Dear XMCA'ers
I'm enjoying the slowly developing discussion of Carol Lee's latest paper.
Unfortunately (for me;-) I am in the middle of so much other stuff that I
can only be a passive observer. What energy sources do Mike and Andy have
that I don't, at a much less bountiful age??
I have forwarded this message from an SFL list that may be of interest -
especially those who are interested in SFL and discourse analysis. It is a
very comprehensive paper by Robin Fawcett on some of his new developments
on "Theme". Interestingly, it is not solely focused on English, but draws
on other language systems, including Tagalog and Japanese. Not having read
the entire paper, I shouldn't comment much, but it is interetsing to see a
complex discussion of forms of meanings from a grammatical perspective and
meaning itself, as related to the organisation of discourse.
Maybe one day....we can have that discussion on Halliday's realised and
actual potentials that add to our understandings of language within a CHAT
perspective.
Regards,
Phil Chappell
>REPOSTED::
>Dear all,
>
> Robin Fawcett has written a paper on theme, and wants to make it
>available.
>
> You can download it from:
>
> http://www.wagsoft.com/Systemics/Archive/Fawcett-ThemePaper.rtf
>
> The paper is now part of the Wagsoft "Systemic Paper Archive". You
> can visit the archive at:
>
> http://www.wagsoft.com/Systemics/Archive/
ABSTRACT
In the 1960s Halliday made a number of innovative proposals about the
concept of 'theme' which have been highly influential - both within
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and in linguistics in general (e.g.
in Quirk et al 1985). These proposals were modified in minor respects in
Halliday 1985 & 1994, but in recent years scholars - including many working
in SFL - have increasingly pointed out various problems. The present paper
describes an alternative SFL approach to 'theme' in English that is based
on the same principles, that is both comprehensive and pragmatic, and that
resolves these problems. My starting assumption is that 'thematic'
meanings are meanings between which a user of a language chooses, just as
we choose between meanings of 'transitivity', 'mood' and so on. While the
focus here is on the system networks for the various types of 'theme', I
adopt an explicitly 'trinocular' approach. That is, in deciding how the
system networks for the various types of'theme' should be, I draw on
evidence that is (1) 'from above' (the 'discourse purposes' that the
various 'thematic' constructions may serve); (2) 'at its own level' (the
relations of the various systems of choices in 'thematic' meanings to each
other and to other systems, especially those in 'transitivity'); and (3)
'from below' (the functional syntax that realizes the 'thematic'
choices). This fresh approach to the data from first principles leads to
the recognition of seven or eight distinct types of 'theme' (depending how
we count them), together with several minor variants. The systems for the
major types are summarized in one diagram (Figure 2). These include new
syntactic and semantic analyses of the structures known in formal grammars
as 'cleft', 'pseudo-cleft', 'extraposition' and 'left-dislocation', but I
present the case for replacing these labels by explicitly functional
ones. This new SFL description of 'theme' provides for five types (some
quite frequent, some very rare) that are not covered in either Halliday
1994 or Matthiessen 1995, and provides analyses for other types that are
different from - and simpler than - those of Halliday. In the presentation
of each type of 'theme' the 'trinocular' approach is expressed though the
fact that each has sub-sections on'form and meaning' and 'discourse
purposes'. The paper also contains supplementary sections on (a) why we
should not treat elements of the clause that always occur early - such as
and and because -- as types of 'theme'; (b) some apparently borderline
cases of 'theme' in 'reporting' clauses; and (c) the fact that ('unmarked')
Subject Themes are frequently covert - and that they need to be shown in
the analysis. Taking this position has major consequences when analyzing
texts, especially in the so-called 'pro-drop' languages such as Spanish. I
provide analyses of the functional syntax of the key examples throughout,
and I also analyze selected examples at the level of meaning. The picture
of the discourse purposes served by the various types of theme is less
complete, but I describe work in the COMMUNAL Project which models the
'higher' decision-making that affects what is required in the corresponding
semantic system networks for 'theme'. By the end of the paper it will be
clear that the various types of 'theme' recognized in this comprehensive
treatment cover a very wide range of meanings, and that they serve an even
wider range of purposes in discourse - so raising the question of how far
it is still helpful to think in terms of a single, 'unified' concept of
'theme'.
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