Shirley Carter-Thomas. Specialised syntax for specialised texts ? An examination of the preferred syntactic patterns in 2 agnate scientific genres : proceedings articles and conference presentations. GLAT-BARCELONA 2004 : Groupe de Linguistique Appliquée des Télécommunications, May 2004, Barcelone, Spain. pp.3-18.

This study compares the syntactic choices adopted by speakers in the introductory sections to their conference presentations with those made in the introductions to the corresponding proceedings articles. Within the setting of an international physics conference I will evaluate the relative importance of content-related features, epistemological concerns and specific contextual constraints on speakers’ and writers’ decisions to privilege certain syntactic patterns. The syntactic features focussed upon include: the active/passive voice distinction, noun-group and personal pronoun distribution, extraposition, pseudo-cleft constructions and the use of ‘existential’ there.