| This thesis chooses the book 1587, A Year of No Significance as a case to analyze the textual functions of one kind of discourse markers---time markers from the perspective of Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Grammar. Three research questions are proposed. (1) What time markers are used and how are they classified in the historical discourse? (2) What are the possible textual functions that time markers realize in the data? (3) What is the relationship between the time markers and their textual functions? Through both quantitative and qualitative analysis, it has found, (1) there are mainly seven categories of time markers in historical discourse. They are immediate, simultaneous, specific, teminal, following, preceding and conclusive time markers. (2) The textual functions of time markers are mainly realized in two aspects:thematic structure and cohesion. In thematic structure, the functions of topic-changing, topic-closing, concluding, framing, evidence-showing, topic-maintaining and topic-initiating are found. In the aspect of cohesion, the functions of enhancing and context-cohering are executed. (3) The relationship between time markers and their textual functions can be quite flexible. It is found that the same time markers can realize different textual functions in different structures while different types of time markers can realize the same textual functions. This interesting relationship reflects functional diversity and overlapping of time markers. It implies that the proper use of time markers will help to achieve a coherent text in historical discourse. |
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