推荐 | A systemic functional analysis of the “ngp1+vgp+ngp2+ngp3”
世界语言学刊
ISSN: 2169-8252
Journal of World Languages
A systemic functional analysis of the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction in English
Guowen Huang and Ruihua Zhao
From the journal Journal of World Languages
https://doi.org/10.1515/jwl-2021-0014
Abstract
The literature to date features two very different approaches to the study of syntax, the formal or structure-based approach and the functional or semantics-based approach, both of which have advantages and disadvantages. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction in English by identifying the relationship between the clausal elements in terms of clause types. The theoretical support is Systemic Functional Linguistics which is semantics-based and which regards form/structure as the realization of meaning/semantics. Specifically, the paper discusses the issue by keeping in mind questions such as “What kind of process is it?”, “How many participants can/must be involved in the process?”, and “What roles can/must those participants play?”. By analyzing three pairs of clauses that share the same “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” structure, it is found that the clause types SVOO, SOVA, SVOC, and SVO all exhibit the same “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” structure. The identification of the clause types is conducted by examining the Process in the Transitivity system of the clause. The implication of the present study is that a functional-syntactic analysis should start from meaning and consider how the meaning is realized and that although syntactic analysis at the level of form is necessary, the focus of a good functional-syntactic analysis should be based on semantic analysis at the level of meaning.
Keywords: clause type; functional syntax; systemic functional linguistics
1 Introduction
In the description of clauses in English, one important step is to distinguish between central and peripheral elements of the clause. Quirk et al. (1985: 49) distinguish the following elements of clause structure as necessary to describe the constituency of clauses: Subject (S), Verb (V), Object (O), and Adverbial (A). According to their description (Quirk et al. 1985: 49–55), the verb is the most central element and the adverbial is the most peripheral element of the clause. To say that the verb is the most central element is to suggest that it is this element “that wholly or largely determines what form the rest of the structure will take” (Quirk et al. 1985: 53), and to regard an adverbial as the most peripheral element is to say that in canonical clauses adverbials are optional elements.
The classification of clauses into types such as SV, SVO, SVOO, and SOVC helps to identify the different elements in the clause, and to say that a certain slot, e.g. the Subject slot, is expected to be filled by a certain word class or group class is to match the relationship between function and form. In conducting a syntactic analysis, one can start with the slots (clause functions) in a clause and ask what word classes or group classes can fill the slots; and equally importantly, one can look at the word classes or group classes in the clause and try to identify their functional roles in the clause. When we are talking about the clause type SVO, we have already identified the three clause elements that constitute the clause. One of the important questions we can then ask is “what word class or group class can fill the slot of the Subject or the Object of the clause”. And when we identify a number of word classes or group classes which form an identifiable structure, we can ask what functions each plays in the clause structure.
The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a systemic functional analysis of the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction in English. Here “ngp” is “nominal group” whose head is a noun in terms of word class (Halliday 1994: 214; Thompson 2014: 15). The study of this construction is important in that it is concerned with a number of clause types and there are important issues that are worth studying, especially those that are concerned with the principles of functional-syntactic analysis (e.g. Huang 2007).
The theoretical basis of our study is Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL henceforth; e.g. Fawcett 2000a, 2008; Halliday 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2014; Martin et al. 2010). In particular, we will draw theoretical support from the Cardiff model of SFL (e.g. Fawcett 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2008; He et al. 2014, 2017; Huang 2007; Huang et al. 2008).
The focus of this paper is to explore the relationship between the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction and clause types such as SVOO, SOVA, SVOC, and SVO. As will be shown in the following sections, according to the meanings encoded in it, the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction can be identified as realizing different clause types: SVOO, SOVA, SVOC, and SVO.
2 Theoretical preliminaries
Traditionally, English clauses are grouped into different clause types, which are regarded as canonical clauses. As Huddleston and Pullum (2008 [2005]: 24) point out, canonical clauses are declarative clauses (e.g. She is patient.) while non-canonical clauses are interrogative clauses (e.g. Is she patient?) and imperative clauses (e.g. Be patient.). SFL scholars do not usually talk about clause types by reference to formal criteria, and they instead identify different clause types by examining their process types and the participant(s) expected by the processes. SFL distinguishes between major clause and minor clause, the former of which has the Mood structure (i.e. Subject + Finite). According to Halliday (1994: 43), “every independent clause selects for mood” and “an independent major clause is either indicative or imperative in mood”. Due to the focus of this paper, the main examples to be discussed are independent major indicative-declarative clauses.
In SFL terms, “Subject” is a functional label when it is used with “Finite” to form the Mood of the clause, because “Mood plays a special role in carrying out the interpersonal functions of the clause” (Thompson 2014: 53). A certain structural element in a clause (e.g. the girl in The girl is patient.) becomes a functional element in different metafunctional situations: 1) Subject in terms of interpersonal meaning, 2) Actor in terms of experiential meaning, and 3) Theme in terms of textual meaning.
The present paper is an exercise in functional syntax (Fawcett 2000a), and in this framework it is important to distinguish between structural labels and functional labels on the one hand and “what something is” and “what something does” (Thompson 2014) on the other. The “ngp” (nominal group) and the “vgp” (verbal group) in the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction are structural labels because they tell us what something is, and focus is on “word class” (or part of speech, or group class). By contrast in terms of clause functions, in The boy has given the girl a book, the first nominal group (ngp1) (the boy) serves as Subject of the clause, and the focus is on what function is played by the first nominal group in the clause. For example, as Thompson (2014: 54) observes, in traditional terms, “the Subject is the entity of which something is predicated in the rest of the clause”. In terms of expression of the interpersonal meaning, the Subject and the Finite enable the speaker to negotiate with the listener, by either giving information (as in He is away.) or demanding information (as in Is he away?) or proposing action (as in Go away!). The discussion here shows that items such as “ngp” and “vgp” are structural labels and terms such as “Subject” and “Object” are functional labels. When we come across something like the boy, we can say that it is a nominal group, which is a structural label; when it appears in a clause like The boy gets up very early, we can say in terms of its function that it is the Subject of the clause. In this case, “what something is” refers to the group class (or word clause) and “what something does” refers to the function it plays in the clause.
In the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction there are four slots, one of which (the vgp) is to be filled by a verbal element or verbal group (e.g. give, have given, gave) and the other three are to be filled by a nominal element (e.g. the boy, he). Therefore, we can say that there are a number of slots in any clause and that the choice of the filler of each slot depends on what is expected (or in Huddleston and Pullum’s 2008 [2005] term “licensed”) by the process (verb) and what function it will play in the clause.
For Halliday (1994: xiv), “[a] language is interpreted as a system of meanings, accompanied by forms through which the meanings can be realized”. And according to Halliday, forms of a language are important but are put in a different perspective: forms are “means to an end, rather than as an end in themselves” (Halliday 1994: xiv). As Halliday (1994: 106) says, “[l]anguage enables human beings to build a mental picture of reality, to make sense of what goes on around them and inside them”, and “the clause plays a central role, because it embodies a general principle for modeling experience – namely the principle that reality is made up of processes” (Halliday 1994: 106). To actualize the meanings expressed by the process, SFL emphasizes the important realizational relationship between form and meaning. In grammatical terms, the stratum of semantics is realized by the central stratum of language – the lexicogrammatical stratum.
To translate “reality is made up of processes” into functional-syntactic analysis, we say that if there is a process in a situation at the level of meaning there is a verb in the clause at the level of form; therefore, if there is a verb, there is a clause (see Fawcett 2008: 48). In terms of grammatical analysis, the “ngp1 + vgp + ngp2 + ngp3” construction is a clause, and the combination of clauses will yield a clause complex, as in He gave her a book and she gave him a pen in return, which expresses two Processes realized in two clauses with two verbs.
In their comprehensive grammatical description of the English language, Quirk et al. (1985: 53) argue that in a clause “of the obligatory elements the main verb is the one that wholly or largely determines what form the rest of the structure will take”. They identify seven clause types in English, which are presented below with examples:
更多精彩内容请登录网站免费阅读全文
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/jwl-2021-0014/html
About this journal
Objective
Journal of World Languages is an international, peer-reviewed multidisciplinary journal that explores the roles, functions and structures of languages in the world. Special attention is given to studies of languages in the fields of ecolinguistics (including the Haugenian Tradition and the Hallidayan Tradition), systemic functional linguistics, critical/positive/multimodal/ecological discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, linguistic typology, linguistic anthropology and philosophy of language.
Topics
functions of language
functional semantics
functional syntax
language and context
language and culture
critical/positive/multimodal/ecological discourse analysis
dialects
language contact
language and environment
language policy and planning
language and technology
language and society
communication
systemic functional studies
cognitive studies
corpus linguistic studies
linguistics and translation studies
linguistic typological studies
linguistic anthropological studies
linguistic philosophical studies
Article Formats
Research Articles
Book Reviews
Editorial
Editor-in-Chief
Wei He (何伟), Beijing Foreign Studies University, China
Co-editors
Jonathan Webster, City University of Hong Kong, China
Guowen Huang (黄国文), South China Agricultural University, China
Ángel Garralda Ortega, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China
投稿方式：
在线投稿网址：
https://www.editorialmanager.com/rwol