Abstract：Based on Halliday's grammatical metaphor and classification of nominalization, this study aims to analyze the nominalization in the abstracts of linguistics academic papers and calculate the frequency of the nominalization of process, quality, circumstance, relator and zero respectively. After analyzing the data, the author finds that nominalization of process ranks first, which occupies 84. 8%. Nominalization of quality accounts for 13. 4%. However, nominalization of circumstance and that of relator only account for 0. 2% and 1. 1% respectively. Furthermore, the author only finds 6 instances of nominalization of zero. Based upon the quantitative results, the features of each type of nominalization used in abstracts are discussed. Process nominalization can condense the length of the abstract, increase the level of abstraction of the abstract and form fixed collocation patterns. Quality nominalization can improve the objectivity of the abstract, but meanwhile increase the distance between readers and writers. Circumstance, relator and zero nominalizations are rarely used in abstracts, because they increase the complexity of abstracts, weaken the logical link and add unnecessary information.

Keyword：abstracts of linguistics papers;grammatical metaphor;nominalization;