Structural and Functional Properties of Lexical Bundles Across Three Time Periods

For about two decades, linguists have been interested in the study of formulaic sequences. one type of formulaic sequences, which recently have drawn the attention of researchers, is lexical bundles. synchronic studies have suggested the influential role of lexical bundles in fluent linguistic production. however, very few research studies have been conducted on diachronic analysis of lexical bundles in academic prose. the present study, therefore, took a diachronic approach to examine the frequency, structure, and function of 4-word lexical bundles in three periods of 1965, 1985, and 2015. a 4.3-million words corpus of 770 research articles was developed from top research journals in three disciplines. the results showed subtle changes in lexical bundle’s behavior since 1965. although thirteen 4-word lexical bundles were shared across three time spans, there was an overall decrease in the frequency of lexical bundles. results also indicated an increase in the use of verb phrase bundles and a decrease in the use of noun and prepositional phrase bundles. in addition, there was an increase (and a decrease) in use of participant and text-oriented bundles, respectively over the past 50 years. the findings suggest that 4-word lexical bundle’s properties have changed across time.