On The Fractal Resonance Of Semantic Wave

Semantic wave is a hot topic in the dialogic cooperation between Systemic Functional Linguistics(SFL)and Legitimate Code Theory(LCT),which is concerned with the information flow in terms of textual meaning in SFL,highlighting its periodic property,whereas the semantics in LCT is concerned with semantic dependence and condensation in terms of specific context of situation and holds that semantic wave is one kind of fluctuating semantic profile which depends on the simultaneous changes of semantic gravity and semantic density,highlighting that semantic wave is analysed in relation to a specific context.Therefore,this enables much complementarity between SFL and LCT.In the process of dialogic cooperation,SFL puts forward the notion of Mass and Presence to re-elaborate semantic gravity and semantic density so as to accommodate them to its metafunction for the sake of enabling a complete integration between LCT and SFL in semantic wave.In addition,temporality and spatiality are also regarded as significant strategies in the forming of semantic wave,which realize its continuity,sequential order and extension in the movement of semantic wave.Based on a close analysis of semantics,temporality and spatiality,it is found that present studies and re-elaborations of semantic wave in LCT and SFL are inadequate in the following aspects: firstly,semantics in LCT needs an objective but explicit criterion and specific identifying units in locating semantic wave.Its rise and fall of wave movement seems much too subjective in relation to a specific context and the choice of semantic gravity and semantic density calls for an objective priority.Secondly,re-elaboration of semantic wave in SFL stops at the semantic stratum and fails to construct a more fundamental and objective lexicogrammar since lexicogrammar is the powerhouse for meaning making,which will be lost without its lexicogrammar that is inherently oriented.Finally,it is held that the fractal property of semantic wave has not been fully construed theoretically in terms of semantics,temporal shift or spatial mechanism in relevant studies.Therefore,by means of corpus-based methods,this thesis is intended to carry out a systematic research on semantic wave in popular science text from an integrative approach of SFL and LCT with a sole concern to answer the following three questions:(1)What is the common foundation for semantic wave construction between SFL and LCT?(2)How can different types of semantic wave be identified in an explicit and objective way?(3)What is the specific fractal resonance like among different types of semantic wave in English popular science text?Within the integrative frame of SFL and LCT,based on the mutually predicting nature between context and text,this study starts from the text approach and a tri-dimensional fractal hierarchy model of semantic wave and a corresponding fractal lexicogrammar is constructed with a 5x5 identifying matrix so as to explicitly identify different types of semantic wave.In terms of this model,the fractal resonance of semantic wave requires a specific textual analysis according to a specific text for the sake of clarifying its fractal properties such as its fractal levels,its shifting directions,its semantic range,its peak and trough,and its resonating effect.For the concern of analyzing the fractal resonance of semantic wave in a specific way,this study takes English popular science text as the corpus and employs a corpus-based quantitative and qualitative analysis.The corpus consists of 144 college-level English popular science texts,among which 78 texts are selected according to the general principle that text fields are expanded as widely as possible without style limits or theme repetitions and then,different types of semantic wavelength are annotated,concordanced in the UAM Corpus software for a quantitative and qualitative analysis.The research findings of this study are as follows:Firstly,in English popular science text occurs a decreasing trend from semantic wave of ideational type to semantic wave of temporal type to semantic wave of spatial type,which depends upon the popularizing fields of popular scientific knowledge and various fractal approaches of different semantic wave.Furthermore,the fractal property of semantic wave manifests an attributive difference of different types of semantic wave in English popular science text.That is,semantic wave of ideational type bears the feature of fluctuation and continuity,whereas that of temporal and spatial type solely presents the property of continuity.Once there occur fluctuations in the type of temporal and spatial type of semantic wave,they will be classified as that of ideational type which accords with their distributive difference and semantic range.Secondly,Different types of semantic wave may emerge at different fractal levels,manifesting different shifting directions and showing different semantic range.In this study,semantic wave of ideational type emerges a decreasing trend from clause complex,clause,group,paragraph to the entire text,most frequently in clause complex and least frequently in word level while that of temporal type and spatial type solely occurs above the clause complex level.As far as the shifting direction of semantic wave is concerned,semantic wave of ideational type manifests four kinds of shifting direction,namely,(1)rise?fall?rise,(2)fall,(3)rise,(4)fall?rise?fall.As far as the semantic range of semantic wave is concerned,semantic waves of temporal and spatial type do not manifest the same fluctuating property as that of ideational type does,which cause their peaks and troughs not to be construed because semantic wave of temporal type solely manifests differences in semantic gravity while that of spatial type only manifests differences in semantic density.Thus,there simply occurs no difference in their semantic range but a distributing difference in fractal levels where that of temporal type emerges higher than that of spatial type.However,compared with semantic wave of temporal and spatial type,there occurs a big difference in that of ideational type.In addition to the more diversities in fractal levels,the semantic range of ideational type of semantic wave manifests big differences between its peak and trough where it emerges more than 21 varieties of different semantic range.In the level of word group its semantic range limits within such 3 varieties as word to word-group,word-group to word-group,word-group to clause.In the clausal level,the semantic range of ideational type of semantic wave presents such 4 varieties as word to word-group,word-group to clause,word to clause,word-group to word-group.In the level of clause complex,the semantic range of ideational semantic wave manifests such 8 varieties as word-group,word-clause,group-clause,clause-clause complex,group-clause complex,group-group,clause-clause and clause complex-clause complex.In the level of paragraph,the semantic range of ideational type of semantic wave presents such 2 varieties as clause-clause complex and clause complex-clause complex.In the level of entire text,the semantic range of ideational type of semantic wave presents only 1 variety,that is,clause complex-paragraph.The varieties of semantic range of semantic wave present an increasing trend as the fractal level goes upward from word-clause complex and a downward trend above clause complex,which demonstrates that the semantic range of semantic wave is limited by its fractal wavelength and there is no possible exception in the semantic range that could surpass its occurring fractal levels.Moreover,different kinds of semantic range manifest a small extent in word-group level characterised by the kind of word-group and an increasing extent in clause complex level characterised by the kind of clauseclause complex and the kind of group-clause.On the premise of ignoring the shifting direction of semantic wave,the construction of peak manifests a decreasing trend from participant,figure,sequence,circumstance to process while that of trough shows an increasing trend from process,circumstance,figure,participant to sequence.In a word,semantic range of semantic wave realizes different extent of taxonomic relations,nuclear relations and sequential relations in field.Thirdly,As far as the resonance of different types of semantic wave are concerned,there emerge 3 kinds of resonating situations above the level of clause complex,namely,the horizontal resonance,hierarchical resonance and simultaneous resonance with information wave.To be more specific,the horizontal resonance includes further 3 subtypes such as resonance between ideational type and temporal type,resonance between ideational type and spatial type,and that between temporal type and spatial type.By contrast,the hierarchical resonance emerges at different levels of wavelength solely within the semantic wave of ideational type,that is,the wavelength in wavelength of semantic wave,but the semantic waves of temporal and spatial type do not exhibit any hierarchical resonance since they do not bear any fluctuations themselves.In addition,with respect to the resonance with information wave,the semantic wave of temporal type occurs at the level of clause complex and paragraph,and that of spatial type occurs at the level of clause and clause complex,whereas the semantic wave of ideational type emerges diversely from word-group level to entire text.It is concluded that the three types of semantic wave are resonating simultaneously with information wave in the aspects of shared elements,overlap of peak and trough,and theme-rheme structure.Lastly,the fractal resonance of semantic wave lies in the use of different lexicogrammatical resources.Viewed from the carriers of semantic wave,various kinds of semantic wave depend on the ideational meaning of diverse functional status.From the perspective of shifting directions,various kinds of semantic wave at least involve semantic flatline and semantic fluctuations.From the perspective of fractal grammar,various kinds of semantic wave depend on different fractal approaches,such as rankshift,transcategorization,grammatical selection,lexical selection,nonnuclear expansion and nuclear condensation.However,with respect to the resonance effect,the grammatical resources of semantic wave mainly involve uses of relational clause in transitivity system,objectified projections of facts in projection system,the transcategorization between logical meaning and experiential meaning,and grammatical metaphor.Finally,viewed from language resources,the resonance effect of semantic waves embodies the uses of power word,power grammar and power composition.The significance of this study is double-fold.Theoretically,a tri-dimensional fractal hierarchy model is built up to provide an objective but explicit criterion for analyzing and identifying semantic waves in the dialogic interaction between SFL and LCT,enabling SFL re-elaboration of semantic wave to be expanded into lexicogrammatical strata and strengthening the further integration of SFL and LCT on semantic wave.Practically,this study mainly explores the fractal resonance of different types of semantic wave in English popular science text and elaborates the legitimate popularizing process of scientific knowledge on the part of semantic waves which clarifies the essence of scientific popularization practices and provides a referential standard for a legitimate manifestation for constructing persuasiveness and instructiveness of popular science text in the process of knowledge building.