时间：2022-08-20 02:42:51
Abstract：The essay attempts to summarize Michael Halliday’s contribution to the theory of syntactic semantics according to the author’s understanding. Starting from the origin of his ideas, the essay then explains what syntactic semantics means and the concept of transitivity system and several processes such as material processes, behavioural processes and mental processes. Finally, Halliday’s new ideas are described-namely the micro perspective of one part of the functional linguistics.
Key words：syntactic semantics; processes; transitivity; elements
中图分类号： H315.9 文献标识码： A 文章编号：1672-1578（2013)02-0001-02
Michael Halliday has developed the ideas stemming from Firth’s theories in the London School. His Systemic Functional Grammar is a sociologically oriented functional linguistic approach and one of the most influential linguistic theories in the twentieth century, having great effect on various disciplines related to language, such as language teaching, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, stylistics, and machine translation. SystemicFunctional Grammar has two components: Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar, in which his contribution to syntactic semantics is regarded as “of a fundamental and pioneering character”.
By syntactic semantics, we mean that the syntactic constructions are based on the semantics,and the constructional constraint suggests that the semantic relations have close relations with syntactic constructions. Syntactic constructions change with the differences in semantics. A nuance in the semantics can cause the change of syntactic constructions. His theory of syntactic semantics is more detailed than that of the traditional linguistics. In his theory of syntactic semantics, he uses “transitivity” to analyze it. Transitivity is to render certain relationships between participants in communications and between the activities taken by participants and conditions or circumstances. Also in Functional Grammar, he holds that language has three metafunctions: the ideational, the interpersonal, and the textual function.
The ideational function is corresponding to the elements in expressing our experiences, such as Actor, Process and Goal as are the content of our experiences. When expressing the content, we could have our choices, i.e. transitivity, voice and modulation.
The whole of the transitivity system is part of the ideational component. In this respect, this function not only specifies the available options in meaning but also determines the nature of their structural realizations. For example, Mary draw a picture can be analyzed as a configuration of the functions:
Actor: Mary
Process: Material: creation: draw
Goal: affected: a picture
Here the actor, process, Goal, and their subcategories reflect our understanding of phenomena that come within our experiences. Hence this function of language is that of encoding our experience in the form of an ideational content. The notions of Actor, Process and the like make sense only if we assume an ideational function in order to satisfy some theory of linguistic functions; an analysis in something like these terms is necessary if we are to explain the structure of clauses. The clause is a structural unit, and it is the one by which we express a particular range of ideational meanings, our experience of process, the process of external world, both concrete and abstract, and the processes of our own consciousness, seeing, liking, thinking, talking and so on.
Transitivity is simply the grammar of the clause in its ideational aspect. And when expressing the content, a process must be included, which consists of three components (1) the process itself,(2)participants in the process,and (3) circumstances associated with the process. Transitivity consists of six different processes:Material Process, Behavioural Process, Mental Process, Verbal Process, Relational Process, and Existential Process. He regards the first three types as principle ones and the last three types as subsidiary ones. Of the three subsidiary types, behavioral processes are intermediate between material and mental processes, verbal processes between mental and relational processes, and existential processes between relational and material processes. In other words, the six processes may be represented like this: material- behavioural- mental- verbal- relational- existential.
According to Halliday, I think material processes are those in which something is done. These processes are expressed by an action verb (e.g. beat, break, kick), an Actor (logical subject) and the Goal of the action (logical direct subject, usually a noun or a pronoun). This kind of process can be further divided into action process and event process. And action process includes intention process and super- vention process.
Behavioural processes refer to physiological and psychological behaviour such as breathing, coughing, smiling, laughing, crying, staring, and dreaming, etc. Generally only one participant, Behaver, often a human, is involved in this kind of processes, much like the Mental Processes. Behavioural Process may sometimes be hardly distinguished from a Material Process that has only one participant. This depends on whether the activity concerned is physiological or psychological. When Behavioural Process has two participants, we may take it as Material Process, for example, John kissed Mary.
Mental processes are processes of sensing, expressing such mental phenomena as “perception” (see, look), “reaction” (like, please) and “cognition” (know, believe, convince). A mental process involves two participants, Senser and Phenomenon. This kind of process consists of internalized and externalized processes.
Verbal processes are processes of saying, those of exchanging information. Commonly- used verbs are say, tell, talk, praise, boast, describe, etc. In these processes the main participants are Sayer, Receiver, and Verbiage.
Relational processes are processes of being, which can be classified into two types: Attributive and Identifying. The former expresses what attributes a certain object has, or what type it belongs to (“a is an attribute of x”), for example, Ben is wise. The latter expresses the identical properties of two entities (“a is the identity of x”), for example, Tom is the leader; the leader is Tom. An essential difference between the attributive and the identifying modes is that the identifying clause is reversible whereas the attributive clause is not. These two relations can be further classified into Intensive (“x is a”), Circumstantial (“x is at a”), and Possessive (“x has a”).
Existential processes represent that something exists or happens. In every Existential Process, there is an Existent, which may be an event, an object or a human being. For example:
There is a new office building at the end of the road.
Does life exist on Mars?
Along the street there comes the bus.
Halliday also deals with some of the participants in his discussion of process types. In this part, two main terms are introduced Beneficiary and Range. Beneficiary corresponds to logical indirect object, and Range to logical cognate object. Halliday defines his Beneficiary as “the one to whom or for whom the process is said to take place”. It is an umbrella term. In material process, the Beneficiary is specified as Recipient (one that goods are given to) or Client (one that services are done for); in a verbal process, the Beneficiary is specified as Receiver; and in a relational process, it is referred to just as Beneficiary without being specified likewise.
In a material process, Recipient and Client each may appear with or without a preposition, depending on its position in the clause. If it is an external dative, Recipient is associated with the preposition to and the preposition for. However, this does not imply that any clause that contains a prepositional phrase to or for necessarily contains a Beneficiary. The Beneficiary may be a human being. And it may also be a plant or an abstract entity. The “benefit” (i.e. goods given to services done for the Beneficiary) is not necessarily beneficially, for example, he gave the tree some water; he gave her a dose of poison. In verbal process, “the Beneficiary is the one who is being addressed”. The preposition often used in the verbal process is to. Nonetheless, other prepositions can also be applied instead of to.
The definition given by Halliday of the term Range is “the element that specifies range or scope of the process”. In material process, the Range may be an entity and indicates the domain over which the process takes place. He illustrates this point by comparing two sentences: (1) He climbed the mountain; (2) He moved the mountain. There is not a “doing” relationship in (1), which suggests that the mountain in (1) is not the target of the action, and it is where the action takes place. Hence it is location. By contrast, the mountain in (2) is the target of the action. Because of this semantic difference, syntactic constructions can’t be like the following: What he did to the mountain was climb it. Therefore, we can draw from this that when the semantic relation is that of doing something to a target, the construction “to have something done” can be used. When the semantic relation is that of action and Range/entity, this construction cannot be used, thus we can’t say “He has the mountain climbed”, but can say “He has the mountain moved”. Hence an important issue is how different semantic relations are realized in syntactic constructions and how syntactic constructions encode and reveal semantic relations. One syntactic structure may embody more than one semantic structure. Semantically, a Range element is not a participant in the process, but grammatically, it is treated as if it was. In other words, a Range element is not a target of the action as a Goal is. Since it is not a target, a Range element is sometimes similar to a circumstantial element (Extent) in a way.
Circumstantial elements consist of Extent and Location in time and space, manner (Means, Quality and Comparison), Cause (Reason, Purpose and Behalf), Accompaniment, Matter, and Role.
Extent is related with the notion of distance and duration whereas Location is related with the notion of place and time. Both of them can express spatial and temporal meanings. Manner consists of three subcategories: Means, Quality, Comparison.
Means refers to the means or instrument whereby a process takes place. Quality expressions represent various meanings such as degree. They “characterize the process in respect of any variable that makes sense”. Comparison represents the meaning of similarity or difference. It is typically expressed by a prepositional phrase with like or unlike.
Cause itself comprises three subcategories: Reason, Purpose and Behalf. Reason represents the reason for which a process takes place. Purpose represents the purpose for which a process takes place. Behalf represents the entity, “on whose behalf or whose sake the action is undertaken”.
Accompaniment represents the meanings and (positive accompaniment), not(negative accompaniment) as circumstancials. It is expressed by prepositions or prepositional phrases, e.g. with, without, instead of.
Matter corresponds to the interrogative “what about?” and is expressed by prepositions or prepositional phrases, e.g. about, concerning, with reference to.
Role corresponds to the interrogative “what as?” and is expressed by prepositions and prepositional phrases, e.g. as, by way of.
On the whole, I think Halliday develops his theories from more specific aspects, which, on the one hand, leads us to the micro perspective of one part of the functional linguistics, on the other hand, offers us a research method, that is to find the causes that give rise to particular phenomena in linguistics, from which we can speculate our points of view and then demonstrate them step by step.
作者简介：硕士研究生，中级职称，主要研究英语语言学，中西文化对比及翻译。