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In recent years language researchers have become interested in examining types of variation and changes that occur in a particular linguistic system across genres. This study adopts a corpus-based approach to attempt to investigate in depth whether particular linguistic features can serve as reliable indicators for genre identification. Noun phrase type is one kind of linguistic feature that has been selected to conduct quantitative and qualitative analyses for establishing distinctions between genres. Based on the Singapore Component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-SIN), this research systematically examines the grammatical variation and distributional features of eight English NP types in Singapore English novels. The findings indicate that the distribution patterns of eight different NP types align with the linguistic characteristics and socio‑communicative functions of the novel genre. Different NP categories can be significant indicators of genres which contributes to revealing the inherent linguistic preferences and stylistic features of narrative discourse in literary works.
Noun Phrase; ICE-SIN; Novels; Stylistic Features; Indicator
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A Corpus-based Study on the Features of Noun Phrases in Novels—Based on the ICE-SIN Corpus
How to cite this paper: Kun Yang. (2025). A Corpus-based Study on the Features of Noun Phrases in Novels—Based on the ICE-SIN Corpus. Translation and Foreign Language Learning, 1(5), 911-918.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/tfll.2025.12.028