Outline of a functional grammar of Chinese for teaching purposes

Lunguage Sciences, Volume 14, Number 4, pp. 435-458, 1992 0388~1192 $s.oo+.oo Printed in Great Britain 0 1992 Pergamon Press Ltd

Outline of A Functional Grammar of Chinese for Teaching Purposes

Edward McDonald

Peking University/University of Sydney

ABSTRACT

This article presents an outline timctional grammar of Chinese based on the framework presented in M. A. K. Halliday’s Inrroducrion ro Functional Grammar. The description is divided into five areas for teaching purposes (only the first three of which are treated here), covering basic clause structure, additional elements, clause marking, clause complexing and group and word structure. Particular adaptations for Chinese include: l recognition of only two layers of clause structure: Experience (transitivity) and Message (theme/information); l organisation of the message structure around two points: starting point or Topic (Theme) and centre of attention (New)-the. first of these may be “absolute” i.e. have only thematic function; a recognition of three main process types: action, state and relation, and three circumstance

types; a recognition of a complex verb+postverb structure to allow for the quasi-compound nature of many verbal groups in Chinese; a separation of clause systems into basic, and marked, to account for the optional presence in the clause of such g ranunatical features as aspect, phase etc.

This description is put forward as an initial functional reinterpretation of the grammar of Chinese, and also as a test-case for the application of systemic-functional theory to a language other than English.

INTRODUCTION

I would like to tell you about the development of a new teaching grammar of

Chinese which draws on systemic-functional theory for its theoretical framework. I’ll

give a brief outline of the form the description of Chinese takes, and discuss some of

the issues that came up in adapting the theory to a language other than English. Firstly

though I’d just like to tell you how it all came about.

In January 1991, the Professor of Chinese at Macquarie University, David Holme,

436 Language Sciences, Volume 14, Number 4 (1992)

asked me to write a teaching grammar of Chinese to be used in conjunction with an

introductory textbook called Colloquial Chinese by T’ung and Pollard of the School

of Oriental and African Studies, London University. This textbook treats the grammar

of Chinese in a way that is for the most part very clear and insightful, but because

of constraints of space, is written so concisely that it tends to put beginner students

off. My brief was therefore to “expand” the grammar notes of Colloquial Chinese

while keeping as far as possible to the original order of topics and retaining the same

terminology.

After only a few weeks’ work, I pretty quickly discovered that “expansion” wasn’t

the simple thing I’d imagined it to be, and that the inconsistencies and omissions

of the Colloquial Chinese treatment soon became very clear under my linguist’s

magnifying glass. My solution to this problem was to take over systemic theory as a

general theoretical framework to inform my explanations of Chinese grammar.

What I produced was a systemic description in disguise. In fact, reading this New

Teaching Grammar, you might be forgiven for wondering where systemics comes into

it at all! Since I had to be careful, as much as I could to clothe the systemic explanations

in the terminological dress of the original textbook, I introduced only a few obviously

systemic terms: e.g. Actor, Process, Goal; and modified a few others: e.g. “Theme-

Rheme” became Topic-Comment. Inevitably also I drew heavily on non-systemic

descriptions of Chinese, including Colloquial Chinese, Li and Thompson’s Mandarin

Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, Yuenren Chao’s Grammar of Spoken

Chinese, John Mamey’s A Handbook of Modem Chinese Grammar and some others,

as well as on my research and thinking of my own.

On finishing the Teaching Grammar, I was then asked to design a teaching schedule

for a second year grammar revision class which would cover the same material in a

more systematic order. Here again I found that there is no such thing as simple re-

arrangement, and that the best way to systematize this grammar was in fact to

systemic&e it. The result of this is a still incomplete Teaching Schedule, the chapters

of which are being successively written and posted off to Macquarie, and which

consists of an outline grammar of Chinese, on the model of An Introduction to

Functional Grammar, cross-referenced to topics in the Teaching Grammar. This

outline grammar, which I will go on to describe below, will serve as a basis for further

revisions of the Teaching Grammar, and hopefully at a later stage be publishable as

a functional grammar of Chinese.

This outline falls into five parts, according to the division I have made for teaching

purposes:

1. Basic Clause Structure

2. Adding to the Clause

3. Marking the Clause

4. Linking Clauses

Functional Grammar of Chinese 437

5. Group and Word Structure (Parts 4 and 5, a description of the clause complex and of group and word structure, take a fairly traditional form so I won’t discuss them here).

The theoretical framework used is basically that set out in Halliday’s An Zntro- duction to Functional Grammar, adapted to the description of Chinese, and with some simplifications for teaching purposes.

BASIC CLAUSE STRUCTURE

The first area of the grammar is “Basic Clause Structure”, divided into three main areas corresponding to ZFG’s “Clause as Message” (Message), ‘Clause as Represen- tation” (Experience) and “Clause as Exchange” (Exchange). However, I have only recognized distinct layers of clause structure for the first two of these. As Chinese for the most part does not mark mood by changes in internal clause structure, and certainly has nothing like the clear interplay of Subject and Finite found in English, I have found it more useful simply to classify the clause as a whole according to its Mood (Speech Function) and Modality (Intrusion of Speaker - the use of semantic terms here is deliberate). The basic clause options are set out below. The first thing to note is that they are not system networks, they are systemic options arranged taxonomically; the second thing is that they are entirely for your benefit, and won’t be found in any of the versions of the grammar. The terminology used has some differences from ZFG but the correspondences should be clear in most cases.

Systemic Options

(See Figure 1, p. 438.)

Message

I’ll discuss the message structure first, using a couple of examples that show it is possible to recognize a separate exchange (Mood) structure, and explain why I have chosen not to do so, but instead have treated everything within the message and experience structures.

The following example shows a clause that divides clearly into Topic (Theme) and Comment (Rheme):

(1) Topic Comment Keren lai le. guest come ASP “The guests have arrived.”

However, a problem arises in the analysis when we have two non-circumstantial


Systemic Options

<

Absolute topic

<

starting point Topic, comment

Non-absolute topic MESSAGE

<

Unmarked New

Centre of attention Given, New

Marked New

/r&I; <g;l Goal,‘Recipient

EXPERlENCE

Carrier. Process

statement

<

yes/no question

offer missing information

command BXCHANGB

< ‘Intrusion of

Speaker (modal verbs modal tags modal particles)

Figure 1.

Functionai Grammar of Chinese 439

nominal groups at the beginning of the clause, as in the following examples:

(2) Daxiang bizi hen chang.

elephant nose very long “Elephants, their trunks are long.”

(3) Ta jiaozi bu xihuan chi.

s/he dumpling not like eat “He doesn’t like eating dumplings. ”

If we analyse these according to ZFG (leaving aside the transitivity structure for the time being), we can recognize very roughly textual and interpersonal functions as follows:

(2a) Theme Rheme Subject

Daxiang bizi

elephant nose

Predicator hen chang.

very long

(3a) Theme Rheme Subject Complement Predicator Ta jiaozi bu xihuan chi.

s/he dumpling not like eat

However, these two examples have an important difference. In the first, the initial nominal group, duxiang “elephant”, has only textual and no interpersonal function; in the second, both nominal groups, ta, “s/he” and jiaozi “dumpling” have both textual and interpersonal functions.

If we ignore the interpersonal for now and substitute experiential functions, what do we get?

(2b) Theme Rheme Carrier

Daxiang bizi

elephant nose

Process: attrib . hen dung.

very long

(3b) Theme Rheme Actor Goal Ta jiaozi

s/he dumpling

Process bu xihuan chi.

not like eat


In the first example, dariang “elephant” is still solely thematic, but note that in

the second example the experiential functions map on exactly to the interpersonal

functions just posited. Thus there is nothing to prevent us from leaving out the inter-

personal functions altogether and allowing the textual and experiential, or to return

to the terminology of the present work, Message and Experience functions to do all

the work.

The analysis given below shows how this works for the message structure. Example

(2) is analysed as containing a Topic that could be called “absolute” i.e. it has no

other function but as starting point of the message (compare English examples using

“as for”, “in regard to”). The analysis of example (3) brings in another message

system, the information system of Given/New (here glossed as “centre of attention”).

By this analysis, every clause has two message “points”: the starting point (Topic);

and the main point or centre of attention (New). The Topic is by definition at the

beginning of the clause, the New typically towards or at the end of the clause.

However, the position of the New may be “shifted back” towards the beginning of

the clause, for contrast, or for other reasons to do with the scope of certain Adjuncts

like dou “(in) all (cases)” which can only modify elements that precede them. In this

case, example (3) has its starting point and its centre of attention immediately adjacent

to each other (it is not possible to go into the discourse motivations for this structure

here).

(2~) Topic

Given

Daxiang elephant

Carrier

bizi nose

(3~) Topic Comment

Giv- New

Actor Goal

Ta jiaozi s/he dumpling

Experience

Comment

New Process

hen chang .

very long

-en

Process

bu xihuan chi. not like eat

Moving on now to the Experience structure, you will note that I recognise three

main process types and three circumstance types. Looking firstly at Process types, I

draw a broad three-way distinction between Action, Relation, and State.

Action processes are distinguished from the other two types by being more sus-

ceptible to the different types of Experience marking (e.g. aspect suffixes, postverbs,


etc: see below), and by their participants being more flexible in position, i.e. with a

greater potential to be thematically marked. Action processes are made up of three

subtypes: material; mental; and verbal. You will note that I do not recognise different

participant functions for each subtype (introducing a Range function would be a pos-

sibility), since formally their clause structures are closer to each other than to either

Relation or State, and it is not stretching it too far to explain them as “different types

of action”. Some examples of Action clauses are given below.

(5) Actor Process:mat. Goal

Wo he Ch.

I drink tea

“I drink tea.”

(6) Actor Process:mat. Recipient Goal

Ta gei wo wu kuai qian.

s/he give I 5 yuan money

“She gave me 5 yuan.”

(7) Actor Process:ment. Goal

wo xiang banfa . I think means

“I’ll think of a way.”

(8) Actor Process:verb Recipient Goal

Ta wen ni Yi ge wenti.

s/he ask You one MEAS question

“He’s asking you a question.”

Relation processes cover largely the same range as ZFG’s relational processes. They

are divided into: Identifying, with the subtypes “equating” and “attributing”, corres-

ponding to the different functions of shi “be”; and Locating, again with two subtypes,

“existing” (realised by you “exist, have”) and “locating” proper (realised by zui

“be located at”). Examples of each type are given below.

@a) Identified Process:equ.

Nei ge ren shi

that MEAS person be

“That one is Qian.”

Identifier

la0 Qian.

old Qian

(8b) Lao Qiun shi

old Qian be

“Qian is that one.”

nei ge ren .

that MEAS person


(9) Carrier Process:attr.

Ta shi

s/he be

“He’s my classmate.”

Attribute

wode tongxue.

my fellow-student

(10) Existent Process:loc. Location

Huochezhan zai beibian ‘r.

train-station locate north-side

“The train station is (located) to the north.”

(1 la) Location Process:exist. Existent

Beijing You bu shao a’alou.

Beijing exist not few tall-building

“In Beijing there a quite a lot of tall buildings. ”

(lib) Ta You wode dizhi.

s/he exist/possess my address

“She has my address.”

The final type, State processes, correspond to the “adjectives” (xingrongci) of

traditional Chinese grammar. The term “state” is not altogether a happy one; formally,

these processes share some features with the more delicate “reactive” or “emotive”

subtype of mental processes, e.g. xihuan “to like” which also describe states. They

could be more accurately termed “ascriptive” processes (cf. Long Bijin 1981): that

is, they ascribe an attribute or a property to their (single) Participant which I have

termed “Carrier”. See the examples below.

( 12a) Carrier Process:stat.

Tianqi hen leng .

weather very cold

“The weather’s (very) cold.”

(12b) Zhe ge ren hen guai.

this MEAS person very strange

“This person’s (very) strange. ”

In general I see this three-way division as valid for Chinese, but it is more than

likely that further research, as well as research already undertaken using systemic and

other functional frameworks, will redistribute the exact membership of each Process

type.

ADDING TO THE CLAUSE

I give the circumstantial functions of the experience structure separate treatment in the second “area” of the grammar: Adding to the Clause. I have done this both because they are less “central” to the experience structure (i.e. owing them does not affect the completeness of the clause as a representation of experience), and because it seemed to me that at the least delicate level their use was more complex in Chinese than in English. I have recognised therefore, three distinct circumstantial functions in Chinese: Circumstance, Adjunct and Complement. (Note that these last two terms, which in IFG refer to interpersonal functions, are “free” because I am not recognising a separate exchange (Mood) structure, and because they also happen to correspond fairly closely to some versions of traditional Chinese grammar.)

Firstly, Circumstances. Circumstances “place” the Process and Participants in time or space or in some other way. They take the default position immediately before the Process, i.e. at the beginning of the Comment, but they may also “move” to the head of the clause to act as Topic. They are realised by nominal groups (time or place nouns, etc) or by coverbial (i.e. prepositional) phrases. See the examples below:

(13a) Topic Comment Actor Circumstance Process WO ~~ngtian zou.

I tomorrow leave “I’m leaving tomorrow.”

(13b) Topic Comment Circum. Actor Process Goal sangria wo canjia ~~~~. tomorrow I participate exam “Tomorrow I’ve got an exam.”

Next, Adjuncts. These directly modify the Process, i.e. specify something about its continuation, repetition, etc. and may also link it forward or back to other elements of the clause. Adjuncts directly precede the Process and in most cases cannot appear without a Process. They are usually realised by adverbial groups. See the examples below :

(Ha) Actor Adjunct WO bu

I not “I don’t eat meat.”

Process Goal chi TOU.

eat meat


(14b) Actor Adjunct

Ta ye s/he also

“She’s coming too.”

Process

lai.

come

Finally, Complements. These “fill out” the Process, i.e. specify the scope or extent

over which it takes place. In contrast to Circumstances and Adjuncts, Complements

always follow the Process. They are mostly realised by nominal group structures of

counting. See the examples below:

(15a) Actor Process Complement

Women deng le ban ge xiaoshi.

we wait ASP half MEAS hour

“We waited for half an hour.”

(15b) Actor Process Complement

Ta 9u guo yi ci.

s/he go ASP one time

“He’s been there once.”

The formal distinctions between these three types are not totally clear cut. For

example, Circumstances realised by coverbial phrases very rarely appear as Topic.

See the following example:

(16) Topic Comment

Actor Circumstance Process

wo gen(.e) tamen zou.

I with them go

“I’m going with them.”

* Gen tamen wo zou.

with them I go

As another example, the counting nominal group structures typical of Complements

may appear before the process when they express time. In this case, however, func-

tionally they are clearly Circumstances, placing the Process and Participants, but in

a period of time rather than at a point of time. See the example below:

(17) Actor Circumstance Process Goal

wo san ge yue mei tan gin.

I three MEAS month HAVENT play instrument

“In three months, I haven’t played the piano.”


Generally speaking, I have given functional explanations priority over formal, and I think a distinction like the above is both valid for Chinese and more helpful to the student than lumping all three together as “‘adverbials”. (To confess to a bit of “lumping together” myself, I should point out that I have also included “message connectives” (conjunctions) and “exchange elements” (i.e. what would be called Adjuncts in ZFG) under the headings of Circums~~e and Adjunct in this area of the grammar (see the following examples):

( 18) Circumstance Actor Keshi tamen however they “But they all know.”

Adjunct Process dou zhidao. all know

(19) Actor Adjunct Process Tamen kending zhidao.

hey definitely know “They must know.”

MARKING THE CLAUSE

The next area of the grammar, and the last I shall discuss here, deals with a phenomenon that is not given a separate treatment in ZFG, but seemed to me to be a particularly salient feature of Chinese: marking the clause. What this refers to is the use of grammatical systems that, unlike those of the “basic clause structure”, are not obligatory. (Working out the particular contexts in which they do appear is another area for further research.) These systems are “marked”, both in the sense that they are realised by grammatical markers, and also in that they are semantically prominent. This marking, according to the present formulation, occurs mostly in the context of the message and experience systems.

Experience marking

To deal with experience marking first, you will find the possible systems laid out below. I will discuss them in order: (i) aspect; (ii) phase (completion); (iii) clausal complement; (iv) manner adjunct; and finally (v) marked circumstance/participant. As noted above, verbal group marking is for the most part confined to clauses with action processes.

446 Langoage Sciences, Volume 14, Number 4 (1992)

systemic options

/ situation

<pzzvetive

ZtCtiOtl

< durative

hllperf. progressive

Structural Real&rations Ie

clause particle

verd suffix

l?UO

zhc

aux. verbiadv. zhengtzai

orientation postverb lui “come” (closed class) qu “gon

/

directional dire&o< simple shang “up”

complex xia “down” cc

FEze& _‘tative~ ZZ’ 0 -

\

pbasal

displacement

non-literal direct < phase

+ lai/qu postverb po “broken” (open class) shi ‘wet”

hui “know,, guun “used to’ hao “complete” dao “reach”

postverb shang “on” (closed class) chului “out”

qilai “start” xiaqu “go on”

<

extent

CLAUSAL COMPLEMENT

degree

, direction

<

target

coverbial position

recipient

<

product

verbal

attribute

(A&OII P~OCCSS) + de + (part of) clause (State Process) + (de) + (part of) clause/postverb

stative verb (single or redupl.) + de adverb set phrase

postverbdco “reach - to” (closed class) zai “locate - at”

gei “give - on” cheng “become - into”

dang “act - as”

Figure 2.

Functio~I Grammar of Chinese 447

Aspect in Chinese, like tense in English, is concerned with time, not in the sense of locating the experience in relation to the speaker, but rather with specifying the completion or non-completion of the experience from the point of view of the speaker. Aspect in Chinese has two main domains: the first is the clause as a whole, in which case aspect marking indicates the completion (perfective) or non-completion (imperfective) of a situation, and is realised by a clause particle (see examples below).

situation: perfective

(20a) Xu yu le. drop rain ASP “It’s raining (now - it wasn’t before).”

(20b) Women chi fan le. we eat meal ASP “We’re having dinner now (we’ve finished work). ”

situation: imperfective

Ta du dianhua ne. s/he make telephone ASP “She’s making a phone call (still).”

Hai you ne? still exist ASP “Is there (any) still left?”

The second domain of aspect marking is the verbal group. In this case, it refers specifically to the action rather than the whole situation, and again has the two possibilities of completion and noncompletion; here, however, both divide into two: the first, perfective, into completed and experienced; the second, imperfective, into durative and progressive. This kind of aspect is mostly marked by a verbal group suffix (see examples below).

action: perfective: completed

(22a) Ni chi le wmfm ma? you eat ASP dinner MOD “Did you eat dinner?”

(22b) Ta he le liang bei. s/he drink ASP two cup “She drank two cups.”


action: perfective: experienced

(23a) Wo qu guo Xianggang.

I go ASP Hong Kong

“I’ve been to Hong Kong.”

(23b) Zher xiu guo ma?

here repair ASP MOD

“Have (you) had (it) repaired here (before)?”

action: imperfective: durative

(24a) Zhuozi shang fang zhe yi ge beizi.

table top place ASP one MEAS cup

“There is a cup (placed) on the table.”

(24b) Ta chuun zhe dayi (ne). s/he wear ASP overcoat ASP

“She’s wearing an overcoat.”

action: imperfective: progressive

(25) Laoshi zheng zai jiang ke (ne) teacher just at talk lesson ASP

ASP ASP

“The teacher’s in the middle of class. ”

Phase (Completion)

The system of phase in Chinese is one of the most complex in the language and has

a wider scope than grammatical phase in many other languages. If we define phase

as “the state of progression of the action”, i.e. moving from “start” through

“continue” to “finish”, phase in Chinese is mostly concerned with the far end of this

continuum: that is, stages of completion, and this is therefore what I have termed the

general system of phase.

The completive phase is marked by postverbs, i.e. verbal elements that are attached

to the main verb to form a kind of compound. These divide on formal and functional

grounds into two main types: resultative and directional; and another type that is

somewhere between the two: non-literal directional. Generally speaking, marking for

completive phase by one of these postverbs extends the action represented by the main

verb in a direction or to a result (see examples below).

directional: simple (orientation)

(26) Na - lai ba!

hold come MOD

“Bring (it) over here!”


directional: complex (directional+orientation)

(27) Fang - xiu - lui ba! place down come MOD “Put (it) down over here!”

resultative: physical

(28) Yifu dou lin - shi le. clothes all soak wet ASP “The clothes are all soaking wet.”

resultative: mental

(29a) Dabaicai women dou chi - ni le.

Chinese-cabbage we all eat bored ASP “We’re all sick of eating cabbage.”

resultative: phasal

(30a) Mai - wan le! sell finish ASP “sold out! ”

(30b) Zuo - hao le. do complete ASP “All done.”

non-literal directional: displacement

(31) Ta chuan - shang le yifu le. s/he wear on ASP clothes ASP “She has put on her clothes-got dressed.”

non-literal directional: phase

(32) Tiunqi leng - qilui le. weather cold start ASP “The weather’s getting colder.”

What are perhaps more usually thought of as strictly phasal meanings (“begin”, “continue” etc) are scattered throughout the system as a whole. “Begin” (qilai) and “continue” (xiuqu) belong to the non-literal directional type, deriving fairly iso- morphically from “rise up” and “go down” respectively. “Finish” (wan) belongs to the phasal resultative type. Still fairly general phasal meanings to do with successfir completion are realised by the phasal resultatives hao “good - complete satisfac- torily”, zhao “touch - gain successfully”, da0 “reach - manage to” etc.

The phase system in Chinese straddles the boundaries between grammar and lexis.


Parts of the system, like the directional type and the postverbs expressing “strict” phase mentioned above, are fairly grammaticalised: they form more or less closed systems, and like other grammatical postverbs (like those realising marked circumstance/participant treated below) are usually unstressed (phonologically, enclitics to the verb). In contrast, numerically the largest group of postverbs, the resultatives, are much less grammaticalised, do not form a closed class in the same sense, and have features that cannot be captured by strict grammatical analysis. For the resultatives, the possibilities of combination between verb and postverb are best treated collo- cationally, and the present grammar incorporates some results of previous research of mine, in the form of collocational classes of verb and postverb.

A concomitant difficulty in analysing completive postverbs is that they have some features of a clause function and some of a verbal group function. The present grammar treats them somewhere in between the two: on the one hand, they make up part of the verbal group: i.e. together with the main verb realise the function “Process ’ ’ , and in most cases may only be separated from the main verb by a type of infix expressing potentiality. On the other hand, functionally speaking, some types have a direct effect on clause structure: e.g. directional postverbs often incorporate a Goal or Target function - often literally incorporated within the parts of the verbal group (in this characteristic they resemble the postverbs realising marked circumstance/participant, see below); conversely, resultative postverbs often relate only to the main verb, and have no direct links with participant or circumstantial functions.

Clausal Complement The third system of experience marking, that of the clausal complement, is tradi-

tionally treated as a subtype of the above system, all considered as types of “complement” (i.e. elements following the verb that are not objects). Clausal complements have the same ambiguous status as completive postverbs between clause function and verb marker (or arguably they can even be considered subordinate clauses in a clause complex) but they are formally and functionally less closely linked to the verb than completive postverbs. Clausal complements may mark action verbs, in which case they express the extent to which the action has been carried out; or alternatively state verbs, in which they express the degree of the condition or quality. Clausal complements follow the verb and are usually joined to it by the marker de; in the case of state verbs, they may also be realised by a limited number of postverbs. (The not very happy term “clausal” complement indicates the characteristic that they may be real&d by anything up to a full clause (see examples below).

clausal complement: extent

(33a) Laoshi shuo de hen qingchu. teacher speak MK very clear “The teacher speaks (very) clearly.”

(33b) Laoshi shuo de mei teacher speak MK not “The teacher spoke (in


you ren ting - dong. exist person listen understand such a way) so that no-one understood.”

clausal complement: degree

(34a) Leng de yao ming. cold MK demand life ‘ ‘It’s bitterly cold. ’ ’

(34b) Na hao - ji le! that good extreme ASP “That’s excellent! ’ ’

Manner Adjunct The fourth type of experience marking, Manner Adjunct, is in fact a subtype of the

Adjunct circumstantial function, but I have reintroduced it here in order to show up the contrast between it and the two previously mentioned types of marking: firstly resultative postverbs, which indicate the result of the action: e.g.

(29b) Nimen dou ring - qingchu le nUl?

YOU all listen clear ASP MOD “Did you all hear clearly (what was the result of your listening)?”

Secondly, clausal complements which indicate the extent of the action (see example (33a) i.e. the speaking took or generally takes place to what extent); and finally manner adjuncts themselves, which indicate the manner in which the action was performed (this last, unlike the other two, precedes the verb; it is realised by stative verbs, single or reduplicated, adverbs or set phrases, and is usually marked by de (pronounced the same but written differently to the clausal complement de): e.g.

(35) Laoshi ba nei nie wenti qingqingchuchu de jieshi le teacher DISP that PL problem clear MK explain ASP yi bian. one time “The teacher explained those problems (very) clearly (performed a clear explanation). ”

It is necessary to point out the contrast between these three types to English-speaking students since their effect is quite different in Chinese, but they are often translated identically in English.


Marked Circumstance/Participant This is again not a particularly happy term. What it refers to is a system that marks

(usually circumstantial) elements of the clause by placing them at the end of the clause (exactly what sort of marking this is, I will explain below). This system, like that of completive phase, is realised by postverbs which, like the more grammaticalised of completive postverbs, are usually unstressed and atonal. They might perhaps be called “linking postverbs” because they link the verb with a following nominal group. They divide into two types: the first, coverbial, is made up of elements which function elsewhere as coverbs (prepositions). However, these postverbs are much more re- stricted than their corresponding coverbs as to the types of verbs that they can appear after: functionally they modify the verb directly, unlike coverbial phrases which modify the clause as a whole, and so the verbs that they follow must incorporate an element of meaning that is compatible with the meaning of the postverb (e.g. verbs with the postverb a’ao “(reach) to” must be capable of being extended in a direction).

The second type contains elements which elsewhere function as verbs; as postverbs, they have similar restrictions as to the type of verb they may follow. This sort of collocational patterning has some similarities with the class of completive postverbs; the main difference is that marked circumstance/participant postverbs must be fol- lowed by a nominal group: in other words, they invariably have an effect on clause structure (see examples below).

coverbial: target; direction

(36) Ta aixsuan qi the qi - dao Xizang.

s/he reckon ride bike ride reach Tibet “He’s planning to ride (a bike) to Tibet. ”

coverbial: target: position

(37) Ba duizi fang - zai zhuozi shang!

DISP bag place locate table top “Put the bag on the table!”

coverbial: recipient

(38) Piao dou mai - gei ta le.

ticket all sell give s/he ASP “The tickets have all been sold to her.”

verbal: product

(39) Ta ba rou qie - cheng pian.

s/he DISP meat cut become slice “He cut the meat into slices. ”

verbal: attribute


(40) Ta ba yan a!ang - zuo fang chi.

s/he DISP salt treat act-as sugar eat “He ate the salt as if it were (by mistake for) sugar.”

As for the kind of marking these represent, in fact it is not experience marking at all, but rather message marking. This marking works not according to the Topic/ Comment division but by what is here called the “centre of attention” (New): i.e. it is not thematic but informational. As I noted above, final or near-final position in the clause in Chinese is the unmarked position for New information. In the case of the coverbial type of linking postverbs, using them with a following noun, rather than using a coverbial phrase, moves the element they are marking from Given information, near the head of the clause, to New information, near the end. In the case of the verbal subtype, the use of the postverb actually introduces an extra participant into the clause: e.g. a Product in example (39) above, (i.e. the action of cutting results in slices). Both the coverbial and verbal type of linking postverbs are explained in the current grammar as introducing the “centre of attention”: i.e. a message function, but since this system operates on experiential functions and is in direct contrast with other experiential structures (e.g. coverbial phrases (Circumstances)) I have included it as a subtype of experience marking.

Message Marking

To finish off this brief outline of the grammar, I would just like to discuss four of the main systems of message marking in Chinese: these are (i) Topicalisation; (ii) Focus; (iii) Passive; and (iv) Disposal.

Topicalisation

This system exploits the potential of Topic position in the clause by moving various experience functions, such as Goal, from their unmarked position after the Process to the head of the clause, thus making them the starting point of the message (see example below).

(41) Topic Comment Goal Actor Process Neiyang de ren wo z,hen taoyan.

that kind SUB person I really disgust “I really hate those kind of people.”


Focus This system uses the element shi “be” to focus in on a particular experience

function for the sake of contrast. This use of shi may be combined with nominalisation to make relation clauses out of action clauses in a similar way, and with similar effect, to what ZFG called “thematic equatives” or traditional grammar “pseudo-cleft constructions” (see examples below).

focus on circumstance

(42) Actor Circumstance Process wo shi mingtian zou.

I be tomorrow leave “I’m going tomorrow (not the day after).”

focus on actor

(43) Actor Circumstance Process Shi wo mingtian ZOU.

be I tomorrow leave “Z’m going tomorrow (not someone else). ”

focus on process

(44) Actor Process wo shi zou.

I be leave “I am going (not not going).”

nominalisation + focus on goal

(45) Topic Comment Wo xie de shi zhe ben shu.

I write SUB be this MEAS book “The book I wrote was this one.”

nominalisation + focus on actor

(46) Topic Xie shu de

write book SUB “The one who wrote

shi wo.

be I the book was me - I wrote the book.”

nominalisation + focus on actor & process

(47) Topic Comment Zhe ben shu shi wo xie de.

this MEAS book be I write SUB “This book was written by me.”


nominalisation + focus on circumstance: time

(48) Topic Comment

wo shi zuotian lai de.

I be yesterday come SUB

“I came yesterday.”

nominalisation + focus on circumstance: place

(49) Topic Comment

wo shi tong Shanghai lai de.

I be from Shanghai come SUB

‘ ‘I came from Shanghai. ’ ’

nominalisation + focus on circumstance: means

(50) Topic Comment

wo shi zuo feiji lai de.

I be travel plane come SUB

“I came by plane.”

Passive and Disposal These two systems both make use of coverbial (prepositional) phrases, but not in

this case to introduce circumstances, but rather to mark particular participants for

special message status.

In the case of the passive, the use of a coverb like bei (there are several others),

gets the Actor out, and the Goal into Topic position, and in many cases implies that

the participant represented by the Goal is undergoing some undesirable experience

(most of what would be realised as passives in English are simply handled by

Topicalisation in Chinese). (See examples below .)

passive

(5 1 a) Topic Comment

Goal Actor Process Complement

Haizi bei fiqin da le yi dun.

child PASS father beat ASP one bout

“The child was given a beating by his father.”

(51b) Topic Comment

Goal Adjunct Actor Process

Xin shu dou gei ren jie - zou le.

new book all PASS people borrow away ASP

“The new books have all been taken out.”


In the case of disposal, use of the coverb 6u moves the Goal into the position of Given info~ation, near the head of the clause, and simul~n~usly marks it as something that is being “disposed of”, with the particular kind of disposal occurring in the position of New information near the end of the clause. The use of this system of disposal is very common in cases where the New information in the clause is something other than the Goal, and therefore the Goal must be “moved away” from the end of the clause in order to acco~odate that element of New info~ation (see examples below).

disposal

(52a) Topic Comment Actor Goal Process WO ba nei hen shu mai - wan le.

I DISP that MEAS book sell finish ASP “I’m sold out of that book.”

(52b) Topic Comment Actor Goal Process Location WO ba hua % gua - zai qiang shang.

I DISP painting hang locate wall top “I hung the painting on the wall. ”

CONCLUSION

This brief sketch of part of a functional grammar of Chinese should give you some idea of the applicability of the theory to languages other than English, and equally its adaptability for the purposes of teaching. I will go on in another paper (McDonald 1991) to examine in more detail the specific adaptations that I have felt it necessary to make for a teaching grammar of Chinese, and also mention some of the theoretical issues that arose during the process of adaptation.

I will just conclude with a word or two about the status of the above description as an interpretation of the lexicogrammar of Chinese. This grammar, in contrast to works like Chao 1968 or Li and Thompson 1981 is not a synthesis of a great deal of concrete research. Quite the contrary: it is in fact a general description of a language in a new theoretical framework before there has been much detailed work done in that framework. As such, it is to some extent a functional “reshuffling” of the traditionally recognised grammatical categories of Chinese rather than a genuine functional reinterpretation of Chinese grammar.

There have of course been systemic-~n~tional studies of Chinese gramm~: for

Functional Grammar of cbinese 457

example, Long 1981 (Transitivity in Chinese), a number of studies in the collection Hu ed 1990, and my own work on completive postverbs (McDonald, forthcoming). (See also the general account of systemic-functional theory in Chinese, with some discussion of applications to Chinese grammar in Hu et al. 1989). I should also mention the work of Zhou Xiaokang, currently at the University of Melbourne engaged in a study of Chinese transitivity using Fawcett’s model of systemic-functional grammar; and the work of Zeng Licheng working as part of a group project in multi- lingual text generation at the University of Sydney (for an introductory account of this project, see Matthiessen et al. 1991).

However, the large-scale detailed work, including text analysis, that is needed to support the establishment of a truly functional account of Chinese grammar still waits to be done. This general account is offered as a broad framework to stimulate discussion and criticism and facilitate further research. Although originally conceived as an aid for beginning students to gain an overall picture of Chinese grammar, it has proved to be a valuable exercise in its own right and neatly exemplifies the truly “functional” nature of systemic-functional theory.

NOTES

1. Address correspondence to: Mr. E. McDonald, Department of Linguistics, Uni- versity of Sydney, Camperdown, NSW 2006, Australia.

REFERENCES

Chao, Yuen ren 1968 A Grammar ofspoken Chinese, Berkeley: University of California Press.

Halliday, M. A. K. 1985 An Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Edward Arnold.

Hu, Zhuanglin (ed.) 1990 “Language System and Function, ” Proceedings of the 1989 Beijing

Systemic-Functional Workshop, Peking University Press. Hu, Zhuanglin, Zhu Yongsheng and Zhang Delu

1989 Introduction to Systemic-functional Grammar (in Chinese), Hunan Educational Press.

Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson 198 1 Mandarin Chinese: A Functional Reference Grammar, Berkeley: University

of California Press. Long, Rijin.

1981 Transitivity in Chinese, M. A. Thesis, Department of Linguistics, University of Sydney.

458 Language Seienees, Volume 14, Number 4 (1992)

McDonald, Edward 1990a A New Teaching Grammar of Chinese, Macquarie University. 1990b A New Shorter Teaching Grammar of Chinese, Macquarie University.

1990-91 A Teaching Schedule for “A New Teaching Grammar of Chinese,”

Incomplete Manuscript. 1991 “Applying Systemic-functional Theory to the Writing of a Grammar

Textbook,” Department of English, Peking University. n.d. “Completive Verb Compounds in Modem Chinese: A New Look at an

Old Problem,” Journal of Chinese Linguistics. Mamey , John.

1977 A Handbook of Modem Chinese Gramma r, San Francisco: Chinese

Materials Center Inc. Matthiessen, Christian, Nanri Keizo and Licheng Zeng

1991 ‘ ‘Multi-lingual Resources in Text Generation: Ideational Focus, ’ ’ Depart- ment of Linguistics, University of Sydney.

T’ung P. C. and D. E. Pollard 1982 Colloquial Chinese, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (reprinted 1988).

Documents

Outline of a functional grammar of Chinese for teaching purposes