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...

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.

Offers a description of the Old English dialect on systemic functional principles. This book covers structures and functions within nominal, verbal and adverbial groups; relationships among clauses; embedding; and cohesion.

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...

The notion of Choice provides a constant underlying theme to work in Systemic Functional Linguistics, whether this is concerned with in-depth description of the system of lexicogrammatical options available within specific languages or with the analysis of the semiotic and/or social implications of the choices taken within specific texts. Yet to date little has been published exploring the applicability of choice across various contexts. This book addresses this gap in the literature by presenting a selection of writings from internationally renowned authors that develop the analytical...

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...

Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Digital Age explores the insights that SFL offers to help us understand and explain the new meanings afforded through digital channels and how they are shaped by and shape their digital contexts.

This long-awaited volume presents thirteen original contributions by some of the leading scholars in Systemic Phonology. The chapters present both theoretical and applied studies with analyses of wide-ranging texts including news readings, children's stories, literary classics, classroom discourse, and sung texts. The volume also includes some theoretical contributions, such as an explication of the generative model of intonation and punctuation of the Cardiff School of SFL. The last chapter in the volume is an interactive chapter where readers can listen to, read, and obtain a first-hand...