A Study Of Adverbial Conjunctions In The University English Teaching Competitive Classes From The Perspective Of Interactional Linguistics

Adverbial conjunctions refer to the words which have both the proposition-modifying function as well as linking function.In recent years,many scholars have been carrying out detailed explanations and research about the definition of adverbial conjunctions and functions as well as cohesive devices in the textual structures.However,the study of the discourse-coherent function in the talk-in-interaction is barely noticed.This thesis,from the perspective of interactional linguistics and based on the systemic-functional linguistic theories,intends to regard adverbial conjunctions as an entry point to figure out the relationship among their semantic feature,discourse functions and syntactic positions based on the self-built university English teaching competitive classroom-discourse corpus,and seek the underlying general rule in the turn-taking organization.The thesis finds out that the semantic orientation is the fundamental feature of adverbial conjunctions.In the turn-taking construction,the semantic orientation contributes to the discourse multiple functions: 1)When adverbial conjunctions are located at the beginning of turn head,they convey turn-opening or turn-preempting function.2)When adverbial conjunctions are located at the middle and end of turn head,they convey turn-keeping function.3)When adverbial conjunctions are located at the turn body,they convey a turn-persisting function.4)When adverbial conjunctions are located at the beginning and middle of turn end,they convey turn-transforming function.5)When adverbial conjunctions are located at the final position of turn end,they convey turn-ending function.6)When adverbial conjunctions serve as one-word turns,they convey the propositional meanings.Besides,in the spoken discourse,the semantic meanings of adverbial conjunctions include: 1)propositional meanings;2)content-item meanings;3)context-based meanings.The latter two meanings are composed of the pragmatic meanings of adverbial conjunctions.The semantic bleaching satisfies the grammaticalization cline.However,most of the semantic meanings occurring in the corpus concentrate on the pragmatic level and it does not seem to show the sign for further grammaticalization.These illustrate that the grammaticalization procedure of adverbial conjunctions is interrupted.The viewpoint shows that the pragmaticalization of adverbial conjunctions is existent and serves as one phase of grammaticalization.The notion can give the reference significance for future pragmaticalization study.Finally,adverbial conjunctions are one kind of typical word whose semantic scope is beyond clauses.Adverbial conjunctions can act as the discourse-coherent function andexpress the speaker's attitude and evaluation.Under the turn-taking construction,adverbial conjunctions satisfy the verb-centered model,which means: 1)When adverbial conjunctions are placed before verbs,their semantic orientations tend to point to the previous utterances;while adverbial conjunctions are placed after verbs,the semantic orientations direct to the latter information.2)As for their syntactic positions,adverbial conjunctions cannot be placed next to verbs directly for modifying verbs.The syntactic positions come closer to the outer positions of clauses,the subjectivity and propositional meanings become stronger so that such adverbial conjunctions do not need to alter their syntactic positions to accomplish certain discourse functions.