Abstract

Local grammar is an emerging path of language description that focuses on the meaning or function of a particular discourse in a local context. While previous studies have mostly used the universal grammar path to explore the syntactic structure of language, some scholars have recently begun to apply the local grammar path to the study of discourse functions in exemplification, evaluation, and apology. However, few studies have used local grammar to investigate the function and meaning of defining language, especially the study of definitional sentences in academic English discourse. Therefore, this study takes the definitional sentences in the LinDEAP corpus as the research material, explores the scientificity and comprehensiveness of the previous list of definitional markers, and summarizes the local grammar patterns of definition sentences in academic English discourse. Theoretically, it improves the previous list of definition markers and revises five sets of local grammar of definition patterns commonly used in linguistics academic English discourse. Practically, it provides a new perspective for the study of definition languages and provides insights for academic English writing research and teaching.