The Study Of English Tense Within The Framework Of SFG

Since ancient times, study on tense has been carried out along two lines: logical thinking and linguistic reflection, which are sometimes parallel and at other times intersectant. The present thesis aims to interpret tense phenomena from linguistic framework, especially from the perspective of the Systematic Functional Grammar.Comparing with other scholar's tense models, Halliday's account of tense has great potential to cope with tense not only in written English but also in spoken English. But it seems to be inadequate that he concentrates exclusively on tense in independent clauses and has never extended his theory to the description of tense between clauses. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is in the hope of offering a sound description not only about tense in the clause, but also tense between clauses within SFG.The whole thesis falls into six Chapters. Chapter 1 is an"introduction"which mainly talks about the background to the study, aim of the thesis, and some information about data collection as well.Chapter 2 is the"literature review". In this chapter, we give a survey of some previous studies proposed by some scholars such as Aristotle, Thrax, Reichenbach and Comrie. First, we introduce Aristotle and Thorax's models and point out that the most modern tense models, which do not distinguish tense and aspect, can find their theory rooted in Thrax's model; whereas the modern tense-aspect models, which treat tense and aspect as two independent categories, can find their tradition from Aristotle. Then we discuss Reichenbach and Comrie's model respectively. Logician Reichenbach first proposes the conception of"Reference time", and holds that tense is determined by the relations between"Speaker time, Reference time and Event time". But the shortcoming of his theory is that in his model, there exists only one Reference time between Speaker time and Event time, which limits his model only to interpret some simple tenses. However, his three-point system has significant contributions to the linguistic community. Based on Reichenbach's theory, Comrie distinguishes"absolute tense"and"relative tense"which are almost the same as the"primary tense"and"secondary tense"in Halliday's model. Although the systemic functional approach to tense is remarkably distinct from others mentioned above, it has, in some aspects, something in common with them. Therefore, only by putting it in a larger setting can we gain a better understanding of its significance.In Chapter 3, we make a full interpretation of Halliday's tense framework. Since Halliday locates tense at the rank of verbal group rather than at the lower rank of word, his account of tense has greater potential power to deal with more complex tense phenomena than others. According to his theory, English tense bases on two principles: three-division and recursive principle. Either primary tense or secondary tense has three tenses—past/present/future tenses which indicate the anterior, simultaneous and posterior relation to their reference times respectively. This is the"three-division principle". Furthermore, Secondary tense can be selected recursively, i.e. a primary tense can be followed up with one or more than one secondary tense, thus forming a tense chain. This is the recursive principle. But the recursion in tense is not endless; Halliday identifies three"stop rules"which limit the total number of finite tenses to 36. For the recursive principle, there exist more than one Reference time from Speaker time (Rt1) to Event time (Et), which gives rise to great potential for English tense to form a temporal chain ( Rt1-Rt2-Rtn-Et). Therefore, for Halliday, tense is a grammatical resource for construing the temporal relation between the Speaker time and Event time.Chapter 4 is mainly about the tense phenomena between clauses especially in finite hypotactic clause complexes (Fhcc). We first bring out four hypotheses concerning the tense phenomena in Fhcc outside SFG, which is intended to reveal their limitations in generalization and in applicability. Then we will point out that even though Halliday's tense framework has greater potential to interpret tense than others, it still has some limitations in dealing with the tense phenomena in Fhcc. In order to solve those problems, some new assumptions and modifications to Halliday's original tense model will be proposed from the perspective of SFG at the end of this chapter.For Halliday, English tenses fall into primary tense, secondary tense and primary-secondary tense according to their Reference time. Primary tense takes the Speaker time as Reference time (Deictic center). Secondary tense takes the time established by its previous tense as its Reference time. Because secondary tense functions as"modifying elements"in logical structure of verb group, it can not be used alone without its"Head"—primary tense. It must be combined with the primary tense to form a primary-secondary tense. Thus, the Reference time of primary-secondary is still Speaker time due to the combination with primary tense. Consequently, for Halliday, all of the clauses must take the Speaker time as their first Reference time no matter it is a primary tense or primary-secondary tense. This theory can only find its rightness in interpreting tense in the independent clause. However, if the clause complexes are taken into consideration, there will appear a new type of tense which can not find its interpretation in Halliday's tense system. In English, all the tense phenomena in the clause complexes fall into two types:"tense independence"and"tense dependence"without any exception. If both subordinate clause and dominant clause take the Speaker time as their first Reference time, they are in"tense independent"relation which can be interpreted by Halliday's tense framework. However, sometimes in Fhcc, the subordinate clause doesn't take the Speaker time as its reference time, but takes the time established by the tense in the main clause, which is called"tense dependent". In such a case, tense of subordinate clause doesn't take the Speaker time as its first Reference time, so it does not belong to any tense type distinguished by Halliday. By analyzing this type of tense , we find it has the same nature of secondary tense but takes on the finite form of primary tense; therefore, we term it as"secondary-finite tense". The definition of secondary-finite tense is that if tense in the dependent clause takes any time except the Speaker time in the temporal series of the dominant clause as its first Reference time, the tense is secondary-finite tense. At the end of this Chapter, we make some new assumptions and modifications to Halliday's original framework so as to explain this new kind of tense.In Chapter 5, we investigate and see whether or not those assumptions can deal with the tense in question effectively and try to make an elaborate study of the expressions of the relationships between dominant and dependent tense in Fhcc. Although Halliday leaves some limitations in the description of tense in Fhcc, the treatment of tense by Halliday is systematic and yields many helpful suggestions or valuable clues which will point the way to analyze any complex tense. Moreover, our purpose of observation is to interpret tense within the framework of SFG; therefore, in this Chapter, the two basic principles in Halliday's model, three-division and recursive principles, still will be used to describe the secondary-finite tense. Three points will be made clear: one is that the secondary-finite tense can be past, present or future in relation to the tense in the dominant clause within the same Fhcc, another is that the time referred to by the secondary-finite tense is a time selected in the dominant tense and the last is that the three-division principle and the secondary-finite tense can be used recursively.Chapter 6 is the conclusion about the whole thesis. In this Chapter, we point out that, despite of its defects, Halliday'tense framework has wider application and energy in dealing with tense phenomena than other tense models. The two basic principles in Halliday's model are the nature of all of the tenses. Matthiessen points out that Halliday's description of tense is one of his many significant contributions to a fresh understanding of how English grammar works.