Contrastive grammar analysis of pharmaceutical research articles in english and spanish

Introduction

In recent years, we have witnessed how the world is increasingly becoming a global one. English language has risen as an international language, or lingua franca of modern era (Crystal, 1997), hence its influence in almost all fields. In Crystal"s opinion, a language becomes global certainly not because of the number of people who use it, nor the linguistic characteristics of such language; but because of who these people are and what they represent. For this reason, Latin and later French, were international languages in their respective periods; they both represented the power. He also adds that a "language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country" (Crystal, 1997:3), being the case of English language. Moreover, industrial and economic development as well as advances in communication technology also contributed to the establishment of Shakespeare"s language as the most powerful one at a global scale during the 20th century.

Globalization also facilitated the spread of English in many domains. English became the language of political conferences as it has stood one of the working languages of a great number of political organizations (United Nations, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund, World Health Organization, World Bank, and others). Additionally, it is considered the language of business, entertainment, technology, the media and education (Crystal, 1997). Perhaps, one of the major achievements of English language in this globalized world is having become a vehicular language in the domains of science.

Undoubtedly, English is nowadays used almost exclusively as the language of science. Its adoption as the universal language of science has had an extraordinary effect on scientific communication: by learning a single language, scientists around the world can communicate with other scientists anywhere in the world. This communication can take place through different channels such as the presentation of papers at conferences, participation in seminars and the publication of short communication, critical reviews and monographs. However, a chief channel that members of an academic community use to report the results of their research is publication of research articles in scientific journals. Because of English status in science, research articles are mostly written in English.

However, "the use of English as the universal language creates distinct challenges for those scientists who are non-native speakers of English" (Drubin, 2012), inasmuch as when they write their articles, they tend to make linguistic mistakes such as lexico-semantic and syntactic, along with those related to the cultural referent and the influence from their mother tongue. Simultaneously, all these difficulties can delay the due date of the document and affect its quality.

In this case, writing a research article results a challenging activity for a group of Spanish-speaking pharmaceutical science specialists from the Medical University of Villa Clara Serafín Ruiz de Zárate Ruiz and from the Central University "Martha Abreu" of Las Villas, in Cuba, whose mother tongue is Spanish. They are frequently required to translate their research articles into English, or write them in this language in order to publish them. In that situation, these Spanish-speaking specialists need to master most of the grammatical, syntactic, semantic, stylistic and pragmatic aspects in both languages: English and Spanish.

Grammar is one of the aspects of language where Spanish scientists find more difficulties when writing in English. According to P. H. Matthews (2007), within the grammar of a language, we find a property of items which is called grammatical category; it has a number of possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusive within a given category. Examples of frequently encountered grammatical categories include tense (which may take values such as present and past), number (with values such as singular, plural, and sometimes dual), gender (with values such as masculine, feminine and neuter) and voice (with values such as active and passive) (Matthews, 2007).

One of the most troublesome grammatical aspects of the style of scientific writing is the proper use of the passive voice. In English, this category is formed with the verb be. In Spanish, however, the passive with ser tends to be avoided inasmuch as the most common way of expressing a passive idea in this language is by using the particle se with a verb in the third person.

The unawareness of the Spanish-speaking specialists of the appropiate use of the passive voice in English research articles can cause many problems when writing their research articles. The comparison of research articles of pharmaceutical sciences in both English and Spanish languages through the perspective of contrastive linguistics can contribute to a more appropiate use of the passive form.

Therefore, this paper seeks to improve the research article writing by describing the use of the passive voice in pharmaceutical research articles in both English and Spanish. Moreover, this study has been conducted through a contrastive linguistic perspective.

Theoretical considerations

• 1. The notion of contrastive linguistics

The term "contrastive linguistics" was coined by the American linguist Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1941 and its program was instigated by Charles Carpenter Fries from the University of Michigan in the 1940s. Fries (1945) contended that "the most effective materials in foreign language teaching are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of the learner" (Fries, 1945).

Some years later, this project was put into practice by Fries" colleague Robert Lado. In his book Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers (1957), which is considered the highest contribution in the field of contrastive studies, Lado formulates the "Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis". This theory basically states that foreign language teaching can be improved by comparing the learner"s native language with the language to be learned. Its main assumptions can be summarized as follows:

• First language acquisition and foreign language learning differ fundamentally, especially in those cases where the foreign language is learned later than a mother tongue and on the basis of the full mastery of that mother tongue.

• Every language has its own specific structure. Similarities between the two languages will cause no difficulties ("positive transfer"), but differences will, due to "negative transfer" (or "interference"). The student"s learning task can therefore roughly be defined as the sum of the differences between the two languages.

• A systematic comparison between mother tongue and foreign language to be learned will reveal both similarities and contrasts.

• On the basis of such a comparison it will be possible to predict or even rank learning difficulties and to develop strategies (teaching materials, teaching techniques, etc.) for making foreign language teaching more efficient (König & Gast, 2007)

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed a certain diversification in the field of contrastive linguistics insofar as new topics came into the focus of attention (e.g. pragmatics and discourse studies), and new empirical methods were introduced, especially corpus-based ones. The availability of specialized corpora (parallel corpora and learner corpora) also led to a renewal of the link between contrastive linguistics and linguistic applications, as insights gained from (quantitative) contrastive analyses turned out to be useful for translation studies (Gast, 2012).

In his book Contrastive Linguistics and the Language Teacher (1981), Jacek Fisiak defines contrastive linguistics as a subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both the differences and similarities between them. In his turn, Carl James (1991) asserts that contrastive linguistics (or CL) is synonymous with contrastive analysis (CA) but only the latter is a countable noun.

One of the most complete definitions of contrastive linguistics is the one proposed by Stig Johansson (2000). He defines contrastive linguistics as the systematic comparison of two or more languages, with the aim of describing their similarities and differences. According to him, the objective of the comparison may vary since language comparison is of great interest in a theoretical as well as an applied perspective. This comparison reveals what is general and what is language specific and is therefore important both for the understanding of language in general and for the study of the individual languages compared.

He points out that contrastive linguistics is thus not a unified field of study. The focus may be on general or on language specific features. The study may be theoretical, without any immediate application, or it may be applied, i.e. carried out for a specific purpose (Johansson, 2000).

Thus, as a whole, it can be stated that contrastive linguistics is a branch of linguistics concerned with showing the differences and similarities of two languages regarding their structure, characteristics and individual peculiarities, not only with the purpose of second language acquisition but also for translation.

This article is centered on contrastive studies between English and Spanish languages. More specifically, and the focus is on language specific features. Moreover, the study is applied having a specific purpose inasmuch as the features explored belong to articles from the field of pharmaceutical sciences.

Scientific writing features in English and Spanish languages

The language of science, no matter the language being used, needs to be easily and accurately understood by the reader without multiple possible interpretations arising. In a research article, ambiguities and unnecessary text must be avoided in order to get the message across clearly. For this reason, scientific writing should possess what it is called the "three C's": clarity, conciseness and correctness (accuracy).

In scientific texts, subject-matter takes priority over the style of the linguistic medium (Close, 1965). Scientists focus more on the accuracy of theme and the findings rather than on the style of presentation. Hence scientific language is devoid of any language full of human impulse and human pleasure.

Another feature of scientific writing is its objectivity. A deliberate effort is made in scientific discourse to diminish the researcher"s presence in the text, resulting in an "objective" style of writing that ostensibly enables the facts to "speak for themselves". Therefore, scientific language avoids the use of first and second person, detaching a message from its sender and receiver (Livnat, 2010).

Peter Strevens (1977) states that in many respects scientific language is normal in that a scientist functions in a host language using the same system of pronunciation, the same accent, the same common grammar, rules of spelling and orthography, and even a lot of the common non-specialized vocabulary as anyone else (Strevens, 1977). The difference between scientific and general English and Spanish is that the particular mixture of grammatical and vocabulary items typically found in this type of texts may display some or all of an group of features including: the use of terms specific to each given branch of science; nominalization, which is used in order to package complex information into a phrase that is simple from a grammatical point of view; impersonality; rather long sentences containing many clauses; discourse markers and connectives.

Despite the similarities previously mentioned between scientific English and Spanish, there is never a complete parallelism between any two languages, as there may be a lack of correspondence between categories. Each language is an individual and distinctive system that has a structure in which a degree of regularity in the organization of the language can be discerned. The range of every word category in English does not always correspond with that of Spanish.

Some of the most significant differences between English and Spanish may be summarized as follows:

• The general word order of a sentence in Spanish is usually subject-verb-object, which is similar to English, but Spanish is more flexible in this regard. In Spanish, the object and the verb can be placed at the beginning of the sentence and the sentence still makes sense. However, if you alter the word order in English, the sentence will no longer make sense.

• As far as use of tenses is concerned, Spanish does not involve any one-to-one correspondence. Thus, it can lead to an incorrect use of a simple tense in place of a future or progressive one.

• In Spanish, there is often no need to use "it", "he" or "I" because the verb tenses alter with the subject whereas in English, the subject cannot be elided.

• In Spanish, there are no auxiliaries in the formation of negative and interrogative sentences while in English, they cannot be missing.

• In Spanish, strings of prepositional phrases are frequently used, but in English, these structures tend to be avoided.

• In Spanish, the structure of nouns phrases differs from that of English. In Spanish, the structure is: determiner + head + modifiers; while in English: determiner + pre-modifiers + head + post-modifiers.

• In English, the passive voice is formed in the same way that in Spanish. However, Spanish avoids the passive with the verb ser. The most common way of expressing a passive idea in this language is by using se with a verb in the third person.

This research will be focused on the last difference mentioned above

2.1 The passive voice as a feature of scientific writing

In his book A Grammar of Contemporary English, R. Quirk (1972) defines voice as a grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of a sentence in two ways, without change in the facts reported.

He further asserts that the active-passive relation involves two grammatical levels: the verb phrase and the clause. In the verb phrase, the difference between the two voice categories is that the passive adds a form of the auxiliary and the past participle (–Ved) of the main verb (Quirk, 1972).

Moreover, passive voice is not a derivative of active voice, which is the outcome of people"s different meaning expression. It describes the whole process of certain event from the patient"s point of view. It is a marked form of voice.

In Classification and SLA Studies of The passive voice in English, Wang (2010) affirms that there are three markers in the passive voice, that is, be, –ed and by. They all have their meaning and significance respectively. Meanwhile in Spanish, the passive voice is formed in the same way, with the appropriate form of the auxiliary verb ser and the past participle of the main verb (which, as an adjective, must agree in gender and number with the subject). The agent, if mentioned, comes after the preposition por (Yepes, 2011).

The most important aspect about Spanish the passive voice is that it is rarely used. This language avoids the passive with ser when the agent of the action is unknown or irrelevant. The most common way of expressing a passive idea in Spanish -that something happens, but without expressing who in particular does it-, is by using se with a verb in the third person.

Nowadays, scientific writers, either English or Spanish-speaking ones, have a tendency to use passive rather than active expressions. However, most medical and scientific style manuals support the active over the passive voice. These manuals and other books on science writing recommend using the active voice as much as possible.

For example, the American Medical Association's AMA Manual of Style recommends that "in general, authors should use the active voice, except in instances in which the author is unknown or the interest focuses on what is acted upon" (Iverson, 2007). Moreover, the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) has similar advice: "Prefer the active voice….The passive voice is acceptable in expository writing and when you want to focus on the object or recipient of the action rather than on the actor" (American Psychological Association, 2009).

Meanwhile, the Journal of Neuroscience asserts as well that: "Overuse of the passive voice is a common problem in writing. Although the passive has its place—for example, in the Methods section—in many instances it makes the manuscript dull by failing to identify the author's role in the research" (Westbrook, 2009).

As the overuse of the passive voice while writing research articles is a problem that affects not only English-speaking scientists but also Spanish-speaking ones while writing in English, this study is centered on this aspect of language in research articles of pharmaceutical sciences.

Analysis of passive voice in pharmaceutical research articles in both English and Spanish languages

• 1. Corpus

The corpora to conduct this study were comparable, involving English and Spanish languages. They were composed of 15 research articles belonging to the field of pharmaceutical sciences written in English and 15, written in Spanish. These articles were selected from different leading, internationally accredited journals of the discipline in their respective language. Annex 1 indicates the names of the journals and the research articles in English and Annex 2, the ones in Spanish.

As a high degree of comparability in the corpora was needed, two criteria were used in order to select the research articles:

• The publication date of the research articles ranged between 2010 and 2015. This point was considered very relevant in the study because of the possibility of time influences on the style of the writers. Thus, by considering this time limit, that time influence was minimized.

• The articles needed to possess the following sections: Abstract, Introduction, Materials and methods, Results and discussion, and Conclusions.

The research articles were extracted from the Web and corpora compilation consisted of three steps: research articles search, according to the chosen scientific field; selection of relevant web pages; and classification of these web pages according to their language. Table 1 presents the main features of the corpora: the number of research articles, words and characters for each language.

• 2. Selected software for the corpus linguistics analysis

Since the articles were in PDF format, it was necessary to use a software in order to convert them into text. Every document was stored in the corpus in its original format and converted into text by means of the software ABBYY PDF Transformer v3.0.1 (See Annex 3).

Then, the corpus in English and the one in Spanish were subdivided respectively into the main sections of research articles. No peripheral parts were included in this process, namely references, headings, footnotes, tables and figures, since they were not relevant in the study.

After the texts were already separated regarding the section where they belonged to, they were ran through another software that tagged the corpus for part of speech. For the sections of articles written in English, the software GoTagger v0.7 (See Annex 4) was used, while for the ones in Spanish, it was used TagAnt v1.2.0 (See Annex 5). It was impossible to use the same software for both languages since GoTagger only recognized parts of speech in English.

These software allowed to tag the verbs in past participle in both languages as well as the particle se in the case of Spanish. However, not every verb in past participle was an example of the passive voice. In the case of English, not every verb was combined with the verb be as the auxiliary to form this construction and in the case of Spanish, with the verb ser. Consequently, another software was needed in order to recognize whether the verb in past participle was a part of the passive voice since it is much easier to count the frequency of the passive voice with such a program than manually.

Therefore, UltraEdit v15.1 (See Annex 6) was the computer program chosen to that purpose. This software not only allowed to determine the frequency of the passive voice in both languages and of the passive with se in the research articles written in Spanish but also helped ascertain the number of sentences for each section.

• 3. Survey to specialists

The sample in research involved a group of 10 pharmaceutical science specialists from the Medical University of Villa Clara Serafín Ruiz de Zárate Ruiz and from the Central University "Martha Abreu" of Las Villas.

In order to conduct the research, questionnaires made by the researcher with the supervisor consultancy were used (See Annex 7). They were based on the survey method and covered aspects such as how often the specialists used the passive voice when writing research articles in both English and Spanish and in what section they used it more frequently as well as if they knew when it was more appropriate to use the passive voice when writing this type of text.

Results and discussion

• 1. Frequency of the passive voice in research articles of pharmaceutical sciences in both English and Spanish languages

Table 2 illustrates the number of occurrences of the passive voice according to the section of the research articles in English where they belonged to.

In relation to the purpose of the study, the frequency of the passive voice was counted in all the sections of the articles written in English.

As Figure 1 shows, it was observed that the most frequency percent is related to the Materials and methods section (95.6%). The next priorities are occupied respectively by the sections of Results and discussion (66.4%), Abstract (48.7%), Conclusions (40.6%), and Introduction (38.5%), which imply that pharmaceutical specialists use the passive voice most in the Materials and Methods section when writing research articles in English; and then, with much lower frequency, they use it in the sections of Results and discussion, Abstract, Conclusions, and Introduction.

Separately, it was determined the number of occurrences of the passive voice according to the section of the research articles in Spanish where they belonged to.

In this case, it was necessary to distinguish the passive voice formed with the verb ser from the passive using se.

The frequency of the passive voice was also counted in all the sections of the articles written in Spanish.

As Figure 2 illustrates, it was discerned that, for the passive voice with ser, the most frequency percent is related to the Materials and methods section (22.7%). The next priorities are occupied respectively by the sections of Introduction (8.3%), Abstract (5.9%), Results and discussion (2.9%), and Conclusions (2.5%), which indicate that pharmaceutical specialists use the passive voice with the verb ser most in the Materials and Methods section when writing research articles in Spanish; and then, with very low frequency, they use it in the sections of Introduction, Abstract, Results and discussion, and Conclusions. For the passive with se, the most frequent section is also Materials and methods (60.2 %). The next levels are occupied respectively by the sections of Results and discussion (55.9%), Introduction (48.2%), Conclusions (35%), and Abstract (27.4%). This situation shows that pharmaceutical experts use the passive form with se most in the Materials and Methods section when writing research articles in Spanish; and then, they use it in the sections of Results and discussion, Introduction, Conclusions and Abstract (in that order). Furthermore, it can be appreciated that pharmaceutical professionals prefer to use the passive voice with se rather than with the verb ser in all the sections of a research article.

According to the figures above, the passive voice in both English and Spanish is most used in the Materials and methods section.

• 2. Analysis of the survey

After surveying the pharmaceutical science specialists from the Medical College of Villa Clara Serafín Ruiz de Zárate Ruiz and from the Central University "Martha Abreu" of Las Villas, interesting results were noticed. 100% of the specialists know the passive voice in both English and Spanish. However, as Figure 3 illustrates, they use it with different frequency when writing scientific articles in both languages.

When writing articles in English, 20% of them use the passive form with a frequency of 3, 30% with 4 and 50% with 5, meaning that 100% tend to use the passive voice regularly in this language. However, according to a half of them, articles written in Spanish do not need this grammeme so often and they use it with low frequency, ranging between 1 and 3 and only the other half use it frequently, within the range 4 to 5.

As for the sections the specialists use the passive form more frequently, Figure 4 shows that the Introduction and Conclusions sections show a similar trend when compared to the articles analyzed since 80% of the experts interviewed do not use it very often in these sections, whereas 20% use it frequently, meaning that the latter are not clear of the effective use of this grammeme.

Furthermore, it can be appreciated that these professionals use the passive voice, principally in the Results and discussion (70% of the sample) and the Materials and methods (60%) sections. This situation resembles in a certain way what occurs with original articles where the sections that make more use of the passive form in both English and Spanish are the Materials and methods and the Results and discussion sections. Nevertheless, in both languages the Materials and methods section is the one that uses this grammeme the most and with higher frequency (English: 95.6%; Spanish: 82.9%) than Results and discussion (English: 66.4%; Spanish: 58.8%). Moreover, according to half of the sample, in the Abstract section the passive form should be used with high frequency. However, when the results are compared, it can be appreciated that in the peer-reviewed articles, the use of the passive voice is not so common in this section.

Another interesting result was the one achieved respecting the experts" knowledge of when it was more effective to use the passive voice when writing a research article in English and when it was more appropriate to use the active.

The figure above shows that from the five pairs of sentences they were provided with, one in the passive voice and the other one in the active, no specialists got the first pair right, while in the second and the fifth one, only one of them chose the correct answer. As for pairs 3 and 4, the results were satisfying inasmuch as only one of them made the wrong choice in pair 3.

As it can be noticed, these Spanish-speaking pharmaceutical science specialists are not clear of the effective use of the passive voice when writing research articles in English. Due to the answers they gave to the questions they were posed, it is evident that defining some strategies that can contribute to a more appropriate use of this grammeme would help them in the hard task of writing scientific articles in this language.

Proposal of strategies in order to contribute to a more effective use of the passive voice when writing research articles of pharmaceutical sciences in English

Taking into account the stated objectives and the results of the diagnosis and the regularities indicated in the first part of this chapter, a set of strategies are presented in order to help Spanish-speaking pharmaceutical science specialists cope with the difficulties they have concerning the effective use of the passive voice when writing research articles in English. These strategies are presented as follows:

Use the passive voice when you do not want to emphasize on the performer of the action

The passive voice is preferable if the performer is irrelevant, unknown, or obvious to the discussion, as in the following examples:

These two sentences were extracted from the Introduction section of the corpus. The passive voice was used in both cases to refer to previous studies that have been conducted. In the first sentence, the author's assumes the reader will not be interested in the name of the publisher that should put this type of studies on the market; and in the second sentence, the performer (researchers in this case) is obvious. That is why it can be stated that when naming the performer in a sentence would prove unnecessary, the passive voice works well.

Opt for the passive form when the performer is less important than the action

When discussing an experimental procedure in the Materials and methods section, the passive form is the best choice. The examples that follow evidence this statement:

These instances were extracted from the Materials and methods section. In the three sentences, the authors do not emphasize on the performer (researchers) because the most important topics are the research materials and the procedures used. Therefore, when describing processes, it is more effective to use the passive construction.

Choose the passive construction to achieve cohesion

The subject (person, thing, or idea) that the author wants to discuss in a sentence should occur near the beginning in the topic position where the reader expects to find it. The following example illustrates this situation better:

Notice that the authors used the active voice in the first sentence, but the passive in the second. If the second sentence is changed to the active, it becomes:

This version shortens the sentence but the original passive style creates parallel structure by repeating the topic of the first sentence (obesity) in the second. The topic in the second sentence connects backward and prepares the reader for the next information. These two sentences are more cohesive as a result. Hence, in order to make the reading process more comprehensible and enjoyable by focusing on the topic, opt for the passive voice.

Avoid passive sentences containing dangling modifiers

This type of grammatical error is very frequent, as it could be noticed in the survey, when authors write in a sentence structure "a grammatical modifier that is associated with a word other than the one intended" (McArthur, 1992). For instance, a writer may have meant to modify the subject, but word order makes the modifier seem to modify an object instead. In the following example, this situation is illustrated better:

In this sentence, the modifier After analyzing the samples "dangles" in mid-air, implying that the plants were the ones that analyzed the samples, rather than the obviously intended meaning of indicating that the researchers were the ones that did this task. In this case, the correct sentence would have been the one written in the active voice in order to avoid such ambiguity:

Thus, if ambiguities that can guide to difficulty in understanding a sentence are to be avoided, do not use passive sentences that contain dangling modifiers.

Shun passive sentences that weaken the writing style

Some scientists often depend excessively on the passive voice and they do not realize that by using this construction, they weaken the writing style. The example that follows evidences this statement:

In this case, the use of the passive forms make the sentence less clear and intelligible. To express the same idea, it would have been better to choose the active voice, as follows:

This sentence is clearer and more concise, which indicates that if using passive sentences leads to a weakening of the writing style, avoid this kind of constructions.

As it can be noticed, this proposal of strategies can be an effective tool in helping Spanish-speaking pharmaceutical sciences specialists improve the use of the passive voice when writing research articles in English.

Conclusions

This articles represents an important step towards the improvement of the writing skills of pharmaceutical specialists from the Central University "Marta Abreu" of Las Villas and the Medical University of Villa Clara "Serafín Ruiz de Zárate Ruiz" when using the passive voice in research articles in English language. Therefore, the following conclusions can be stated:

-Contrastive linguistics is concerned with showing the differences and similarities of two languages. In the present study, this branch of linguistics constituted a useful tool in order to analyze pharmaceutical articles in English and Spanish regarding the frequency of the passive voice in them. It showed the existence of similarities and variations in the use of this grammeme in both languages.

– In the diagnostic phase, it was found that the overuse of the passive voice when writing research articles in English is a problem that affects Spanish-speaking scientists in the field of pharmaceutical sciences. As a result, this paper proposed a set of strategies that can lessen the difficulties these experts deal with when using the passive form in the writing of research articles in English.

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Author:

Lic. Yuliet González Madariaga.

Profesor Asistente, Departamento de Lengua Inglesa, Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Central "Marta Abreu" de Las Villas, Cuba

Astrid Díaz Cabrera.

Estudiante de último año de la Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa con Francés como segunda lengua extranjera