| The relational clause,characterizing the properties of entities and their relationships by means of attribution and identification,is one of six clause types in systemic functional grammar that construe our experience of the world.In both systemie functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics,experience can be construed through meaning which is realized by lexicogrammar.Therefore,a functional and cognitive study of how entities are related through relational clauses is theoretically motivated in this dissertation.In addition,this dissertation attempts to account for the functional semantics and cognitive mechanism of relational clauses by means of qualitative and quantitative analyses of relational clauses in popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts.First,this dissertation introduces the background,objectives,methodology,data collection,and organization of this study.Then,it presents a literature review of the research on relational clauses in traditional approach,functional approach and cognitive approach,and an overview of the studies in popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts as linguistie data.Second,this dissertation aims to propose an analytical framework for a functional and cognitive study of relational clauses.For this purpose,it elaborates on some important concepts such as stratification,metafunction and appraisal in systemic functional linguistics,and image schema,idealized cognitive model,and construction grammar in cognitive linguistics,then makes a comparison of systemic functional linguistics with cognitive linguistics,and finally proposes a complementary functional-cognitive approach to the study of relational clauses.Third,based on the metafunctional theory in systemic functional linguistics,this dissertation is dedicated to an in-depth analysis of transitivity,modality and polarity in relational clauses,and a study of attitudinal lexis and extraposed participants so as to investigate the experiential and interpersonal meanings of relational clauses.After that,this dissertation moves on to the elaboration of the relation between cognition and bodily experience by introducing several image schemas involving relational clauses.Then,some idealized cognitive models are applied to the description of the relational structures of static scenes and stative events,and the theory of construction grammar is used to illustrate the syntactic formation of relational clauses.For the purpose of analyzing the functional representations and cognitive properties of relational clauses in a specific way,a corpus-based quantitative and qualitative research is employed to examine the lexicogrammatical distributions of relational clauses in the corpus consisting of two registers which are selected according to the general principle that the text types are descriptive and intended for the general audience,and different types of relational clauses in the corpus can be annotated and retrieved in the corpus software for a quantitative and qualitative analysis.The study of this dissertation brings out the following major findings:First,there are various types of relations among entities,which are different in the ways of expression.It is found that relational clauses can express three types of relations:intensive,circumstantial and possessive relations.Second,both popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts are concerned with the institutional tenor which tends to take the place of personal tenor in recognizing interpersonal function in written texts.Both popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts use a large number of relational clauses,manifesting the status of relational clauses as the "favourite clause type" and"favourite construction type" in science and touring texts,and the critical role of relational clauses in the construction of popular science knowledge and tourist-attraction information.Both popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts fall into the category of description in text type,but differ in register.The former tends to be objective and expository,while the latter is mainly subjective and emotional.Therefore,it can be concluded that text types and register variables affect the choices of relational clausal types,as well as the selections of the primary lexicogrammatical systems within relational clauses.Third,the supplement of the cognitive perspective to the study of relational clauses forms a complementary functional-cognitive approach to many a linguistic phenomenon.The systemic functional linguistie model concentrates on the social functions and contextual variables of relational clauses,construing our experience of the world,while the cognitive linguistic model lays emphasis on the cognitive aspects of relational clauses,reflecting our cognition of reality.Their different paths in construing reality can produce a complementary functional-cognitive framework,in which the relational clauses are explored as the starting point in the systemic functional linguistic model but as the terminal point in the cognitive linguistie model,indicating the functional and cognitive motivations for the study of relational clauses.Fourth,the empirical statistics shows that(ⅰ)the skewed distribution of relational clauses in tourist attraction introduction texts(TAITs)versus popular science texts(PSTs)suggests that relational clauses are more frequently used in TAITs than those in PSTs,(ⅱ)the intensive relational clause acquires an unmarked status by an absolute advantage over the other two types of relational clauses,(ⅲ)the present tense is the favourite tense within the total set of relational clauses in both TAITs and PSTs,insofar as it tends to provide a non-progressive and non-aspectual characterization of the subject,and a deictic and real-time account of present processes,(ⅳ)the positive polarity obtains a dominant status in both TAITs and PSTs,but the negative polarity is more frequently used and diversified in PSTs than that in TAITs which are reluctant to provide negative mformation for the potential tourists,(ⅴ)be and have are the top two high-frequency verbs,indicating that the relational processes are the processes of being and having,(ⅵ)the skewed distribution of RCs with entity and non-entity as reference point/trajector indicates that all the things and matters(entities)in the objective world and various abstract theories,concepts,assumptions and hypotheses(non-entities)in the subjective world can be the objects of scientific study,while the most largely skewed distribution of RCs with location as reference point/trajector indicates that most of RCs in TAITs are used to express the locative information about the tourist attractions,and(ⅶ)the largely skewed distribution of predicative relational constructions and predicate relational constructions indicates the dominant status of predicative relational constructions within total set of RCs in the corpus.Furthermore,the uneven distribution of two kinds of predicative nominal constructions indicates that the predicative nominal constructions in TAITs tend to express class inclusion so as to describe the tourist information of scenic spots,while those in PSTs deal mainly with referential identity in order to construct scientific knowledge by means of identification.This study is significant in many aspects.Firstly,by means of a systematic research on relational clauses,this study improves the sporadic situation of previous studies in relational clauses,and thus makes an enrichment of the lexicogramnatical study of relational clauses.Secondly,the functional-cognitive theoretical framework combining a corpus-based quantitative approach is significant in that it provides adequate explanation,and therefore can be applied to the study of other clause types.Thirdly,this investigation is conducive to a better understanding of the role of relational clauses in the construction of popular science knowledge and tourist-attraction knowledge.In a word,this linguistic research on relational clauses in the case of popular science texts and tourist attraction introduction texts is significant in approaching and investigating other linguistic phenomena,therefore providing referential significance for the research on other types of clause.Theoretically,the introduction of cognitive approach to language and the examination of complementarity between systemic functional linguistics and cognitive linguistics in the study of relational clauses will contribute to the development of comprehensive linguistic studies.Practically,this dissertation is devoted to the interrelation among lexicogrammar,function and cognition,and to the linguistic codes in different registers,which will provide both important implications for the learning and teaching of tourism English and popular science English,and linguistic significance for the research and development of popular-science-oriented tourism—a new form of tourism. |
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