英语中定语从句的语法功能研究_教育学dissertation
英语中定语从句的语法功能研究
The Study of Discourse Functions of English Restrictive Relative Clauses
本研究主要探讨在英文论述文与叙述文文本中，英文限定关系从句的话语功能。本dissertation主要是从句法、语意、语用和话语结构的观点，来探讨限制性关系从句的功能与它在话语单位所出现的位置有何关联。研究结果显示多数的限制性关系从句出现在话语单位最前面的位置，而且他们往往引导他们新的先行词作为整个话语单位的主题。
The study will discuss the discourse functions of English restrictive relative clauses are mainly based on spontaneous conversations and written narrations. Rare studies were found on the discourse functions of English restrictive relative clauses in written data. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the discourse functions of English restrictive relative clauses in written expositions and argumentations by native speakers of English. Also, we study the use of English restrictive relative clauses in the compositions by Chinese college students.
因此本dissertation认为，大多数限制性关系从句会出现在话语单位最前面的位置，是因为它们有一个很重要的话语功能，那就是它们要引介新的先行词作为整个话语单位的主题。此外，本研究也探讨大学英文系学生在他们的英文写作中，使用限制性关系从句的情形。
In particular, we want to know how the discourse functions of English restrictive relative clauses are related to their occurrences in discourse structures. Thus, our analysis includes considerations from four dimensions: syntax, semantics, pragmatics and discourse. The present study investigated the use of relative clauses by Chinese EFL students in their proposal writing.
From the previous studies, we know how English Restrictive Relative Clauses operate in spontaneous conversation. The use of Restrictive Relative Clauses is for two reasons: grounding and description. Restrictive Relative Clauses achieve grounding function by either doing a proposition-linking work or anchoring the new referents by virtue of the given referents in Restrictive Relative Clauses. Besides, Restrictive Relative Clauses fulfill the description function by providing new information for their newly-introduced head NPs. Furthermore, Restrictive Relative Clauses are realized by different types of syntactic relatives:A-relatives, S-relatives, and O-relatives. Different syntactic types may contribute to different discourse functions of Restrictive Relative Clauses.
The findings of previous studies are mainly from studies on spontaneous conversations. Whether their findings can be generalized to written texts is doubtful because the typical pattern of given/new information status of discourse entities in spoken discourse is very different from those in written discourse. Most referring expressions in spontaneous conversation present given information, and among these given information, exophoric referents such as you and I account for over half of all given referents in conversation whereas this kind of given referents are almost absent from written texts. Second, the preferred nominal forms used for given referents are also different in these two registers: Spoken texts have greater reliance on pronouns and written texts use full lexical NPs most of the time. Compared with spoken discourse, written discourse consists of higher proportion of full lexical NPs expressing new information. So it is clear that there exists discrepancy between spoken and written languages with respect to information status of referring expressions. Based on this fact, we have reasons to believe that written texts may not rely on as many human pronouns in grammatical subject positions as spoken texts do to anchor new referents. O-relatives in written languages thus may not occur as frequently as in spoken languages.#p#分页标题#e#
Besides, written languages often display discourse structure markers that greatly differ from those used in spoken languages. Written texts tend to rely on an extensive set of linguistic markers such as logical connectors moreover and temporal markers when or rhetorical organizers of larger stretches such as firstly and in conclusion. They thus have very clear discourse structures most of the time. As for spoken languages, due to limited time, spoken languages frequently depend on extralinguistic clues to interpret the functional relation between clauses, so they often use many incomplete sentences and the boundary of discourse units tend to be marked by non-linguistic elements. Therefore, written languages display their typical patterns of discourse structures very differently from spoken languages.
To get a comprehensive understanding of discourse structures of written texts, we establish the link between discourse structures and textual relationships within discourse. The functional relations holding between discourse segments may be included under two broad categories: logical sequence and matching relations. This approach to the overall configuration of discourse structures is provided as the base for our definition of discourse units. In the present study, we define a discourse unit as “a discourse segment which bears a functional relation with one another”.
In this study, we believe that in addition to the factors such as information status of NPs and syntactic-semantic types of Restrictive Relative Clauses, discourse structures may play a crucial role in determining the discourse functions of Restrictive Relative Clauses in written texts. Thus, we will employ the notions ‘information status of NPs’, ‘syntactic types of Restrictive Relative Clauses’ and ‘discourse structures’ to investigate the discourse functions of Restrictive Relative Clauses and their relations to their occurrences in discourse units.
There is a important view is from Prince’s works which are concerned with givenness defined on the basis of shared knowledge or assumed familiarity. She notes that an understanding of givenness in the sense of shared knowledge is prerequisite to the understanding to other kinds of givenness delineated above. She proposes a taxonomy in terms of what she calls assumed familiarity. In the present study, we follow Prince very closely.
Prince notes that when a writer/speaker firstly introduces an entity into a text, the entity is new. A new discourse entity has two natures. One is that addressees may have to extract it from their existing knowledge for building the discourse model. To put it simply, addressees know it but may not attend to it until it is introduced in the text.
Another category of discourse entities is what Prince calls evoked entities. An evoked entity is a referent which is already in the discourse model. There are two ways in which an entity can have come to be evoked: either already introduced on textual grounds or evoked by the situational reasons. Prince call the first type textually evoked and the second type situationally evoked. He in “A guy I worked with says he knows your sister.” represents the textually evoked whereas you in “Pardon, would you have change of a quarter?” is situationally evoked.#p#分页标题#e#
The most complex category of discourse entities is what Prince calls inferables. She notes that an entity is inferable if the reader/listener can infer it by means of logical and plausible reasoning from the discourse entities which have been already evoked. For example, readers/listeners are able to infer the driver from the fact that every bus has a driver in “I got on a bus yesterday and the driver was drunk”. Prince further proposes a subclass of inferable entities, which she calls containing inferables. A typical example is “Hey, one of these eggs is broken!”. The NP one of the eggs is a containing inferable which is contained within the other NP these eggs which is situationally evoked.
Prince’s taxonomy then includes the following seven subclasses: unanchored brand-new, anchored brand-new, unused, inferables, containing inferables, textually evoked and situationally evoked. The first three can be classified as new, the second two as inferable, and the last two as evoked. Thus, based on Prince’s taxonomy in terms of assumed familiarity, we can make a very fine information-status distinction of NPs.
The syntactic-semantic aspects are emphasized by Hoey (1983) and Hoey and Winter (1986). Emphasis of their works is placed on the interpretive acts involved in relating one textual segment(s) to the other(s) through logical sequence or matching relations. Examples under the heading of logical sequence relation include condition-consequence, instrument-achievement, cause-consequence, and problem-solutio, as shown below respectively.
Winter and Hoey note that the texts above often contain clues to help the reader/listener interpret the clause relations. The most apparent means whereby a clause relation may be signaled to the reader/listener is by the use of subordinators, conjuncts, and vocabulary items. Take (14) and (16) for examples, in (14), the conjunct so occurring in the beginning of sentence tells us that three sentences form a cause-consequence clause relation. In (16), the adjective different first tells us that people’s thought about Birmingham is to be contrasted and then whereas reveals that the contrast is under way.
To achieve the purpose of this study, the present study contains three steps. First, we collect Restrictive Relative Clauses from the writings of mature native English speakers and classify them according to their positions in discourse units: the beginning positions, the middle positions, and the final positions. Then, we classify these Restrictive Relative Clauses into different syntactic types: S-relatives, A-relatives and O-relatives. Finally, we analyze English Restrictive Relative Clauses from pragmatic, syntactic, semantic and discourse perspectives to see how the discourse functions of English Restrictive Relative Clauses are related to their occurrences in discourse units.
It is found that English Restrictive Relative Clauses are most likely to occur in the initial positions of discourse units. 65% of the Restrictive Relative Clauses we have examined occur in the beginning of discourse units, as sketched in Table 1. This finding is attempting to us to know why the majority of English Restrictive Relative Clauses occur in the beginning of discourse units. Below are our detailed analyses and discussions on the discourse functions of Restrictive Relative Clauses and their relation to the preferred occurrence in the initial positions of discourse units. Besides, http://ukthesis.org/jyx/ a brief explanation for the discourse functions of Restrictive Relative Clauses in middle and final positions of discourse units is also provided.
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