{"title":"Specialized multiword units in traditional Chinese medicine","authors":"Cailing Lu , Averil Coxhead","doi":"10.1016/j.jeap.2024.101467","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Chinese culture, Chinese language all root in ancient Chinese philosophy, and thus each of them penetrates the others. This study adopted a mixed-method approach of quantitative and qualitative semantic analysis to identify the most frequent multiword units in TCM. A list of 538 TCM collocations and lexical bundles was developed from a corpus of TCM textbooks and journal articles. These multiword units are made up of one or more of the following types of words: Chinese loan words (e.g., <em>dang gui</em>), Chinese loan words plus English words (e.g., <em>qi transformation</em>), and English words (e.g., <em>the lung channel</em>). A functional taxonomy analysis revealed three main categories of TCM multiword units: diagnosis, treatment, and theoretical. These results suggest that collocations and lexical bundles play an essential role in creating both the structure and subject knowledge of TCM discourse, supporting previous research which revealed that some technical words need to be seen in combinations rather than as individual words.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47717,"journal":{"name":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","volume":"73 ","pages":"Article 101467"},"PeriodicalIF":3.1000,"publicationDate":"2025-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of English for Academic Purposes","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1475158524001358","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Chinese culture, Chinese language all root in ancient Chinese philosophy, and thus each of them penetrates the others. This study adopted a mixed-method approach of quantitative and qualitative semantic analysis to identify the most frequent multiword units in TCM. A list of 538 TCM collocations and lexical bundles was developed from a corpus of TCM textbooks and journal articles. These multiword units are made up of one or more of the following types of words: Chinese loan words (e.g., dang gui), Chinese loan words plus English words (e.g., qi transformation), and English words (e.g., the lung channel). A functional taxonomy analysis revealed three main categories of TCM multiword units: diagnosis, treatment, and theoretical. These results suggest that collocations and lexical bundles play an essential role in creating both the structure and subject knowledge of TCM discourse, supporting previous research which revealed that some technical words need to be seen in combinations rather than as individual words.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of English for Academic Purposes provides a forum for the dissemination of information and views which enables practitioners of and researchers in EAP to keep current with developments in their field and to contribute to its continued updating. JEAP publishes articles, book reviews, conference reports, and academic exchanges in the linguistic, sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic description of English as it occurs in the contexts of academic study and scholarly exchange itself.