Due to the paucity of attention to research article (RA) abstracts, particularly from a diachronic perspective, this study investigates the changes in the representation of authorial presence through first person pronouns in RA abstracts, with data sampled from four applied linguistics journals between 1990 and 2019. The findings indicate that the representation of authorial presence tends to be shaped by the number of authors. Overall, co-authors intrude into their abstracts more frequently than single authors. In the most recent two decades, single authors are inclined to project their author persona as individuals. However, in the 2010s, both types of authors tend to conceal their presence in abstracts through less frequent use of personal pronouns. The two overwhelmingly recurrent pronouns we and I performed eight discourse functions, among which low-stakes ones (functions that run relatively low risk of exposing authors to readers’ attacks or challenges) have been favored over high-stakes ones (functions that run relatively high risk of exposing authors to readers’ attacks or challenges). The most recurrent low-stakes function of “Organize the text” and “Describe methods” both exhibit significant diachronic variations in their occurrence in co-authored abstracts, with the former overall increasing while the latter steadily declining. However, no significant variations are observed in the occurrence of these two low-stakes functions in single-authored abstracts. The dominant high-stakes function “State opinions” displays opposite diachronic patterns in its incidence in co-authored and single-authored abstracts -- downward and upward respectively.

由于很少关注研究论文（RA）摘要，特别是从历时的角度出发，本研究调查了1990年至2004年间通过RA论文中第一人称代词对作者存在的表示形式的变化，这些数据来自四种应用语言学期刊2019年。调查结果表明，作者在场人数的体现往往受作者数量的影响。总体而言，合著者比单作者更频繁地侵入其摘要。在最近的二十年中，单身作者倾向于将其作者角色投影为个人。但是，在2010年代，这两种类型的作者都倾向于通过较少使用人称代词来掩饰其摘要中的存在。我们和这两个压倒性的代词一世执行了八种话语功能，其中优先级低的功能（使作者受到读者攻击或挑战的风险相对较低的功能）优于优先级高的功能（使作者受到读者攻击的风险相对较高的功能）或挑战）。在共同撰写的摘要中，“组织文本”和“描述方法”中最经常出现的低风险功能均显示出明显的历时差异，前者的总体增加，而后者则稳步下降。但是，在单作者摘要中这两个低风险功能的发生中未观察到重大变化。