Proposals in meeting minutes: An English-Spanish corpus-based study

Rabadán, Rosa

doi:10.1075/lic.16.2.03rab

Article published In: Languages in Contrast
Vol. 16:2 (2016) ► pp.213–238

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Proposals in meeting minutes

An English-Spanish corpus-based study

Rosa Rabadán | University of León (Spain)

Published online: 29 September 2016

https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.16.2.03rab

This paper provides an analysis of the lexico-grammatical features used in English and Spanish in the rhetorical part pertaining to the proposal step of a particular genre, meeting minutes. The results have been used in the construction of a computerized writing aid designed to assist Spanish writers when writing minutes in English. Corpus-based contrast reveals that minutes share a common rhetorical structure but show differences in the lexico-grammatical choices associated with the various rhetorical parts. Proposals are conveyed both in English and Spanish by means of lexical verbs, deverbal constructions and certain clause types. Cross-linguistic differences are in the choice of tense, mood and voice. The analysis also suggests different degrees of conventionalization of these resources in the two languages. Results form part of a linguistic prototype that includes three main components: rhetorical information in Spanish, grammatical strings in English and bilingual genre/move restricted glossaries.

Keywords: minutes, corpus, proposals, English/Spanish, contrast

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