ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to show whether the choice of elaboration postmodifiers is genre-driven. For this reason, the analysis of these postmodifiers is conducted in a one-million-word-corpus equally divided between academic and popular medical articles, taking into account the frequencies of elaboration postmodifiers as well as their implications in each genre.
The quantitative analysis shows that both academic articles (AAs) and popular articles (PAs) display a remarkable preference for elaboration postmodifiers at the expanse of extension and enhancement postmodifiers, which is related to the conventions of the scientific discipline to which both genres belong. More importantly, these postmodifiers are mainly related to their heads through a defining relationship in AAs and a specifying one in PAs, which is related to generic variations, partially confirming the claim that the choice of elaboration postmodifiers is genre-sensitive.
