A Comparative Study Of Transitivity Systems And Their Realizations Across Languages

Along with the introduction and implementation of the Belt and Road(B&R henceforth)Initiative and the Chinese Culture Going Global Strategy,the issue of communication across languages and cultures has attracted increasing attention from researchers.In finding solutions to effective communication across languages and cultures,ontological and cross-cultural study of languages should be highlighted and taken as one of the priorities,in addition to cultivating interdisciplinary talents for foreign languages,so that mutual understanding and heart-to-heart communication between peoples along the B&R,and telling Chinese stories in an acceptable way can be achieved.As the major participants of the B&R Initiative,the Han people,the Indian people,the Arabic people,and the Greek people all have a long history,a splendid culture and far-reaching influences,and thus a well-grounded study of their languages and cultures and an adequate proposition on the solutions to effective communication across languages and cultures will help greatly in building the B&R and in promoting the Chinese culture to go global.Therefore,this study chooses these four peoples and their languages,specifically the transitivity systems of their languages,as the object of comparison and contrast,in the hope of promoting the understanding of the four languages and the four peoples,and making mutual communication easy and smooth.Looking back on the history of language study,we may find that many researchers touched upon transitivity,the important but quite complex phenomenon.To make a summary of their studies,we can see that transitivity is treated from two different planes,the plane of form and the plane of meaning,and thus two approaches to transitivity are developed,that is morpho-syntactical approach and semantic approach.It is clear from the previous literature that Halliday,the founder of Systemic Functional Linguistics,is the first one who discusses semantic approach to transitivity in a comparatively systematic way.To Halliday,transitivity comes under the experiential metafunction of language and it is a resource for construing experience of the world around us and inside us,through processes,the participants therein,and the circumstantial elements associated with them.Halliday and Fawcett successively developed their transitivity systems,based mainly on English semantic structure.However,the structures of human languages are various and complex,one universal transitivity system cannot embody and reflect the characteristics of individual language,like Chinese and French.Therefore,a few scholars such as Caffarel,Teruya and He have constructed French transitivity system,Japanese transitivity system and Chinese transitivity system respectively.Moreover,some scholars such as Lavid,Matthiessen and He have explored comparative,contrastive or typological study of transitivity systems of different languages.However,these kinds of study are short in number of languages and coverage of texts,and didn’t explain how the differences come,from the perspective of culture and thinking.After a review of the previous studies and a reflection on their strengths and shortcomings,this study,based on Halliday’s transitivity theory and He’s approach to construction of transitivity system,explores the universality and the peculiarity of the four transitivity systems,namely Chinese,Hindi,Arabic and Greek one,and their realizations,by comparative and contrastive study.The reasons for the peculiarity are discussed from the perspective of ethnic cognition,thinking and ethnic culture.It is hoped that this study can help people understand the four languages,and the ethnic cognition,thinking and ethnic culture behind each language.This study finds,especially from the transitivity processes,that the four transitivity systems and their realizations share five universal features,namely richness,hierarchicalness,flexibleness,metaphoricalness and abstractness.As for richness,it refers to that the four transitivity systems are rich in process types and in participant roles,and thus can construe the experience of physical and social world,mental world and relational world.As for hierarchicalness,it refers to that all the different processes of the four languages can be grouped into superordinate level type,basic level type and subordinate level type,and in analyzing texts with transitivity,people can choose superordinate level processes or basic level processes or even subordinate level processes.As for flexibleness,it refers to that process identification becomes difficult,under the influence of context,background knowledge,life experience,etc.That is to say,the process type is quite fuzzy,and the process of a clause may change from one type to another.As for metaphoricalness,it refers to the popularity of incongruent or metaphorical model of expression.In other words,metaphorical forms are frequently employed together with congruent form.When the congruent form is reworded into metaphorical form,the process itself,and the participant roles and the circumstantial elements may change accordingly.As for abstractness,it refers to that there exists a relationship of abstractness and concreteness among the processes of different levels.This study finds,especially from the semantic configuration of the basic level processes,that although the semantic configuration of all the four languages consists of the process itself,the participant roles in the process and the circumstantial elements associated with the process,the order of these semantic elements,their ellipsis and salience,and their integration vary greatly.For Chinese,its semantic configuration has the following features:a)the participant roles appear in the front of a clause while the process doesn’t appear at the beginning;the positional relations of the process and the participant roles are moderate in number and both have certain freedom in position;b)the circumstantial elements are conventionally placed in the front of a clause and they often appear before the first participant role or the process,or after the process but before the last participant role;c)the ellipsis of the participant roles occurs at a large proportion;d)the types of process and participant role integration are in moderate number,and the integration level is moderate.For Hindi,its semantic configuration has the following features:a)the process appears,in principle.at the back of a clause and its place is quite fixed;the positional relations of the process and the participant roles are the fewest among the four languages;b)circumstantial element are conventionally placed in the front of a clause and they often appear before the first participant roles or between the first and the second participant role,or before the process;c)the ellipsis of participant role occurs at a moderate proportion;d)the types of process and participant role integration are the fewest,and the integration level is the lowest.For Arabic,its semantic configuration has the following features:a)both process and the participant roles can appear at the beginning of a clause,but in most case,the process comes first;the positional relations of the process and the participant roles are the most among the four languages;b)circumstantial elements are scattered across the whole clause,from the front to the back,and therefore have much freedom in position;c)the ellipsis of the participant roles hardly occurs in major clause;d)the types of process and participant role integration are the most,and the integration level is the highest.For Greek,its semantic configuration has the following features:a)both the process and the participant roles can appear at the beginning of a clause,but in most case,the process comes first;the positional relations of the process and the participant role are quite many,a little fewer than Arabic’s;b)circumstantial elements are scattered across the whole clause,from the front to the back,and therefore have much freedom in position;c)the ellipsis of the participant roles may occur but quite rarely;d)the types of process and participant role integration are quite many,and the integration level is comparatively high.The distinctive features of the four transitivity systems and their realizations result directly from the different cognition and thinking of the four peoples.However,the ultimate roots of these distinctive features lie in the different cultures,and the different geographical,natural and social environments.For Chinese,its distinctive features are rooted in the Chinese farming culture and Confucian-Taoist culture,and result directly from natural logical thinking,temporal thinking,intuitive thinking and holistic thinking of the Chinese people from the perspective of modes of thinking,and natural sequence of iconic cognition,background-to-figure cognition,quite strong regulation of prominence and comparatively great effort in decategorization from the perspective of cognition.For Hindi,its distinctive features are rooted in the Hindi multi-culture and religious culture,and result directly from argumentative logical thinking,temporal thinking with randomness,intuitive&enlightening thinking and holistic&analytic thinking of the Hindi people from the perspective of modes of thinking,and salience principle of iconic cognition,background-to-figure cognition,comparatively strong regulation of prominence and little effort in decategorization from the perspective of cognition.For Arabic,its distinctive features are rooted in the Arabic nomadic culture,alien culture and religious culture,and result directly from formative logical thinking,spatial thinking,rational thinking and analytic thinking of the Arabic people from the perspective of modes of thinking,and salience principle of iconic cognition,figure-to-background cognition,week regulation of prominence and quite great effort in decategorization from the perspective of cognition.For Greek,its distinctive features are rooted in the Greek commerce culture and science culture,and result directly from formative logical thinking,spatial thinking,rational thinking and analytic thinking of the Greek people from the perspective of modes of thinking,and salience principle of iconic cognition,figure-to-background cognition,week regulation of prominence and comparatively great effort in decategorization from the perspective of cognition.It is of great significance to explore the universality and peculiarity of transitivity systems and their realizations,and to discuss the reasons for the peculiarity from the perspective of cognition,thinking and culture.It is hoped that the study of the universality and peculiarity,and of the reasons for the peculiarity can not only help language teaching,but also promote communication and understanding for the four peoples.