A Study of Topology of Behavioral Clauses in English and Vietnamese in the Light of Functional Grammar

Abstract

The study of the relation between human behavior and language is probably the most fascinating interests that a scholar can undertake. Actually, human behavior and language have very close, mutual and complex relationships which need exploring more. This paper reports on an ongoing Ph. D research in the light of functional grammar raised by Halliday M.A.K [11]. It aims at presenting (i) the theoretical background of experimental meaning: the system of transitivity and especially behavioral clauses, (ii) the identification of English and Vietnamese verbs that realize process in behavioral clauses with a corpus of English and Vietnamese literary work of the late 20^th century and the early 21^st century, (iii) a topology of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese literary work. When we look at the experimental metafunction, we are investigating the grammar of the clause as <i>representation</i>. To achieve the set goals, descriptive method and functional analysis are thoroughly chosen. Finally, this paper also employs the framework of Martin, Matthiessen and Painter [15], Bloor and Bloor [2] and Eggins [8] to find out more about the subtypes of behavioral processes in English and Vietnamese literary genre.