Stage

Grammatical feature

Modifiers

Abstracts of IEEE writers (N = 50)

Abstracts of CNKI writers (N = 50)

Mean difference

Mean

SD

Mean

SD

P(t-test)

2

Attributive adjectives

AP

4.43

2.01

4.19

2.27

0.577

AAP

0.65

0.57

0.69

0.9

0.791

3

Participial premodifiers

PP

1.26

0.97

0.95

0.89

0.099

That relative clauses, especially with animate head nouns

RC

0.81

1.1

0.16

0.86

0.001*

Nouns as premodifiers

NP

3.09

2.27

3.82

1.79

0.077

Possessive nouns

PNP

0.14

0.4

0.17

0.43

0.719

Of phrases

OF

2.19

1.99

3.58

6.33

0.142

Simple prepositional phrases other than of

PR

3.22

2.79

0.6

2.35

0.000*

4

Nonfinite relative clauses: -ed

ED

0.53

1.04

0.4

1.29

0.58

Nonfinite relative clauses: -ing

ING

0.29

1.01

0.08

0.73

0.236

Multiple modifiers of Attributive adjectives and nouns

ANP

1.54

1.29

1.39

1.17

0.544

NNP

0.82

0.81

1.11

1.39

0.205

Other multiple modifiers

3.36

1.65

3.18

1.78

0.601

5

Preposition + Nonfinite complement clause

PNCC

0.13

0.43

0.13

0.87

0.942

Complement clauses controlled by nouns

CN

0.08

0.2

0.03

0.34

0.372

Multiple prepositional phrases, with levels of embedding

EPE

0.33

1.24

0.08

1.25

0.318

To-clauses

TO

0.61

0.94

0.04

0.43

0.000*