Functional Grammar Research Articles

“Does the pronominal copula exist in the Arabic verbless clause?”

Abstract This study attempts to offer a single unified account for the syntactic features of the pronominal copula in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), traditionally known as ḍamīr al-faṣl ‘Separation Pronoun/SP’ within the Cardiff Grammar (CG) model of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). Such a pronoun is typically used in nominal verbless clauses to separate Subject from its Predicate (Complement) when both are definite. This study argues against the two traditional accounts that analyze it either as a redundant pronoun that has no significant syntactical function or as the second Subject in the nominal embedded clausal Complement of the first Subject. The study also proposes that the modern generative account that considers it a pronominal copula is problematic as the function of this pronoun is not linking, but rather separating, emphasizing, and disambiguating. Therefore, the study proposes to analyze this SP as an Extension of the Subject (SEx) in a tripartite structure.

The focus system in Hadiyya

Abstract This study identifies, analyses and describes the devices and functions of focus in information structuring in Hadiyya, a Highland East Cushitic language. Data, which were collected from native speakers, were dealt with based on the theory of Functional Grammar (Dik 1997). For focalization, the language uses morphological, lexical and syntactic means. The latter involves word-order change and cleft construction (including pseudo-cleft). Comparatively, the morphological mechanism is the most dynamic and frequent in use while the lexical means is limited both in the number of items employed and in frequency of occurrence.

Subject Structure of Texts on New Reality

The article demonstrates the potential of Prof. G.A. Zolotova’s functional and communicative grammar in analysis of texts on new reality regarding subjects involved in this reality. The author examines different genres – from news to philosophical essay – dwelling upon high technologies and digitalization. The subject structure of a text includes communicative frame (sender and recipient) and in-text subjects (human and non-human) which receive different predicates from the author constructing his textual world. The linguistic analysis of the text’s subject structure allows one to reveal the author’s point of view, the properties of his desirable world and ideas critical for the epoque. The analysis of the characteristics predicated to different types of subjects as well as the linguistic means of expression or elimination of these subjects helps to see these critical ideas activization of non-human “intelligent” devices acquiring independence and intentionality together with deindividualization and disembodiment of human subjects. The ideology of independency and personalization of machines and “dissolution” of human subjects is expressed both by language-specific means and lexicogrammar ones, common for Russian and other languages.

Intermodal and Intermedial Translation of Songs in Stage and Film Musicals: Application of an Integrated Approach in Turkish Context

Engaging with a spectrum of intermodal and intermedial translation, the primary aim of this study is to present and apply a holistic multimodal approach to song translation through which the interaction of the potential meaning of semiotic resources can be considered as a composite and indivisible whole. The focus of this study is Fiddler on the Roof, chosen because it has been translated for both stage and film musicals in Turkiye. With this purpose, we adopted a triple model which operationalized Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), Kress and van Leeuwen’s integrated approach by combining textual and visual grammar, and Leeuwen’s (1999) framework of musical analysis. Our historical approach to the Turkish musical landscape proposes that translation strategies for songs in film musicals reflect a consistent pattern of choice (mainly mixed translation) arising from state-monopolized TV impositions; while in contrast, for stage musicals, the wider range of translation strategies shed light on fluctuations in multi-semiotic popular arts entertainment, caused by ideologically- and economically-driven practices. Our in-depth multimodal analysis revealed that an integrated approach can bring to the surface the potential density of interacting semiosis in the performative and narrative dimensions of musicals. These new dimensions, enabled through a multimodal analysis, require new skills, knowledge and literacies, thus, expanding the boundaries of translation studies.

Visual and Verbal Means to Attract our Clicks: Multimodality in Youtube Thumbnails

Pictures, color, tones, and motions have all been identified as modalities that help to create the meaning-making process. A multimodal message is made up as two or more modes work together to give meaning for the overall discourse. This article is to describe how the visual and verbal signs work together in constructing meaning in video thumbnails. This study is used as a descriptive research method. The data are thumbnails of the most-viewed videos in Close the Door podcast. They were analyzed by employing Kress& van Leeuwen's Visual Grammar and Halliday’s Functional Grammar of language, especially ideational meaning of clause, transitivity. These are to explain the relationships between the images and the texts and elucidates the functions of images in meaning interpretation. Based on the analysis, all the thumbnails evoke a clear message video; they have no ambiguity and are in line with content of the video. Amongst 4 data, there are four types used; relational, mental, material, verbal with descriptive sentences by three data and one imperative. In terms of MDA Visual, the videos have Lead, Display and Emblems as the relationships between the images and the functions of images in meaning interpretation.

Systemics Functional Grammar and Teaching English as a Foreign Language: an analysis of three styles of the recipe genre and a reflection on pedagogical applications

Systemics Functional Grammar (SFG) has been used to address issues of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in extensive research, however the aim of this article is to analyze how instances of a specific genre, the recipe, may present different functional features, as well as discuss how TEFL may use the genre in their work with learners. The paper presents a summary of the relevant theoretical aspects on the three Meta Functions in SFG by Halliday, examining the features of the texts in the light of these concepts; the result is a reflection on how these functional features may be used in TEFL.

Sentence‐Final Particles in Mandarin*

AbstractMandarin Chinese is rich in sentence‐final particles, which have to follow a rigid linear order when they cluster. In much of the literature, researchers focus on clarifying the functions of individual particles, with less attention being paid to the explanations of their highly restricted order. Based on corpus data and using the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG, Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008), this paper explores the questions which particles can cluster and why they cluster in a specific order. We show that maximally three Mandarin sentence‐final particles can cluster, and we argue that their sequence is restricted by their positioning in a strict four‐layered hierarchical structure, in which each particle pertains to a specific semantic or pragmatic layer. In addition, Mandarin particles provide evidence that there are operators at a higher discourse level than so far assumed to exist in FDG.

Language Metafunction in Cosmetic Advertisement

This research deals with the meaning of beauty through language metafunctions in cosmetic advertisements. The theory used in this research was the theory of language metafunction by Halliday dan Matthiessen (2004) in their book entitled An Introduction to Functional Grammar. The method applied in this research was a descriptive qualitative method. The data collection methods and techniques used are the listen and note method. First, the researcher listened repeatedly to the utterances conveyed by the advertisement figures and advertisement voice actors. The utterances that have been listened to are then recorded in the data collection sheet on the laptop. The data that has been collected is then presented in the table provided. The table contains data and types of language metafunctions contained in cosmetic advertisements. The data is presented in a table and then analyzed using the theoretical basis of language metafunction by Halliday and Matthiessen (2004). Based on analysis, it was found that the meanings of beauty conveyed through language metafunctions in cosmetic advertisements include smooth and soft skin, thick and beautiful hair, very thick and long hair.

The interaction and rhetorical conflict between systemic linguistics and generative linguistics

AbstractThe distinction of systemic linguistics and generative linguistics has led to more problems for systemicists than for generativists: Halliday’s theory has been widely applied but has not been adequately valued as an influential strand of functional grammars in discussions on functionalism and formalism in linguistics; Halliday recognizes Chomsky’s theoretical importance but fails to get Chomsky to respond to his questioning. By focusing on the complementarity and reconcilability of functionalist and formalist approaches to language, this paper discusses the common concerns and dialogues along with discursive differences and rhetorical conflicts between Halliday and Chomsky, and proposes that what stands between them is a difference of discourses of argumentation rather than an opposition of functionalism and formalism. It suggests a few things that at least some systemic linguists need to do in order to further interact with generative linguists who may not be interested in the systemic enterprise. It concludes that since Halliday’s social semiotic theory aims at everyday problems of living and learning, it should not be difficult for systemic linguists to solve the problem of communicating with Chomsky and his followers.

Obituary: Martin Kay

Obituary: Martin Kay

Reconstruction of multimodal aesthetic critical discourse analysis framework

Abstract The paper starts with a theoretical discussion of the possible introduction of aesthetic linguistics into the research field of multimodal critical discourse analysis for analysing tourist news of two modalities: visual and text. Thanks to the successful stories of analysis concerning aesthetic linguistics, systemic functional grammar and visual grammar; first, a framework of multimodal aesthetic critical discourse analysis is carefully redesigned based on multimodal aesthetic critical discourse analysis framework of version 1, originally designed for the same purpose. Then, the validity of the reconstructed framework is verified via analysing a piece of Shannxi tourist news with it. The result indicated that the multimodal aesthetic critical discourse analysis framework re-designed in this paper is of practical significance and can be applied to the analysis of news of multiple modalities.

Discourse Strategies in Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s Letter to President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

The paper sets out to investigate the discourse strategies deployed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo in his open letter to President Jonathan on December 12, 2013 which was published in most of the nation’s major newspapers. The work adopts M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar as its theoretical framework because of the great importance which the model attaches to meanings and functions of a linguistic expression in relation to its context of usage. The researchers, through content and qualitative analysis, identify the discourse strategies used by the encoder of the speech to have the desired maximum effects on the decoders, especially President Goodluck Jonathan. Our findings reveal that President Obasanjo makes use of six discourse strategies in the letter for achieving some aims. The discourse strategies are: references to national interest; using the vocative “Mr President”; mentioning and portraying God in different perspectives; making direct appeals to the president; making references to late Gen. Sanni Abacha and copious repetitions of Nigeria and Nigerians in the text.

THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF REDUPLICATION IN ENGLISH AND URDU LANGUAGES: A CROSS LINGUIST STUDY

The main concentration of this work is to look at the forms and functions of morphological doubling in syntax and it aims at to look at the functions and roles of double questions morphemes of Urdu and to make comparative analysis of Urdu and English languages. There are different types of doublings in English language e.g. adverbs doublings, semantic doubling but question doubling does not exist in English language because it is the unique feature of Urdu language only. Qualitative analysis with purposive sampling approach, with the framework of Lexical Functional grammar (LFG).through the concept of F-Structure from (LFG) theory, double morphemes will be analyzed. For this purpose, data will be collected through document analysis, standard books, articles, published researches, dictionaries and data from common users. 100 sentences, consisting of double morpheme, will be selected and same were put into F-Structure to explore their lexical structure to show the semantic functions in both languages. Simultaneously, the sentences were also analyzed syntactically in order to find out their appropriateness. The study may provide a good level of confidence to develop Urdu National Language processing (UNLP) and enlighten the phenomena that morphological doubling in Urdu used for multiple semantic functions to explore human notions and feelings as compare to any other South Asian Language because Urdu is the only language with per gram. and study will also explore the functional and dynamic aspects of LFG. Keywords: Reduplication, LFG, syntax, Double interrogative morphemes.

The Analysis of Sentence Construction and Meaning Interpretation of English Break Verbs and their Verbs Equivalence in Buginese Language

The purpose of this research is to compare the sentence form and meaning interpretation of 'Break' Verbs in English and Buginese. The sentence construction and the meaning interpretation of verbs confined to Break Verb from English and Buginese language were compared with regards to Dixon’s Affect Verbs Construction and Halliday’s Functional Grammar Construction. The data of this research were collected from two sources. The English data were collected from British National Corpus (BNC) while the Buginese Data was collected from field observation and interview on Soppeng Buginese speaking community. The data were collected and analyzed using Descriptive Qualitative Methods. According to the findings of this study, it was found eighteen Break Verbs in the English language and nineteen in the Buginese language; 2) The ‘Break’ Verbs in both languages are realized into sentences through a number of selections of constructions set up in the two theories that were examined in this research and some additional constructions where each construction plays some contribution to the meaning interpretation; 3) The Break Verbs found in both languages have some similarities and differences regarding their sentence construction and meaning interpretation.

Analysis of Children’s Picture Book from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar—A Case Study of The Coronavirus Fight

The Coronavirus Fight is a well-made children’s picture book about epidemic publicity. This article attempts to analyze 
 the text message from the perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG). For ideational function, this book uses the material, 
 relational and behavior process the most. The heavy use of the transitivity process vividly depicts the epidemic situation. For 
 interpersonal function, most sentences use declarative mood, which indicates that this book aims to express much more information 
 to the readers. Furthermore, a large amount of the first person also bridges the void between the writer and reader. The analysis of 
 the text reveals well the meaning which the story conveys: although the coronavirus does harm to human health, our country is 
 taking effective measures to prevent it, and we should believe we will fight against it one day.

Discourse study of linguistic errors in Vanguard online readers’ comments on the alleged 2012 fuel subsidy committee bribery scandal

The study identifies common linguistic errors among online commenters. It analyses and interprets the identified errors. It relates the interpreted errors to the socio political context of Nigeria. This was done with a view to investigating how these discussed errors were used by online commenters on the alleged national assembly fuel subsidy committee bribery scandal. The study employed both primary and secondary sources of data. The primary source includes 20 purposively selected readers’ comments on news reports from the Vanguard online. The secondary source includes books, journal articles and the Internet. Data were analysed using Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar approach. The study discovers that errors such as faulty sentence constructions, wrong use of, punctuation marks and spellings were used by commenters.

Recommitting to Marriage on Kate Chopin’s ‘A Respectable Woman’: A Systemic Functional Description

A story implies meaning because it is delivered by language. The plot is told by language and the characters in the story are also described by language. The language expresses clauses that can be interpreted. Kate Chopi’s ‘A Respectable Woman’ is a story about a married couple that ends unclear. This story have carried meaning through its ideology. It must be revealed to conclude the story ending. Since this story is not an easy story, Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) was applied to help the writer exploring the linguistic features. SFG could identify evidences of the story’s meaning. Through qualitative and quantitative methods, the writer presented the description of the Systemic Functional Grammar to present linguistic features and interpret the ideology which is recommitting to marriage.

A Functional Discourse Grammar account of proper names in Portuguese

A generally accepted view regarding proper names is that they have reference, but no lexical meaning (Lyons, 1977). This idea is the basis for the Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld & Mackenzie, 2008) view of proper names as primitives of the Interpersonal Level and the lexical head of Subacts of Reference. At the Representational Level, the entity is designated by an absent head, which captures the fact that proper names do not have a meaning. Although this approach accounts for the most prototypical use of proper names, it fails to explain a range of other uses. In addition to the referential use of non-modified proper names, this paper analyses other uses of proper names in Portuguese: modified proper names, metaphorical proper names, and proper names in naming constructions. The proposal presented here explains cases of restrictive modification and metaphorical uses of proper names as instances of reflexive language and coercion, respectively. As for proper names in naming constructions, they are considered to have a third, different, function, in addition to the vocative and referential use.@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face{font-family:Times;panose-1:0 0 5 0 0 0 0 2 0 0;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:auto;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1342185562 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0in;mso-pagination:none;text-autospace:none;font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-size:11.0pt;mso-ansi-font-size:11.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoPapDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-pagination:none;text-autospace:none;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}

Adjectives in Arabic

The main aim of this paper is to describe the main adjectival constructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). It contributes a new analysis of an adjectival construction in MSA that was analysed in traditional grammar as a special postnominal adjectival construction, called the unreal adjectival construction. We argue that it is an example of prenominal adjectival constructions in MSA. We also provide a new analysis of the prenominal construction, suggesting that the adjective modifies the following noun, and this noun is the subject of the adjective. Moreover, we provide an analysis of predicate adjectives in MSA, whether with or without a copula, arguing that the single-tier analysis in Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is the appropriate analysis for predicate adjectival constructions in MSA. Additionally, this paper shows the similarities and differences between adjectival words and participial words, which are both used as modifiers in MSA.

Lexical Repetition and Syntactic Parallelism in Selected Political Essays of Niyi Osundare and Ray Ekpu

This paper examines lexical repetition and syntactic parallelism in selected political essays of Niyi Osundare and Ray Ekpu, which have been relatively underexplored, in order to determine how they have been deployed to represent Nigeria’s socio-political concerns as well as the points of convergence and divergence in the use of these devices by both writers. M.A.K Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar served as the framework. Eighteen (18) essays were purposively sampled; 9 each from Osundare and Ekpu’s publications in Newswatch where they both published between the Second and Fourth Republics (1979–1999). The study shows that lexical repetitions underscore argument, expand the thematic range and create lexical links between words in the discourses. Syntactic parallelism creates a multidimensional representation of discourse themes such as deprivation, anarchy, civil unrest, moral decline, government’s harsh economic policies and intimidation of the press. These themes are situated within a specific context in order to reinforce their gravity. Osundare’s essays deployed the mhq patterns for effective description and thematic projection. Conversely, Ekpu’s essays use the mhq and hq patterns for effective description and thematic projection. The essays of Osundare employ the SPC1 structure to foreground the blatant disregard for human rights while Ekpu’s employs the SPCA and SPA structures in projecting the breach of the judiciary. These devices contribute to the structure of the selected essays and create room for according emphasis and explicitness to the discourse themes. Osundare and Ekpu draw on lexical repetition and syntactic parallelism to unveil and denounce socio-political ills in the country. They employ these devices to underscore their political stance.