Linguistic aspects of the scientific research article in 1715 with particular reference to two astronomy articles

Abstract Astronomy is the most important subject treated in the Philosophical Transactions and the Mémoires de l’Académie Royal in 1715. Articles by Halley and Maraldi have been selected for analysis. The process type profiles of the two articles are very similar. The object of study is the most important type of theme in both, but the proportion of themes of this type in Maraldi’s text is much greater than that in Halley’s. Surprisingly, temporal themes play a significant role in Halley’s text. Also surprising is the fact that, in Halley’s text, adjunct themes are more frequent than subject themes. Nominalized processes tend to be material rather than mental, but the difference is greater in Halley’s text than in Maraldi’s. First person pronoun subjects tend to occur with mental process verbs, but whereas in Halley’s text material processes also play a part, there are hardly any in Maraldi’s text. These linguistic differences between the two texts can be explained in terms of their differing stances, that of Halley being Baconian and hence empirical, that of Maraldi being Cartesian and hence deductive.