An Analysis And Application Of Theme Theory To Chinese Narrative Texts

As an internationally influential theory Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar has been widely applied to the study of text in recent years.As an important aspect, Halliday's theme-rheme theory and thematic analysis are highly valued.The theory of thematic progression and its patterns are the typical marked structure possissing the textual functions, and they are related to the genre.The study on relationship between thematic progression and the genre becomes more essential and has a practical meaning in the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign language.This dissertation tries to carry out a linguistic survey of Chinese narrative texts, which is based on the theories of Halliday's theme in order to search for significant features on theme selection and thematic progression in Chinese Narrative Texts by means of a quantitative method.Altogether fifty short narrative texts are chosen as data sources.The reseach is carried out in a satistics methof accompanied by observation.The result of the analysis is calculated in terms of percentage.From the reseach, it was found that the analysis and dscriptions of Chinese Narrative Texts in terms of Theme theory provide us with an effective means to understanding the genre structure.In Chinese narrative texts,theme selection tends to be unmarked theme and selection of thematic progression tends to be Constant Theme Pattern.Therefore, the selection of theme and thematic progression is non-arbitory, they are closedly related to the genre.