Page 368 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes of the underlying features and properties which tend to universal. The structural component shows
how these choices are realized. It is the surface grammar of underlying choices. Any one sentence has
not got just one structure, but many simultaneous structures all of which are superimposed on one
another, as it were. For example, the following sentence may be said to have a number of simultaneous
constituent structures :
Sheelu has sung a song
(i) Transitivity structure Actor (Sheelu) + Process, (has sung) + Goal
(a song).
(ii) Mood structure Subject (Sheelu) + Predicator (has sung)
+ Object (a song).
(iii) Structure in terms of constituent classes NP (Sheelu) + VP (has sung + NP (a song).
2
1
(iv) Information focus structure Information given (Sheelu sung) + New
Information (a song).
(v) Theme structure : Theme (Sheelu) + Theme (has sung a song).
In the above table, Sheelu is at once ‘actor’, ‘subject’, ‘NP’, ‘given’, and ‘theme’. Each of these properties
stand for a choice that the speaker had made in the construction of that sentence. The simple sentence
(or the clause) may be regarded in most languages as the domain of three principle areas of syntactic
choice—transitivity, mood, and theme. ‘Transitivity is a set of options relating to cognitive content
the linguistic representation of extralinguistic experience, whether of the phenomena of the external
world or of feelings, thoughts and perceptions. Mood represents the organization of participants in
speech situations, providing options in the form of speaker roles, the speaker may inform, question
or command, he may confirm, request, contradict or display any one of a wide range of postures
defined by the potentialities of linguistic interaction. Theme is concerned with the information structure
of the clause; with the status of the elements not as participants in extralinguistic processes but as
components of a message; with the relation of what is being said to what has gone before in discourse,
and its internal organization into an act of communication. (M.A.K. Halliday, ‘Transitivity and Theme
in English;’ Journal of Linguistics, 3, 1967). It is these clause options for which the terms ‘transitivity,
‘mood’, ‘theme’ are being used. Transitivity is the grammar of experience, ‘mood’, and ‘theme’. Hence
‘Transitivity is the grammar of experience, mood is the grammar of speech function and theme is the
grammar of dicourse’.
As mentioned by Dr. S.K. Verma (Introduction to ELT: Linguistics, OUP, 1974.), ‘There is a significant
difference between systemic grammar and Aspect-type transformational grammar with regard to the
notion of linear ordering. Participant roles are not linearly ordered in Halliday’s deep structure. The
ordering of elements of structure is effected by the systems belonging to the modal and thematic
components of grammars. In the aspects-type base component the constituents are ordered.’
We have already hinted at the scales of Rank and Realization. The scale of delicacy shows how
detailed the description is. It tries to measure the depth of syntactic sub-categorization. It seeks to
draw attention to primary similarities first before directing attention to secondary difference. For
example, the class ‘animate’ noun is more delicate than the general class ‘noun’, and the class
‘nonhuman’ noun is more delicate than the class ‘animate noun’, and yet they are alike, for they are
sub-classes of the major class ‘noun’. (For more details, see S.K. Verma, op cit).
28.4 Case Grammar

Charles Fillmore has suggested a modification to the theory of transformational grammar. His
argument is that deep structures show role relationships rather than syntactic relationships and that
nominal expressions are put into syntactic relationships by transformational rules. To Fillmore the
sentence in its basic structure consists of a verb and one or more noun phrases. Each of these noun
phrases is associated with the verb and one or more noun phrases. Each of these noun phrases is
associated with the verb in a particular case relationship. In the case grammar, the base component
has two constituents—a ‘propositional’ constituent and a modality constituent. The propositional

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