German and English

Dirk Siepmann is Professor of English at Osnabrück University. His research interests are translation, contrastive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and language teaching.

• ContentsPreambleAcknowledgements1. Introduction: academic language today2. Academic grammar 2.1 Number and countability: making abstractions concrete2.2 Determiner use: using fewer articles2.2.1 English zero article2.2.2 German zero article2.3 Phrasal complexity: packing information into word groups2.3.1 Predicative nouns and their complementation 2.3.2 Non-predicative nouns2.3.3 Compounds and multi-word expressions2.3.4 Nominal compounds2.3.5 Adjectival compounds2.3.6 Complex postmodification in English and German2.3.7 German premodification vs. English postmodification 2.4 Clausal complexity: making information flow2.4.1 Basic word order rules and clause-initial framing2.4.2 Countervailing tendencies in clause structure2.4.3 Elaboration: Relative clauses and supplements3. Academic vocabulary3.1 General-language items3.1.1 Nouns3.1.2 Verbs3.1.3 Adjectives3.1.4 Small words: adverbs and particles3.1.5 Informal words and expressions3.2 Learned words (Bildungssprache) 3.3 General academic words and phraseology3.3.1 Simplexes3.3.2 Compounds3.3.3 Particle constructions and spatial metaphor3.4 Sub-technical vocabulary used in one or more disciplines3.5 Subject-specific terminology3.6 Subject-specific phraseology4. Vocabulary and grammar: constructions4.1 Lexicon and grammar vs. constructicon4.1.1 Constructions and creativity4.1.2 Nominal vs. verbal constructions4.2 Constructions and word combining4.3 Common constructions in academic text 5. Communicative purpose and linguistic form6. Language use in the disciplines6.1 Literary and cultural studies, art and art history: research proposal (abstract), talk6.2 History: monograph6.3 Sociology: journal article and monograph6.4 Economics: textbook and research report6.5 Philosophy: popularizing book6.6 Geography: journal article6.7 Musicology: journal article and abstractAppendix IIndex