Grammar Perspective Research Articles

Cultivation of Construction Model of Translation Grammar from the Perspective of Cognitive Grammar

Cultivation of Construction Model of Translation Grammar from the Perspective of Cognitive Grammar

Transitivity Analysis of Joe Biden’s Inaugural Address From the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar provides a new perspective and method for political discourse analysis. This paper first introduces the research status of political discourse at home and abroad, and then elaborates three metafunctions of Systemic Functional Grammar, namely ideational function, interpersonal function as well as textual function. On this basis, this paper makes an in-depth transitivity analysis of the inaugural address of the 46th president of the United States, Joseph Robinette Biden. Through profound research, this paper attempts to reveal how English language is applied to hide ideology in political speeches and how president Joe Biden uses various language features to persuade and inspire American people in order to reach his political purpose; at the same time, it also verifies the practicability of Systemic Functional Grammar in the analysis of political speech discourse.

Critical Discourse Analysis of Modal Verbs in 2017 BRICS Talk—A Perspective of Functional Systemic Grammar

Modality received considerable attention from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Modality can be realized by finite modal operators and modal adjuncts. This paper tries to analyze modal verbs used by five hosts of different nations in the 2017 BRICS Talk, a special program made by CGTN ahead of the ninth BRICS Summit. Based on systemic functional grammar (SFG) on the sub-systems of modality, five small corpora are established and quantified to investigate the number, frequency and distribution of modal verbs. Through the corpus-based research, the author finds that there are similarities and variations on the use of modal verbs in different anchors, which reveals different power relations behind their utterances. The findings are interpreted in terms of individual, cultural differences between the five moderators. This paper contributes to research that probes into power relations in the context of media from a CDA perspective and provides further understanding of modality in the public discourse.

A Research on Generative Mechanism Of Synthetic Compounds: From a Perspective of Stylistic-Register Grammar (in Chinese)

Both the structural characteristics and grammaticality issues of synthetic compounds OVN and VON have been fully discussed from perspectives of formal syntax, prosodic grammar and multiple interactions among syntax, prosody and semantics. However, there is still a lot of controversy. This paper puts forward a new analysis based on existing studies and aims to provide a more consistent description and explanation on generative mechanism and constraints of all types of synthetic compounds. First, this paper systematically describes the complex and diverse combination types of synthetic compounds as well as their grammaticality and usability, and summarizes the main aspects and problems to be solved in terms of generative constraints of these compounds, which pave the way to propose a new approach from Stylistic-Register Grammar. With Spatio-Temporal Principle and operational rules of Stylistic-Register Grammar, this paper analyzes the specific constraints on the grammaticality and usability of different types of synthetic compounds, and explains the motivations of special types and cases. Therefore, this paper suggests that the so-called exceptions, special examples or counter-examples are essentially the results of multiple interactions, while the differences of typological features of synthetic compounds are the results of interactions between structural characteristics and specific register motivations, which provide a good reference for the establishment of stylistic-register typology. Lastly, this paper points out that the approach focusing on multi-interactive mechanism could inspire us to make new thinking on the methodologies in related research fields.

Transitivity Analysis of President Obama's Speech a More Perfect Union from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

Obama's friend reverend Wright was photographed with racist remarks that were extremely hostile to whites during his sermon, which shocked the United States and caused Obama's election situation to lag behind. As a result, Obama made this speech to address the situation. The transitivity system under Halliday's systemic functional grammar is used to analyze Obama's A More Perfect Union in order to explore the effectiveness and maneuverability of the transitivity system in achieving the purpose of the speech.

О конъюнктивном употреблении разделительных союзов (на материале польского и русского языков)

The author considers the problem of conjunctive use of disjunctive conjunctions in the perspective of functional grammar. In the first part of the article, the author verifies the logical approach to conjunctions, especially disjunctive conjunctions. The linguistic meaning of a conjunction is defined as information on the credibility or applicability of a (semantically) compound sentence under condition [10, 01], which means an alternative participation of referents in the described situation. In the following chapters, the author analyzes several language facts, namely sentences that contain a disjunctive relationship and which nevertheless express the general meaning of conjunction. The author explains these phenomena by the fact that in such sentences there are the types of configurations of conjunction with the exponents of other semantic categories: quantification and modality.

한국어 문장 층위 구문의 식별과 기술

This paper aims to propose and test several strategies for identifying and describing sentence-level constructions in Korean from the perspective of construction grammar. Although Goldberg (2006: 5) has proposed a modified definition of constructions that covers even common and predictable patterns, many construction grammarians have tended to favour a butterfly collecting approach, focusing primarily on patterns with unusual semantic and grammatical properties. However, the application of Hilpert

Analysis of Linguistic Choices in Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat

The present study contributes to the growing literature on Pakistani novels in English by exploring transitivity choices in Bapsi Sidhwa’s An American Brat from Halliday’s (2004) systemic functional grammar (SFG) perspective. Data of the study consisted of 1158 clauses that were selected from the novel. The following techniques were used to analyse data: comprehending the selected text of the novel, splitting the text into clauses, identifying processes, participants and circumstance types and drawing the conclusion based on the analysed text. The findings of the study revealed that all types of processes were found in the novel. Among 1158 clauses, the material clauses were computed most frequent with the frequency of (566), making a proportion of (48.87%). The second most frequent projection was of the mental clauses with the frequency of (392) making a proportion of (33.85%). The concentration of verbal processes in the text was (123), having a proportion of (10.62%). In comparison, the lowest projection was found in behavioural processes (50), making a proportion of (4.31%), followed by relational processes (17) making a proportion of (1.46%) and existential processes (10) making a proportion of (0.86%). The study results showed that Sidhwa was interested in the description of physical actions and feelings of different characters. For this purpose, she used material and mental processes more than any other process in An American Brat. The current study proved that systemic functional linguistic theory is a helpful tool for analysing any literary or non-literary text. It has implications for further research in stylistic and narratological studies through the transitivity system of analysis.

실제적인 자료를 활용한 영어교육: 영화 밀리언 달러 베이비를 중심으로

The purpose of this study was to provide EFL teachers with a method to teach English using a movie. For the purpose, a movie titled Million Dollar Baby was analyzed by extracting some educational elements from the movie. For the most part, the movie is composed of daily life English and it involves a number of useful idiomatic expressions as well as rich cultural information. Above all, the movie is based on a touching story that depicts the value of one’s dream and family love. A total of twelve scenes were selected and analyzed from the perspective of grammar, expressions, pronunciation, and culture. Out of the twelfth scenes, the analysis on the third scene was presented as a sample. Through the analysis, some grammatical points and some idiomatic expressions that deserve to be attended to were presented. It also offered some phonological phenomenon and some cultural aspects. It is hoped that EFL teachers could apply the analysis to their own classroom setting with examples that this study offers. Based on the results, several implications are discussed.

Korean Relative Clauses: Metonymy, Zone Activation, and Reference Point*

AbstractThis article develops an analysis of three types of Korean Relative Clauses (RCs) from a Cognitive Grammar perspective. The three types under examination are the Internally Headed RC Construction (IHRCC), the Externally Headed RC Construction (EHRCC), and the Double RC Construction (DRCC) which is a subtype of the EHRCC. It is demonstrated that the notion of metonymy helps us properly tease out the nature and provide a uniform account of the hitherto neglected Korean RC constructions. The “mismatch” observed between the syntactic object and the semantic head in the IHRCC is nothing but a case of the active‐zone/profile discrepancy. The putative island constraint or subjacency violations in the EHRC and the DRCC are not an issue because the head nominals in those examples are associated with reference points that are exocentrically‐created and thus exist outside of the inner RCs.

An Analysis of the Website Profile of Oxford University———from the Perspective of Systemic Functional Grammar

Website profile of university is a brief introduction to the university on its official website. It provides a comprehensive overview of the university for web browsers as well as helps the university to attract students to apply for it. This paper intends to construe the ideational function of the profile of Oxford University, which is one of the top universities in the world. In the light of Halliday’ s systemic functional grammar, detailed analysis will be carried out in terms of transitivity system. Through this analysis, it is hoped that this study can find out motives behind this linguistic form and help readers to have a better understanding of how ideational function is realized in this kind of profile.

A Study on Obama’s Optimistic Speech as Opposed to Trump’s Disappointing Speech from a Systemic Functional Grammar Perspective

تقوم الدراسة الحالية بتحليل خطابات ترامب وأوباما بشأن وفاة جورج فلويد. تبحث الدراسة في مفهومين ؛ الهوية والأيديولوجيا کما هي موضحة من خلال الاختيارات اللغوية للزعيمين. ولاستکشاف هوية وأيديولوجية الزعيمين ، تتبنى الدراسة إطارا مشترکا لنظرية لـ Halliday’s (1994) Systemic Functional Grammar and Leech’s (1985)Componential Analysis . يتم تحليل الخطابات التي تم جمعها من منظور معجمي نحوي ودلالي. أما بالنسبة للتحليل المعجمي يتم استکشاف الوظائف النحوية الفکرية من خلال دراسة نظام التعدد المستخدم من قبل المتحدثين. من ناحية أخرى، يبحث التحليل الدلالي في الوظائف الشخصية کما تظهر في الخطابين من خلال العمليات الست التي اقترحها هاليداي. هذا بالإضافة إلى التحليل الدلالي التکويني للأسماء الأکثر استخداما. تتضمن المنهجية مزيجا من الأساليب الکمية والنوعية من خلال استخدام أساليب المتن اللغوية. تتم معالجة البيانات باستخدام محرک Sketch. تشکل قوائم التردد والکلمات الرئيسية ونتائج التوافق الأساس الذي يتم على أساسه تحديد الموضوعات الخطابية، وبناء أنواع الهويات والأيديولوجية لکلا الزعيمين. تظهر النتائج أن الزعيمين أثارا آراء متناقضة ومشاعر قوية

Cultural Translation of Idioms in Textbook Advanced English from the Perspective of Grammar

For foreign language learners, there is a dead corner for them. Now that idioms may lead to a serious misunderstanding, for they overload much information and background culture. Therefore, English idioms need specify the right meanings of Chinese ones, which is essential for the second language learners to get a better understanding of the writer’s intention. This thesis adopts literature review and comparison analysis, and tends to explore the relationship between English idioms translation and Chinese ones in Advanced English complied by Zhang Hanxi, in order to find a better way of relatively appropriate rending, in addition, to provide some suggestions for English language teachers in the teaching.

INITIAL ANALYSIS ON SEMANTIC STRUCTURES OF VOLITION SITUATION IN ENGLISH (IN COMPARISON WITH VIETNAMESE EQUIVALENTS)

According to many functional grammarians, the volition situation in the English language is identified as one of the subtypes of experiential situations (perception, cognition, emotion and volition). It is classified into the subtypes such as wanting, needing, intending, desiring, hoping and wishing. This article aims at describing the semantic structures of the English volition situation from the perspective of functional grammar, then comparing and contrasting it with the Vietnamese equivalents with a view to figuring out some similarities and differences.

NEED-ANALYSIS BASED ON DESIGN PROPER ENGLISH COURSE SYLLABUS

This research attempts to give perspective to the teachers and lecturers of English regarding a proper syllabus which mainly based on students’ problems on designing good quality of the abstracts of their research. 14 students’ product of abstracts of non-English department in the University of PGRI Yogyakarta would be employed as the main sources of data. The technique of doing this study is by observing on the students’ error production based on the diction and the grammatical aspects. This is a Research and Development which the result is a need-analysis-based syllabus. The syllabus mirrors that most of students have difficulties on finding the proper dictions of certain words, such as cardinal and ordinal numbers. From the perspective of grammar, they found that it is an obstacle to apply certain tense and aspect system of English. Based on these, the researcher expects that teacher and lecturer of English are able to design the more suitable and ready-to-use skills that gained during the classroom activities so that students are able to design the more acceptable abstract of their research to increase the readability and the acceptability of academic writing.

On the Coordinate Expression “A and B” from the Perspective of Cognitive Grammar

The coordinate expression of “A and B” formed by the coordinate conjunction “and” shows a variety of syntactic features and semantic relations. Based on the research of scholars at home and abroad the paper argues that the cognitive grammatical research outweighs other theoretical views on the researches of the internal motivations of complex phenomena. It further points out that A and B are parallel in grammar and semantics，and “A and B” is polysemous.

NPs, not DPs: The NP vs. DP debate in the context of dependency grammar

AbstractThis paper considers the NP vs. DP debate from the perspective of dependency grammar (DG). The message is delivered that given DG assumptions about sentence structure, the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is preferable over the DP-analysis. The debate is also considered from the perspective of phrase structure grammar (PSG). While many of the issues discussed here do not directly support NP over DP given PSG assumptions, some do. More importantly, one has to accept the widespread presence of null determiner heads for the DP analysis to be plausible on PSG assumptions. The argument developed at length here is that the traditional NP-analysis of nominal groups is both more accurate and simpler than the DP-analysis, in part because it does not rely on the frequent occurrence of null determiners.

Trends and Recent Change in the Syntactic Distribution of Degree Modifiers: Implications for a Usage-based Theory of Word Classes

This paper examines the syntactic distribution of degree modifiers in both spoken and written English. The results of the empirical case studies show that degree modifiers, both amplifiers (e.g., very, extremely) and downtoners (e.g., quite, pretty), are generally more often used in predication than in attribution, a result that is in line with earlier observations of the distribution of individual modifiers. This synchronic trend is also evident in diachronic developments: corpus data show that the recent frequency increase of intensifying this and that has largely taken place in predication, and the adjectivization of a class of -ed participles (e.g., interested, scared) can also be connected to their frequent co-occurrence with degree modifiers after be. Finally, the connection between degree modifiers and predicative usage has recently become stronger for a subset of modifiers (e.g., so, this, that) due to the decline of the “Big Mess” construction (e.g., so good an idea). From a theoretical perspective, this paper promotes a dynamic, usage-based model of word classes where frequency of use plays a role in categorization. The data investigated in the article are mainly discussed from the perspective of usage-based Construction Grammar, and the theoretical implications of the findings are examined both in light of a more traditional Construction Grammar network model of language and some recent ideas of overlapping word classes.

구문문법을 통해 본 ‘非X不可’의 의미 분류 및 화용조건 분석

The purpose of this paper is to classify the meanings of “非X不可” and to analyze its conditions of practicality used in a certain fixed forms in modern Chinese from the theoretical perspective of construction grammar.<BR> The first meaning that “非X不可” expresses is subjective wishes or aspirations. In order to express this meaning, the background must be that someone objects to the wish or aspiration or is involved in it who does not want to be.<BR> The second meaning that “非X不可” expresses is that certain actions are contextually required. The premise is that certain objective circumstances force the actor to engage in the actions in question.<BR> The third meaning that “非X不可” expresses is the speculation about the occurrence of an event. This conjecture holds that the event is unavoidable and will necessarily produce an unwanted result.<BR> Although the detailed meanings of “非X不可” are different, they are all convey a strong tone and discuss events that have not yet occurred.<BR> In addition, initially other components could be inserted between “非X” and “不可” in “非X不可,” but it became fixed and was used as a structure over time. In the process of this change, the function of “非” conveying negative judgment was weakened and the independence of “X” increased, leading to an expansion of possible meanings.

Uma perspectiva construtiva sobre a ascensão dos marcadores de discurso metatextual

Cognitive linguistics seeks to account for “a speaker’s knowledge of the full range of linguistic conventions” (LANGACKER, 1987; also GOLDBERG, 2006). It is surprising therefore that little attention has been paid in cognitive linguistics to the linguistic conventions called “discourse markers” (SCHIFFRIN, 1987) or “pragmatic markers” (FRASER, 2009, et passim). Pragmatic markers include signals of attention to social relationships (well, please), beliefs (I think, in fact), and discourse management (after all, anyway). Members of the third subtype are metatextual connectors of discourse segments (“discourse markers” in Fraser’s taxonomy). I argue that because pragmatic markers in general play a major role in negotiating meaning, they are an important part of speakers’ knowledge of language. Pragmatic markers are well-known not to have truth-conditional meaning, and not to be syntactically integrated with the host clause. However, they have conventional pragmatic meanings (HANSEN, 2012; FINKBEINER, 2019). I exemplify my recent research on the historical development in English of metatextual discourse markers with a diachronic construction grammar perspective on by the way (TRAUGOTT, 2020). Focus will be on the importance of routinized, replicated contexts in change (CROFT, 2001; BYBEE, 2010).