A Study Of The Semantic Elements And Their Configurations Of The Two-sentential Transitional Sentence Groups

The transitional relations in language have long aroused people's attention and the relevant researches are accordingly fruitful. However, the inquiries have focused on the level of clause complexes, and most of which center around the semantic relations from the perspective of the formal mark, another angle, the transitional sentence groups have less been touched upon.This thesis approaches the two-sentential transitional sentence groups in a comprehensive way and their semantic elements and semantic configurations are highlighted. The thesis consists of five chapters:Chapter One introduces the subject, research background and methodology.Chapter Two investigates the semantic elements of a two-sentential transitional sentence group which is semantically composed of four components:pre-transitional element, post-transitional element; transitional complement and transitional possessive element. Among the four components, the pre-transitional element and the post-transitional element take the core position. To have a thorough analysis of the transitional complement, we examine the transitional complement when it functions in different situations like in the coordinating clauses, subjunctive clauses and transitional clauses. As for the transitional possessive element, this chapter focuses on its form and significance.Chapter Three is an inquiry into the types and features of the configurations of semantic elements of the two-sentential transitional sentence groups. Based on different semantic configurations, the transitional sentence groups are classified into basic types, extending types and blending types, in which, extending ones could be subdivided into 16 types. According to corpus-based analysis, the high-frequency type is characterized by closer distance between the key elements. In the configuration, different semantic elements are scattered in different stratifications. Meanwhile, the cohesion among the semantic elements carries a touch of subjectivity and tropism.Chapter Four researches into the factors influencing the configuration of the semantic elements, which includes cognitive factors, the function of the textual coherence, form-combinations and the combination of modality.The fifth chapter concludes the whole thesis and presents the deficiencies.