Five Reporting Verbs from 'Nature'
Tm Johns, English for International Students Unit, University of Birmingham
Corpus
Approx. 434,000 words from the scientific research journal Nature for 1989 (complete Articles & Letters to Nature).

Data
The five verbs examined (indicate, show, suggest, find, domonstrate) were identified on the basis of the formal criterion that they were those most frequently followed by that-clause complements. Other complements (eg infinitives such as Leupeptin and antipain are known to inhibit certain kinds of serine and cysteine proteases and contact clauses such as We suggest the microplate may have been initiated as follows.) were not included (though it may be worth noting in passing that the latter were far less frequent than that-clauses with these verbs). However, related nominals (indication(s), suggestion(s), finding(s), demonstration) were taken into account when they were followed by a that-clause. The main features of the syntactic environment of each verb, as shown in the table below, were identified with the assistance of the program MicroConcord (OUP).

Results

indicate show suggest find
 demon-
strate		 Total
Finite clauses: Active
• Present
• Present Perfect
• Past
• Past Perfect		 423
376
5
42
0
343
227
52
63
1
159
133
1
25
0
93
33
10
50
0
82
55
15
12
0
1100
824
83
192
1
Finite clauses: Passive
• Present
• Present Perfect
• Past		 1
0
1
0 		21
7
8
6
23
2
19
2
6
2
0
4
6
0
6
0
57
11
34
12
-ing clauses
• Free
• Bound		 121
117
4 		19
10
9
25
24
1 		0
0
0
11
8
3 		176
159
17
Infinitives
• Free
• Bound
 2
0
2 		9
2
7 		3
0
3 		1
0
1 		10
3
7 		25
5
20
Nominals
• Singular
• Plural		 10
9
1 		0
0
0 		11
10
1 		22
20
2
6
6
0 		49
45
4
Total 557 392 221 122 115 1407
Human Subject
• we
• I
• (other)
 1
0
0
1
59
50
3
6
34
22
2
10
93
82
4
7
16
15
1
0
203
169
10
24
Non-Human Subject
• analysis/analyses
• data
• experiment(s)
• observation(s)
• result(s)
• study/studies
• (other)
 422
14
41
15
12
74
16
237
284
27
30
18
3
30
24
162
125
1
7
1
6
12
2
95
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
66
2
3
5
2
11
16
27
897
44
81
39
23
127
58
511
Intensifiers
• clearly
• strongly
 17
4
13
7
7
0
8
0
8
0
0
0
2
2
0
34
13
21
May/might in that-cl.
• may
• might
 47
35
12 		4
2
2 		27
19
8 		0
0
0 		1
1
0 		79
57
22

Discussion
Not quite ready yet. Meanwhile you may wish to consider the data, and draw conclusions, for yourself ...
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