A Systemic Functional Typology Study Of Absolute Constructions In English And German

Absolute constructions are found in both the English and the German language,and have been among the subjects of grammatical studies of both languages.What is the nature of absolute constructions? What are the grammatical cases allowed in such constructions in English and in German? What are the similarities and differences between the absolute constructions in English and German?In traditional English grammar,these questions have been addressed.Both Jespersen and Huddleston & Pullum put emphasis on the semantic relation between the nominal group and the non-finite verb in the absolute construction,treating them as structures named Nexus Tertiary and Complex Catenative,respectively.In the study of the German language,Duden Grammar also address the issues of nominative absolute constructions and accusative absolute constructions in German.With reference to the studies made of absolute constructions in English from the systemic functional perspective,the present study is conducted under the theoretical framework of systemic functional typology.From the functional perspective,the structure of absolute constructions in both languages are described,and typological generalizations are made following the guidelines in systemic functional typology.Corpora of both English and German are used in the present study,but the study is qualitative.Most examples used in the present study are retrieved from the English corpus COCA and German corpus DWDS-Kernkorpus,and the grammaticality judgments of the introspected examples are made by native speakers of English and German.The first three chapters of this thesis are introductory,concerning the background of the present study,the review of previous literature,and a brief sketch of the theoretical framework.In the fourth and fifth chapters,analyses are made of the absolute constructions in both languages from the systemic functional perspective,and typological comparisons and generalizations are drawn.Through the present study,it is found that absolute constructions in both English and German have elliptical Interpersonal metafunction structures.Furthermore,it is found that the verb-last word order in the German absolute constructions,interacting with the Interpersonal and Textual metafunction structures,restrict the formation of SOV structured absolute constructions in German.Qualitative evidence for this restruction is found in the korpus DWDS-Kernkorpus.Within absolute constructions,the German syntax exhibits a more direct link of realization between the metafunctional relations and the syntactic relations as compared to English.For example,the case marking plays a more important role in identifying the Participant Roles in the Ideational metafunction.