This book takes apart and problematises the whole process of identifying and explaining the patterning of words in sentences. It brings together two concepts - syntax and text - that are normally treated separately, and shows how they can best be understood in relation to each other. Part 1, Processing the text, concentrates on getting texts ready for syntactic analysis. Since the data needs to be mediated through the processing of the text, the nature of that processing and its effects on subsequent analysis need to be made explicit. Part 2, Analysing the clause, introduces the relevant...

Texture - the quality that makes a text 'hang together' as a text - is a key focus of investigation in discourse analysis. This volume provides a systematic overview of recent research on textual resources that are used to construct texture, and on the ways in which these resources are deployed differently in different text types. Theme is the major resource that is explored in the first part of this book. The opening papers set out the current understanding of Theme and explore aspects of the concept that remain controversial in the field. This is followed by an examination of thematic...

This book is the first to combine interests in two currently popular approaches to language description, both of which are based on the observation of naturally-occurring as opposed to invented, language. Systemic Functional Linguistics is a theory that focuses on meaning, choice and probability in language and on language as a social phenomenon. Corpus Linguistics is a practice, rather than a theory: a corpus is a large collection of texts that are used as the basis for language description. It is natural that SFL should turn to corpora as a source of information about grammatical...

This book traces the development of the scientific journal article as a linguistic genre in terms of its linguistic features. It looks at Chaucer's Treatise on the Astrolabe as the first technical text written in English. Texts by Boyle, Power and Hooke from the late seventeenth century are then considered. This leads to the detailed analysis of a corpus of texts taken from the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society covering the period 1700 to 1980. The main linguistic features studied are passive forms, first person pronouns, nominalization, and thematic structure. From the study of...

Functional Dimensions of Ape-Human Discourse asks the question, 'What do interactions between apes and humans mediated by language tell us?'. In order to answer this question the authors explore language-in-context, drawing on a multi-leveled, multi-functional linguistics. The levels are context of culture, context of situation, semantics, lexicogrammar, and phonology; and the functions are ideational, interpersonal, and textual. Chapter 1 discusses a negotiation between the bonobo Kanzi and Sue Savage-Rumbaugh in terms of discourse-semantics, lexicogrammar, and the ideational and...

This book is the first to combine interests in two currently popular approaches to language description, both of which are based on the observation of naturally-occurring as opposed to invented, language. Systemic Functional Linguistics is a theory that focuses on meaning, choice and probability in language and on language as a social phenomenon. Corpus Linguistics is a practice, rather than a theory: a corpus is a large collection of texts that are used as the basis for language description. It is natural that SFL should turn to corpora as a source of information about grammatical...

Shares the debates by systemic functional linguistics and other linguistic forums. This title focuses on how we use language to make meaning of the world, on how the systems and structures of the ideational function of language represent the realisation of our experiences of the world around us.

This book applies the techniques of systemic functional grammar to the description of the Old English historical dialect, 650-1150 CE. Systemic functional grammar is an approach to the description of language which distinguishes three separate functions in communication: language as representation, language as attitude, and language as the construction of text. Most applications of systemic functional theory have concentrated on modern English. This book is the first comprehensive description of the Old English dialect on systemic functional principles. The book begins with an outline of...

This book explores some of the developments in Stylistics since its pioneer, Roman Jakobson, identified the patterning of the message as the poetic function. It analyses in turn Golding's Pincher Martin, Rowling's Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Housman's A Shropshire Lad, Elizabeth Jennings' poem 'One Flesh', Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, and a range of poems by John Donne. The analyses show how Jakobson's emphasis on the message gives way to emphasis on the code or on undermining the code (in the Golding and Donne chapters), on the context...

This volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to this volume deal with different types of diathesis alternations -broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaning -i.e. transitivity alternations (such as the causative/inchoative alternation and the conative alternation), alternations involving arguments...