A Systemic Functional Study Of The English Object Clause

The clause complex is the only grammatical unit recognized above the clause, and a sentence will also be defined as a clause complex. In the framework of the Systemic Functional Linguistics, there exist two models-the Sydney Grammar and the Cardiff Grammar. These two models take different views to the clause complex.This study analyzes the English object clause from the perspective of SFL. Some issues explored in this study are as follows:interdependency relation between clauses, logico-semantic relation, the phenomenon of embedding and form and meaning. Compared with the traditional approach, the transformational approach and the corpus-based approach, the SFL approach constructs a more complete system network for the English object clause.As for research method and data collection, this study obtains data by observation. Examples are from literature of English grammar and are analyzed and explained according to the context of situation. The research method of this study is the qualitative method.The Sydney Grammar represented by Halliday holds that two factors should be considered when we analyze the clause complex. The two factors are interdependency relation and logico-semantic relation. Furthermore, paratactic and hypotactic relations are two factors of interdependency relation. Expansion and projection are the main relations belonging to the logico-semantics. Projection contains locution projection and idea projection. The Cardiff Grammar, which is mainly represented by Fawcett and his colleagues, treats the hypotactic clause as a simple clause, because this is the recursion of embedding in the clause complex. Meanwhile, a tree diagram of the Cardiff Grammar can show the relation of the components of the clause clear to readers.The findings of this study indicate that the theories of clause complex in the Sydney Grammar and embedded clause in the Cardiff Grammar are applicable in analyzing the English object clause. Meanwhile, a system network for the English object clause is built up. This study also provides some new ways for analyzing the clause complex from the aspect of syntax and level of meaning.