Dual Function of First Position Nominal Groups in Research Article Titles: Describing Methods and Structuring Summary

Previous research has identified the nominal group as the most distinctivefeature of the research article title. in contrast, the findings reported in thispaper suggest theme/rheme is the dominant structure in title text.theme/rheme structures order and tie nominal groups in titles. when a titlestarts with a methodological term the first position nominal group acts as atheme marker. thus, the following nominal groups yield coherence andgenerate summarization. this finding is based on an analysis of 347 researcharticle titles randomly selected from 99 ssci journals in linguistics. focusingon titles with a research construct in first position, and using the mostfrequently found term, effect, as the basis for comparison, this article presentsan analysis of how titles summarize content. the combination of nominalgroups, theme/rheme, and coherence summarizes the content of the researcharticle more effectively compared to titles that rely solely on the informationpackaging function of high-density nominalization.