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Tense in mathematical English
Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense - and the relative infrequency of the past tense|in mathematical writing. However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an...
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| Format: | Default Article |
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2024
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/2134/25768869.v1 |
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| _version_ | 1818164834529705984 |
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| author | Matthew Inglis Jacob Strauss |
| author_facet | Matthew Inglis Jacob Strauss |
| author_sort | Matthew Inglis (1384290) |
| collection | Figshare |
| description | Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense - and the relative infrequency of the past tense|in mathematical writing. However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an analysis of corpora of mathematical and day-to-day English. We conclude that the present-to-past ratio of tenses is at least 3:1 in mathematical English, compared to approximately 5:7 in day-to-day English. Further, we show that this tendency to favour the present tense is almost universally present in written mathematics. |
| format | Default Article |
| id | rr-article-25768869 |
| institution | Loughborough University |
| publishDate | 2024 |
| record_format | Figshare |
| spelling | rr-article-257688692024-05-08T00:00:00Z Tense in mathematical English Matthew Inglis (1384290) Jacob Strauss (7442504) Maths Mathematical language Corpus linguistics Tense <p>Many authors have commented on the relative frequency of the present tense - and the relative infrequency of the past tense|in mathematical writing.</p> <p>However, none (to our knowledge) have provided an estimate for the size of this effect or explored how universal it is. In this short note we report an analysis of corpora of mathematical and day-to-day English. We conclude that the present-to-past ratio of tenses is at least 3:1 in mathematical English, compared to approximately 5:7 in day-to-day English. Further, we show that this tendency to favour the present tense is almost universally present in written mathematics.</p> 2024-05-08T00:00:00Z Text Journal contribution 2134/25768869.v1 https://figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Tense_in_mathematical_English/25768869 CC BY 4.0 |
| spellingShingle | Maths Mathematical language Corpus linguistics Tense Matthew Inglis Jacob Strauss Tense in mathematical English |
| title | Tense in mathematical English |
| title_full | Tense in mathematical English |
| title_fullStr | Tense in mathematical English |
| title_full_unstemmed | Tense in mathematical English |
| title_short | Tense in mathematical English |
| title_sort | tense in mathematical english |
| topic | Maths Mathematical language Corpus linguistics Tense |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/2134/25768869.v1 |