Luận văn qualifiers in english and vietnamese nominal groups a systemic functional comparison

In light of traditional grammar, she found ont the features and classifications of English nominal clauses, the diforonces and similarities between nominal clauses in English and Vietnam

BUI THI HUYEN

QUALIFIERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NOMINAL GROUPS:

A SYSTEMIC FUNCTLONAL COMPARISON

QUAN DIEM CHUC NANG HE THONG

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES,

BUI THI HUYEN

QUALIFIERS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE NOMINAL GROUPS:

A SYSTEMIC FUNCTLONAL COMPARISON

DỊNH NGỮ TRONG NHÓM DANH NGỮ ANH VIET: SO SANH THEO

QUAN DIEM CHUC NANG HE THONG

w Scope of the sludy

4, Significance of the study

Methods of the study

6, Design of lhe study

1.1.2 Systemic fimetional grammar

1.2 Basis synlactical notions

16

19

20

COMPARISON WITH QUALIFIERS IN THE ENGLISH NOMINAL GROUP

3.1 Comparison of words as qualifiers in English and Vietnamese nominal groups — 32 3.2 Comparison of phrases as qualifiers in English and Vietnamasc nominal groups

3.3 Companson of clauses as qualifiers in English and Vietnamese nominal groups

verb Object Complement Adverb

Detsrminer Modifier Lead Qualifier Process Finite Predicate Preposition Relative pronoun

Circumstance Material

Participant

Nominal group(s) Verb group

Used to distingnish betweon human boings and other creatures, lmguages can be the most wonderful thing in this world, Along with the development of ou society, languages were barn so many that actually we do not know how many languages are still being used and have existed up to now Fach langnage has its own history and appears in a specific period It reflects relatively clearly the society, the economy, the culture of country We have achieved

a lot of accomplishments in the field of biology, information technology, astronomy and other fictds,

In Vietw, English is a compulsory subject in secondary, high schools and in

Nominal group isn’t seen as a new issne in syntax and in linguistics in general In the old and new grammar books, the description of nominal group has been relatively occupied

In traditional grammar, the structure of nominal group consists of three components

the head, the promodification and the post-modification However, according to MAK Halliday and other linguisls of the Hallidayan tradition, nominal groups can be scent inthe overall relation of semanties (fimctional) and structure, Halliday gave not only the structure of the head, the modifier and the qualifier, but also the ideational (clause as representation), the interpersonal (clause as cxchange) and the textual (clause as message) Some Victnamesc researchers have considered the matter of nominal group’s structure in the terms of traditional gremmar and funclional grammar An analysis of nominal groups in English and Vietnamese

in light of systemie-fimetional grammar made by Cu Thanh Xphi (2004) is an example In his research, he gave how semantic relations between constituents of the nominal group are

diversified and particularized in English and Victrmesc, and how these semantic relations

could be explained from the representational points of views The other onc was carticd out by Cao Thi Phuong (1928): clauses of nominal status In light of traditional grammar, she found ont the features and classifications of English nominal clauses, the di(foronces and similarities between nominal clauses in English and Vietnamese

Although the two above researches just view nominal group in general, they do not ropresent structures of sach parl in nominal gronps in detail, For this reason, the author of this paper chooses qualifiers (in the light of systemic-functional grammar) as the main issue

2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The above mentioned rationale shows that nominal groups need to be studied in more detail not only in structure but in use as well ‘The aims of the study are

+ To explore the nature of Qualifier and to locale it in the space of the nominal group

- To describe English and Vietnamese nominal groups based on the famework of systemic functional grammar

- To cstablish the diffrences and similarities between qualificrs in English and

Vietnamese nominal groups

3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The research questions mentioned above have already implied that this study focuses only on investigating qualifiers of English nominal groups ‘I'he investigation of this aspect of English is conducted in comparison with that iat Vicinamosa to find out (he sitnilarilios and differences between therm, and from these findings, Ihe investigation will suggest seme implications for teaching and learning English in the Vietnamese context

4, SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

‘To have a deeper understanding of functional grammar in general and nominal groups

im particular, and to be aware of the mistakes made by Vietnan students, the aulhar

5, METHODS OF THE STUDY

To achieve the aims above, the study uses descriptive, contrastive and qualitative methods offanguage research,

Descriptive methods: Theoretisal issues are studied, Then they are re-examined to form the theoretical framework for the study Real-life illustrations along with examples extracted from different kinds of books are also exhibited comprehensively t constitute fally the understanding of the theories and the realization of them,

Comparative methods: ‘The Unglish and Vietnamese qualifiers in nominal groups will

be madg, which is indnetive in naire Us reliabitily and validity will be ensured by the descriptive method Qualifiers in English and Vietnamese nominal groups will be compared in terms of position and meaning so as to search out the resembling and the distinctive features of the two languages in this linguistic aspect,

conclusion

Part 1: prosonls the rationals, the aims, the rescarch questions, the scops af the study, the significance of the study, the methods of the study and the design of the study

Part 2: consists of 3 chapters

Chapter 1: provides the theoretical background for the study, It includes an overview of schools of grammar (tradition and systemic function), some basic syntactical notions (words, phrases and clauses), nominal groups in English and quatificrs

Chapter 2 is concemed with qualifiers in English nominal groups This chapter exhibits the analysis of Linglish words, phrases, and clauses as qualifiers

Chapter 3 doats with qualifices in Vicnamese nominal groups The chapler will also provide the analysis of Victnames: words, phrascs, and clauses as qualificrs and thon is the comparison of English and Vietnamese qualifiers

Part 3: summurives the wnjor findings, provides concluding remarks, gives tha implications

of functional grammar in teaching and learning English and makes some suggestions tor further study

Grammar has been studied by many linguists and grammarians from different schools

To have a better understanding of different schools of grammar, due to the limit of pace and

tine, this chapter will present the two major schools of grammar (traditional and functional

prammars)

1.11 ‘raditional grammar

Traditional grammars is # theory of the structure of langage based on ideas Western societies inherited fom ancient Greek and Roman sources H is not a unified theory that attempts to explain the sirncture of all languages with a mniqne set of concepts (as és the aim of linguistics), Thare are different traditions for different languages,

vocabulary and analysis In the case of European languages, each of them represents an

each with its own traditional

adaplation of Latin grammar to a particular language, Developed im the cightaonlh canny, traditional grammars bors the following characteristics which wore summarized by Ailehison (1991) First, the traditional grammars are prescriptive, logical rather than descriptive Secondly, they prescribe rules of ‘correctness’ in the sense of absolute and unchanging

‘comcetness’, Thirdly, they regard written language as primary, thus traditional grammarians have overstressed the importance of the written word, Finally, they force language into a Latincbascd fiamework, assuming that Latin provided a universal Eatnowork inlo which aÌl languages fit

The traditional grammars have contributed much to the study of language Theoretical

concepts (nouns, clause words, interrogatives, inflexions, auxiliary varbs, subjects, objects and

so on) have been introdnced and are siill widely found in many text books nowadays Howover, lraditional grammar is characterized by a gencral luck of precision and a lack of explicitness Produced rules rzlied heavily on the reader’s ability to gencralize and extrapolalc

from a few examples, which is far ftom explicit in their approach, Besides that, the concepts

as used in the traditional grammars are notional and quite arbitrary as Palmer (1984) remarks

“Grunumar books ofien make no ailenpl fo give a definition of the word though they happily define other graminatical elements in terms of it”

In the view of traditional grarummr, there are cighl, parts of speech: noun, pronoun,

adjective, adverb, verb, preposition, conjunction and interjection, However, objections could

be raised why there are only eight word classes while we seem to have more than eight

They also provide a kind of definitions of sentence and clause: ‘a sentence is the

expression of a complete thought’ or the sentence consists of words, but words are grouped

into elements that are smaller than the sentence ‘fhe traditional grammars talk of “clauses” as

sonlzmees which are part of larger sentences

As a whole, the traditional grammars can hardly provide a sound foundation for any

adequate syntactical analyses

1.1.2 Systemic functional grammar

One of the many remarkable things about language is that we can use it daily without any real awareness of how it is structured Likewise we can use it in very different circumstances without heing at ail conscious of ho important ro

layed by the particular situation on our choice of language wording Yet a change, for example, in the social role we are playing or in whom we are talking to will typically prompt us to alter, sometimes quite significantly, the acinal form of words we usc, Indeed, it is by the selzction not just of lexical items but also of grammatical structures that we are able to express different meanings In this way we can begin to point out the link between language wording, meaning expressed and

situational context.

European languages which staried with Greck and Latin Whal about non-Ruropaan languages such as Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korcan, ote.? Therefore, il allows us to sce only a

small ftagment of grammar, It is necessary to have a richer theory which can provide us with a way of interpreting the overall organization of the grammar of a language as a system of information And systemic-functional theory was developed in work of Chinese It takes the resource perspective rather than the rule perspective; and it is designed to display the overall systons of grasunar rather than only fragments,

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is a theory of language which is concerned with describing language in terms of its semantic fimotion in the social and cultural contexts within which il is pat fo use by speakers, In this way it differs from the formal, synlactic approach of traditional prammars Eggins (1994) suggests that SFL is distinct amongst linguistic thoorics

as “it seeks to develop both a theory about social process and analytical methodology which pormils the detailed and systamatie doseription of language pallcrns”

Studied by many functional grammarians like Halliday (1983, 1994), Bloor (1994),

Iiggins (1994), ‘Thompson (1996), Iloang Van Van (2005) and many others, Systemic

Functional Granumar (SFG) or fimctional grammar (FG) ties to incorporate meaning, function, context, and grammatical categories, Meanings are typically divided into three broad areas, called metafunctions: the ideational, grammar for representing the world; the inlerpersonal, grammar for cnacting sovial relationships (asking, assorting, and ordoring); and the textual, grammar for binding linguistic clements together into broader texts (via prononminalizations, grammatical topucalization, schematization, expressing the newsworthiness af information, cle) We use language lo inleraet with one another, to construct and maintain our interpersonal relations and the social order that lies belxind them; and in doing so we interpret and represent the world for one another and for ourselves Language is a natural part of the process of living; it is also used to ‘store’ the experience built

up in the course of that process, both personal and collective It is (among other things) a tool

for representing knowledge or, to look at this in terms of language itself, for constructing

useful movernenl aeross the text, laking into consideration the context of siluition Why is

Halliday’s theory different ftom others? To answer the question, we can look at the way he labeled a linguistic unit lle labeled a linguistic unit into two ways, including class (noun, adjcctive, adverb, propositional phrase, noun clansc, cle.) and fimetion (Subjecl, Object Complement, Modificr, Auxiliary, ctc.) For cxample, in ‘old man’, ‘old? is adjective in class labeling and mrodifier in finction labeling, ‘man’ is Noun in the former and head in the latter

In olher wards, Halliday's theory sels out lo axplain how spoken and written texts construe meanings and how the resources of language are organized in open systems and functionally bound to meanings This is a radically different theory of language froma Noam Chomsky’s Tt does nol try to address Chomsky’s thests thal there is a "finite rus system which generates all and only the grammatical sentences in a language?” Instead of trying to determine all closed systems and listing all words of a language, ITalliday’s theary tries to

grammatical or ungrammatical, SFG documents the relative frequencies of choices and assumes these relative ftequencies reflect the probability that each resource will be chosen Thus, SFG docs not describe language as a finite rule system, but rather as a system realized

by instantiations which is continnousty expanded by the very instantiations that realize it and

which is continously reduced with the birth of newer generations and the death of alder ones

In the functional perspective, we should also see Halliday’s idea on clause He states

thal “The clause is functional unit with a triple construction of meaning.” He uses the notions

of Theme, Subjecl and Actor for the three aspecls of meaning of the English clause The three

notions are commonly defined as psychological subject, grammatical subject and logical

subject, respectively, with the term “Subject” understood in the common sense For example

Halliday (1985)

{a) The duke has given my aunt that teapot

(t) My aunt has boon given that teapol by the duke

{c) That teapot the duke has given to my aunt

The subjects in the three above clauses are “the duke”, “my aunt”, and “the duke”,

Tespeclively accorđing 1e the traditional grarmnar tn the functional view, we can see

The duke has given my aunt thal Leapol

3 kinds of Subjecl (psychological, grammatical and logical)

My aunt hhas been given that teapot by _| the duke

With different situations, we can explain more clearly the functions of the term

“subject”

The three notions (Theme, Subject and Actor) would be best used as the starting point

in investigating the clause in the three angles: clause asa message, clause as an exchange and

clause as represcnlation, Or this can be expressed as follows: language is used lo organize,

understand and express our perceptions of the world and of ow own consciousness This

function is known as the ideational fiction which includes two subfunctions: the experiential

(largely concerned with content and idea), and the logical (concerned wilh the relationship

between ideas), Language is also used ta enable us fo participatz in comrmuicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitude and judgments

‘This function is responded to the interpersonal fimction Moreover, language is used to relate whal is said (or written) to the real world and to other linguistic evenls This involves lhe use

of language lo organize the text sel This is known as the textual function

While individual scholars naturally have different research emphases or application contexts, common to all systemic linguists is an interest in language as social semiotic Halliday (1978) - how people usc language with cach other in accomplishing cveryday social life This interest leads systemic nguists to advance four main theoretical claims about language:

- that language wse is fiunctional

- that its function is to make meanings

+ thet those meanings are influenced by the sovial and cullural comext in which thay are exchanged

- that the process of using language is a semiotic process, a process of making mean- ings by choosing

These four points, that language use is timctional, semantic, contextual and semiotic, can be summarized by describing the systemic approach as a fiunctional-semantic approach to language The purpose of this Ihesis is lo use functional grammar asa lool to describe, analyse and compare the Qualifiers in English and Vietnamese nominal groups But before doing these, itis necessary to look at the basic syntactic notions

1.2 Busic syntactical notions

of words appeared in the period of Alexandria (3 Ist — centuries, BC),

According to Wikipedia, the fice encyclopedia, a word is the smallest fice form (an item that may be uttered in isolocation with semantic or pragmatic content) in a language, in

contrast to a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning A word may consist of only one morpheme (e.g wolf), but a single morpheme may not be able to exist as a fiee form (e.g the English ploral morpheme -s} Word — level categories is considered to be the most central

to the study of syntax by O° Grady and Dobrovsky (1987)

There are several ways Lo help identify the lexical calogory of a word according to Edward Finnegan, One way focuses on closely related forms ofa word; it means words with parallel forms belonging to the same category, words with different pattern, ete Another way

to identify categorics on which words and categories can occur together in phrases (Phrases will be mentioned in the next section) Relying on meaning is a third way of identifying lexical categorics, though it is nol always reliable and is uscfut principally in forming an initial hypothesis about a word’s category From the perspective of meaning, nouns name (or refer to) persons, places, or things, ¢.g swimmer, Cleveland, and trees are nouns Adjectives name

(1990); Greenbaum (1996); Quirk et al (1985), include the determiner among the list of word

smallest form thal, can occur by itsalf The allocation of words to word eh undertaken

on the basis of grammatical behavior By grammatical behavior is meant, firstly, the wording environment in which the word appears, its location in the word string and the other words with which it can co-occur; and, sccondly, the range of different forms which the word ean display Thns, for example, the word orange can occur ina variety of word contexts and hence belongs to more than one word class When it denotes a color, it oceurs in contexts such as

‘The (very) orange bulb has blown’ and ‘The bulb which has blown is (very) orange’ With the meaning here orange can be assigned to the word class to which white, pink and new

belong On the other hand, the word orange referring to a fruit occurs in contexts such as “This ripe orange is tasty

Or just a very simple definition, in the book of Lexical Hunetfonal Grammar, Falk (2006) clsimnad thal words arz Ihe “ators” onl of which syntactic struclura is buill, Syntactic

tulcs carmot create words or refer Lo the i

He suggests three main approaches to define what a word is

“The first is to see the word as a semantic unit, a unit of meaning, the second sees it

as a phonetic or phonological umii, one that is marked, if not by “spaces” or pauses, af least

by some features of the sounds of the language; the third attempts to establish the ward by a variety of linguistic procedures that are associated with the idea that the word is in some ways

an isolable and indivisible unit’

As we have seen different definitions of word, we matter how argumentative it is,

word actually is the simallest synlactical clemenl Words can be classified more specifically in

diverse cases

1.2.2 Phrases

1.2.2.1 Traditional grammar

Before giving more detailed about phrases, we just start this point with the definition

of phrases from the Langman Dictionary of Hnglish Language and Culture (1998), which says

a phrase is “a group of words without a finite verh” or from the Longman Dictionary of

language teaching and applied lmguisties (1992) gives a definition of a Phrase typically in

Lnglish ‘Phrase éx @ group of words which form a grammatical unit A phrase does not

contain a finite verh and does not have a subject — predicate structure’ Actually, mos)

dictionaries give somewhat similar concepts of phrase

Generally, a phrase involves a grouping of two or more words They use “phrase” to

refer to a special kind of embedded sentence one without a finite verb, For examples, in the

sentences “I don’t know where to do”, “where to go” is a noun phrase, not a noun clause

Towever, this is considered as a “non-finite clause” which would be attached to the embedded according to Quirk et al (1985) Nowadays, a phrase seems to be considered more clearly, It is regarded as a grouping of two or more words which foous around a headword element and together perforin the grammatical rokz which could be expressed by a single word in other circumstances Thas a phrase inhorenlly involves the expansion around a head clement (Certain phrases will be seen also to incorporate a completive element.) Therefore, if a phrase consists of only a single word, that word is the phrasal headword And if a phrase consists of more than onc word, the phrasal headword is the one which operates as the pivotal word within the word grouping Phrases are formally classified according to the class of word which functions as the headword For example, a nominal phrase bas a nominal headword; a verbal phrase has a verbal headword, and so on (By contrast with elements of clause structure, therefore, the formal classification of phrases is not undertaken in terms of their syntactic function)

Traditionally, five main classes of phrase arc recognized: the nominal, verbal, adjectival, adverbial and prepositional, and together with these we here also include the English genitive and subordinator

From all the above points, we can see that a phrase is different from a group in that, whereas a group is an expansion of word, a phrase is a contraction of clause To put it in another way, a phrase is “clause — like” rather [han “group — Hike” Thus a aun phrase must bz closer to a nominal than a nominal group However, a nominal group is not different tom a noun phrase in the view of the logical structure Both of them have the following structural

formula:

Traditionally, if is not very difficult to dotemnine the Lead of noun phrascs in English Normally, the head of a noun phrase offen consists ofa word which is a content werd (e.g that Jadh) As said above, the heat can be eilher a noun ora pronoun (personal pronouns: he, she, ; indefinite pronouns: someone, something, ; possessive pronouns: yours, his, hers ;

demonstrative pronouns: this, that, these, those,

a group is an expansion of a word a pluasc is a contraction of a clause Against this

background he recognivcs jus onc class of phrasc, the prepositional phrase, which he describes as consisting of 'a preposition plus a nominal group, for example “on the burning deck” in which the preposition is sean as a minor verb, a minor predicator, having ths nominal group as its complement (Halliday 1994: 212)

In Syntax in fictional grammar Motley (2000) gave some kinds of phrases, including nominal phrase, adjective phrasc, verb phrase, adverbial phrase, propositional phrasc, subordinator plrase and genitive phrase He pretérred the term “nominal phrase” to nominal group because he claimed that a nominal phrase may be a noun or a pronown as its hoadword

It also marks a commonality of terminology across units of word, phrase and clause rank, and

a commonality with the othor core phrasc labels, c.g, adjectival, verbal, adverbial, and prepositional Nominal phrases with noun headwords may typically be preceded and modified

(pra-headword modification or prornodiRealior) or dotsrmined by an article, ä gonilivo phrase,

a pronoun, an adjective (adjectival phrase) or another noun (nominal phrase), and they may be followed and qualified (post-headword modification or postmodification) by a prepositional phrase or subordinale clause, orm curlain cases an adjective or nominal phrase Morley (2000: 54)

Some grammar books also give the same list of kinds of phrases like Marley’s We are going back lo phrase later in this caplor when we spocifically doa! with noun phrase, which is directly interrelated to ow problem in question “nominal clause”

1.2.3 Clauses

The clase is a fimdsmental nit of language, and clansal sirueiu

is a major lopie of investigation in all recent linguistic theories

Normally, a clause is understood as a group of words containing a subject and finite

verb, forming a scntenee or part of a sentence, and often doing the work of noun, adjective or

adverb Some schoats of grammar have given the concept of clanse Now, I can have a lock at those concepts

‘The first concept which 1 want to mention here is Morley’s In the book of Syrtax in

Functional grammar, he claimed that a, ckausc consists of ona or more phrases with respocl lo

the formal gratnmalicut composition For example, ‘what a mess! Frter! Qul’, the sentenes

here has only one phrase each; in ‘she lett” we have two phrases In terms of meaning, what a clause does is to express a single idea or proposition This may involve giving or seeking information Morley (2000:60) In terms of their relationships of grammatical dependency, clauses are traditionally classed as main or subordinate, ie a clause which, whether or not it can stand on ils own without the assistance of a subordinaic is not dependent grammatically on

a higher node (a node is a position in a diagram of the syntactic structure) or superordinate clause, ‘Therefore, a main clause which is grammatically well-formed is typically able to stand onils own as a simple sonlence in ils own right He also gives other kinds of clauscs, including (nominal clause, adjcetival clause and adverbial clause)

In the view of traditional grammar, “Clauses are sentences that are part of larger

gon 88 [he “minimal sentences” while the term sentence

sentences” That is lo say, clausos

is used for the larger or “maximal sentence” (Palmer: 34), In other words, clause is the combination of sentences ‘The definition is quite general; however, it contributes much to the rosoarch and study of natural language

Quirk et al, (1973) claim that a clause is a mut that can be analyzed into the elements

$, V, 0, © and A (Subject, Verb, Object, Complement and Adverb respectively) This

explanation is quite simpts and formal, Analyzad the English clause in structural terms, thoy arrived at three main clauses: finite clause (a clause whose V element is a finite verb phrase), non-ñnite clause (a clause whose V element is a non-finite clause}, and verbless clause (a clause containing no ¥ clement)

That the conception is defined by Halliday is clause as a functional unit with a triple construction of meaning In his explanation, a clause fimctions simultansously (a) as the

fh function; and (6) as the bearer of message, which is organized in the form of theme plus exposition In the

representation of the phcnomena of expericnee; (b) as the sxpression of spz

view of speech fimetion, Taltiday’s “clanse” has a two-part structure consisting of modal clement and propositional element

Like a verb, a clanse designates a process — that is, a relation tracked through timeb Taylor (2002) gives the definition of clause as follows; a clanse my be defincd as a linguistic struclurs that designates this kind of conccpimally autonomous process, ctcalod Ibraugh th: elaboration of the participants in a temporal relation, Taylor (2002: 413) he focuses more on clause structure — its participants, the semantic role of the participants, and their syntactic expression, in relation to the kinds of situations that elauses designate

In whichever approach, traditional, functional or cognitive, a clause is combined components of # sontane, ic, il consists of five clemenls: 8 ¥, O, Cand A And it has Ibrea main types: adverbial clauses, adjective clauses and noun clauses Adverbial clauses are to modify the verb of the main clause or sometimes to become modifier of the entire sentence Adjective clauses arc lo modify a preceding noun or a pronoun, And noun clauses fimetions as Subject, Subjective complement, Object of a verb, Objcet of a preposition and Appositive In this study, we are going to deal with noun clauses but under a more fimctional label “nominal clauses” More about nominal elanses will be montioned in the next scction,

1.3 Nominal clauses

1.3.1 Traditional grammar

The nominal clause or noun clause is a clause that funchons as a noun or a noun phrase, It may occur as a subject, object complement, in apposition or as a prepositional complement as in the view of traditional grammar Therefore, noun clanses perform eight

main grammatical finetions within senlenes

in the English language, as followad: subjccl,

subject complement, direct object, object complement, indirect object, prepositional

complement, adjective phrase complement, and appositive

Noun clausos are defined as subordinate or deperdonl, dlauses formed by a subordinating conjunction followed by a clause, Noun clauses perform nomanal functions, ot functions prototypically performed by noun phrases We just have a look at those finctions

cxainple, the following italicized noun clauses function as subjects:

Whoever ate my lunch isin big rouble How you will finish all your homework on time is beyond me,

The truth was shat te moving company lost all your farniture

My question is whether you will sue the company for losses

Noun Clauses as Direct Object

The third grammatical function thal noun clauses can perform is the direel objecl

Direct objects are defined as words, phrases, and clauses that follow and receive the action of

a transitive verb Kor example, the following italicized noun clauses function as direct objects:

The counsclor has buen wondering if she chose the right career

Do you know when the train should arrive?

Our dog eats whatever we put in his bow!

Noun Clauses av Object Complements

The fiwth grammatical function that noun clauses can perform is the object

complement Object complements are defined as words, phrases, and clauses that directly

follow and describe the direet object For example, the following ilalicized noun chauscs function as object complements:

Iler grandfather considers his biggest mistake that he did not finish college

The committee has announced the winner whoever wrote the essay on nour clauses Lhave offen declared the problem that most students do not understand granunar

Noun Clauses as indirect Objects

The fifth grammatical function that noun clauses can perform is the indirect object

Indirect objects are defined as words, phrases, and clauses that follow a ditransitive verb and

indicate Lo or for whom or what is action of the verb is performed For cxample, the following

italicized noun clauses function as indircel objcets:

The judge will give what you said some deliberation during her decision

The group has given that most Americans do not support their cause little consideration

Noun Clauses as Prepositional Complements

The sixth grarmnalical fimetion thal noun clauses can perform is the prepositional

complement Prepositional complements are defined as words, phrases, and clauses that

directly follow a preposition to complete the meaning of the prepositional phrase Mor cxample, the following ifalicived noun clauses fimelion as prepositional complements:

Same people belicve in whatever organised religion tells We have been

waiting for whoever will pick us up from the party

My husband iid not think aboul what F wanted some nice fewelry for my

birthday

Noun Clanses as Adjective Phrase Complements

The seventh grammatical fimetion thal noun clauses can perform is the adjective phrase complement Adjective phrase complements are defined as phrases and clauses that complete the meaning of an adjective phrase For example, the following italicized noun clauses funetion as adjecti

phrase cornplements:

Tam pleased that you are studying noun clauses

‘The toddler was surprised thar throwing a tantrian did not get him his way

My brother is angry that someone dented his new car

Noun Clauses as Appositives

The eighth grammatical function that noun clauses can perform is the appositive

Appositives are defined as words, phrases, and clauscs that describe or cxplain another now

phrase For example, the following italicized noun clauses fimction as appositives

That man, whoever is he, tried to steal some library books

The problem that the storm knocked out power, is affecting the entire town

Your question, whether vou should wear the blue dress or pink one, is frivolous

in the situation

We have jusl viewed the fiunetions of nominal clauscs in the (raditional view In Quirk

et al.’s view, there are five majors of nominal clauses besides the functions They are:

The tat — clause

The dependent intcrrogative clause

‘The nominal relative clause

The to — infinitive clause

1.3.2 Functional grammar

Nominal clauses Gu traditional grammar known as nour clauses) are subordinatz clauses which usually play an integral role in relation to the superordinate clause They are called nominal clanses because they spscify a concrete or abstract entity and typically conld he

inlerrogated by the word What? (sometimes also Who?) or roplaced in the sontenoz siruoturg

by the pronoun it or that (or he/she), In this way they are seen as performing a ‘nominal’ function As mentioned above (in the part of nominal phrase), the label ‘nominal clause! is chosen in prefersnee to ‘noun elausc' as a term which is more generalized and which captures the fact that the nominal function is fulfilled both by a subordinate clause or a phrase, which may itself be a single word (a noun or pronoun) (Morley, 2000: 63)

In Halliday’s systcmic-functional grammar (1985), we find an analysis of intraclausal

constituents in terms of groups and phrases (1985: 158) Groups are taken to be expansions of

words, that is, word complexes which have a certain logical structure (like head and modifier)

A phrase is the contraction of a clause, with no logical structure Thus, in a prepositional phrase the preposition is like a minor verb or predicator which has a nominal group as its complement To sum up, instead of using the lorm noun phrase as in traditional granumar), tha tert nominal group is uscd in fictional yramunar to caver all word groups thal can firmetion

as participants in processes, including all what can be called noun phrase, participle phrase or pronoun, and the term nominal group will be used in the next chapters

1.4, Qualifiers

What of the clement which follows the ‘Thing? Halliday calls this element as Qualifier

In other words, Quutifiers are those clomonts which are placed afler the hondword and ars, therefore, also determined by position Which follows the Thing is either a phrase or a clause?

In certain, fairly limited circumstances in Linglish this position and role may be filled by an

of the Baskervilles, the stain ơn the wallpaper, the man with the yellow socks, ot by a telative subordinate clause, cg the car that I drove yesterday, the map which Pat lost, the hoy wha delivers the papers The analysis of qualifiers expressed by these larger units is described later, ‘The systemic term ‘qualifier is thus equivalent to the term ‘post-headword modifier’, or postmodifier for short, as found in other grammars

Like epithets, qualifiers inform a charaetensstic of the referred in the form of post- positioned embedded elements, whose main types are relative clauses, appositive clauses or

prepositional phrases All of these clauscs will be explored more detail in next parts.

CHAPTER 2: QUALIFIERS IN THE ENGLISH NOMINAL GROUP

According to different schools of grammars, we have some terms which are used to

describe the part following [he Head Generally, we can come fa amive at the term

“postnodification” in the traditional grammar, and the term “qualifiers” in the functional

grammar In this chapter, | will use the later term ‘qualifiers’ to show this part ‘the types of quatifiers in English will be analyzed in the tight of functional grammar, including words as

qualifiers, phrases as qualifiers, and clauses as qualifiers But before going into the detail, I

will present the structure of nominal groups in the light of functional grammar, and then what English qualifiers are

2.1 Structure of nominal groups (functional grammar}

Different scholars have different definitions about modification In early grammars, the tan ‘modifier’ referred anty ta words, phrases or clauses which modify verbs, adjectives or

other adverbials, but not to those whicli modify nouns But in some of the recent theories of grammars, systemic functional grammar is an example, modifier is defined “any word which modifies, qualifies, describes or identifies the head word and which comes before the headword, while a qualifier ix any word which modifies, qualifies, describes or identifies the headword and which comes after the headword”, Generally, in the point of functional grammar, nominal phrase slruclure is secounted for in torms of the basic elements

On describing the oxpericntial structure of nommal group, Halliday (1989) ti

following functions and their realizations.