Abstract
The phenomenon of lexical conversion within modern Chinese nominal group is often presented in ancient Chinese grammar. For many years, there have been earnest discussions in China about how we can better study the Chinese nominal group from alternative dimensions, e.g. cognition, pragmatics, multi-category words, word-class shift as well as functional perspective, but few pay attention to the lexical conversion from perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). As the SFL itself is “a problem-oriented theory” (Huang, 2006), to apply this theory to explain some certain language phenomena merits serious consideration. This paper is based on the Cardiff Grammar, an important model of SFL and the purpose is to explore the semantic and syntactic function in lexical conversion within modern Chinese nominal group. Through the contrastive study in light of the Cardiff Grammar, the Chinese nominal group can be functionally used as a Main Verb, a Main Verb Extension (MEx) and a prepositional group (pgp).
Highlights
Halliday (1988) has put forward that “we live in an age of growth, in which every day more and more things come into our lives; and things, and all their parts, need names
Most Chinese scholars study Chinese nominal group from the point of cognition, and some from the aspect of pragmatics; some hold that the certain Chinese characters are multi-category words, normally referring to nouns and verbs; some regard the lexical conversion as a word-class shift, and others study from the functional perspective
This paper is a new attempt of functional syntactic analysis which is to explore the semantics and syntactic function of the phenomena in lexical conversion within modern Chinese nominal group
Summary
Halliday (1988) has put forward that “we live in an age of growth, in which every day more and more things come into our lives; and things, and all their parts, need names. Do the things need new names, and the functions of some certain words are changing, the Chinese nouns for instance. Most Chinese scholars study Chinese nominal group from the point of cognition (such as Shen, 2010; Gao, 2008), and some from the aspect of pragmatics (such as Gao & Xu, 2000); some hold that the certain Chinese characters are multi-category words, normally referring to nouns and verbs 36); some regard the lexical conversion as a word-class shift (such as Wang, 1989), and others study from the functional perspective There are limited studies about the lexical conversion of Chinese nominal group from the perspective of SFL, precisely the Cardiff Grammar, a model of SFL. We should re-express: nominal group used as the Main Verb (sometimes used as the MEx) and as the prepositional group
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