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Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective

A Corpus-Based Study

  • Book
  • © 2015

Overview

Authors:
  1. Qingshun He

    1. Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

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    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Bingjun Yang

    1. School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • The first attempt to study absolute clauses in the theoretical framework of SFL
  • The results, based on corpus data, are self-contained and highly persuasive
  • Includes a detailed quantitative analysis, helping readers to better understand absolute clauses
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series (TMAKHLFLS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xx
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  2. Introduction

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 1-6

  3. Absolute Clauses in the Literature

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 7-29

  4. Approaching Absolute Clauses from the SFL Perspective

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 31-52

  5. Research Design

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 53-64

  6. Relationships Realized by Absolute Clauses

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 65-106

  7. Absolute Clauses Distributed in Three Corpora

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 107-142

  8. Discussions

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 143-157

  9. Conclusion

    • Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang
    Pages 159-164

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 165-178
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Keywords

About this book

​This book focuses on the structural diversity, semantic variability, case choice, stylistic characteristics and diachronic distribution of English absolute clauses. The syntactic roles assumed by absolute clauses in the traditional sense can be categorized into clausal adjuncts, attendant circumstances and appositives. These three types of function correspond to the three hypotactic expansions in the relation system of clause complexes in Systemic Functional Linguistics, i.e., elaboration, extension and enhancement. This research, therefore, redefines absolute clauses in the framework of SFL and proposes four syntactic types of absolute clauses: absolute paratactic clauses (elaboration), absolute hypotactic clauses (extension and enhancement), absolute projected clauses (fact and act) and absolute embedded clauses (subject). Based on the Brown family corpora, BNC and COHA, this research finds that different function types of absolute clauses differ in terms of their stylistic and diachronic distributions, and both nominative and accusative cases are acceptable.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Faculty of English Language and Culture, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China

    Qingshun He

  • School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China

    Bingjun Yang

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective

  • Book Subtitle: A Corpus-Based Study

  • Authors: Qingshun He, Bingjun Yang

  • Series Title: The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46367-3

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-662-46366-6Published: 23 March 2015

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-662-51635-5Published: 09 October 2016

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-662-46367-3Published: 26 February 2015

  • Series ISSN: 2198-9869

  • Series E-ISSN: 2198-9877

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XX, 178

  • Number of Illustrations: 22 b/w illustrations, 36 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Grammar, Language and Literature, Theoretical Linguistics

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