of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology represented the hard science disciplines, while research articles from the disciplines of Psychology, Sociology, and Counseling comprised the corpus for the soft science disciplines. To determine the lexical density of the introduction sections of the corpus of the study, the UAM Corpus Tool was used. Data was analyzed through one way ANOVA using SPSS 20. Results showed that there was a significant difference between the frequency of nominalization in the introduction section of hard science disciplines and that of soft science discipline (F (1, 41) = 5.260, p= 0.027). Findings revealed that hard science writers employ nominalizations in the introduction sections of research articles more frequently compared with the soft science writers. Results, however, did not show a significant difference between the lexical densities of the introduction section of hard disciplines compared with soft disciplines (F (1, 41) = 0.626, p= 0.433). Findings seem to contradict a long standing belief regarding the interconnectedness of lexical density and nominalization.
