Grammatical Metaphors in Scientific English

Abstract

The terms nominal compounds, complex nominal phrases, nominalizations, and grammatical metaphors (GMs) have been used by different authors and sometimes they are used interchangeably. In this paper we intend to clarify the scope of each term, paying special attention to grammatical metaphors. We believe that nominalizations in general and grammatical metaphors in particular are essential resources for constructing scientific discourse, so they should be taken into account in scientific writing courses.