The Teaching Transference of Ideational Meaning in Nominalization

摘 要：Transference in nominalization represents its functions of encapsulation and condensation. By this means， the wording becomes more economic and the meaning is more precise.

关键词：transference， ideational meaning， nominalization

According to Halliday， the experiential perception of people can be divided into different processes. Each process type has its own participants and circumstances. In other words， a process consists of three components： （Halliday， 2000：107）

（i） the process itself

（ii） participants in the process

（iii） circumstances associated with the process.

These three form the three components in the transitivity analysis， and provide the frame of reference for interpreting our experience of what goes on. According to the classification of process， participant and circumstance， linguists make differentiation with the type of linguistic units in order to represent various ideational categorizations. In most cases， verb phrases represent Process； noun phrases or adjective phrases represent Participant； adverbial phrases or prepositional phrases represent Circumstance， which is the representation of congruent mode. However， with the continuous variation of the world and the deepening of people cognition， the congruent representation is not fit for the only mean of expression. And therefore， metaphorical mode is used to expand the ability to expression. Among them， nominalization is one important type of ideational metaphor and the single most powerful resources in creating grammatical metaphor. By this device， processes （congruently worded as verbs） and properties （congruently worded as adjectives） are reworded metaphorically as nouns； instead of functioning in the clause as Process or Attribute， they function as Thing in the nominal group （Halliday， 2000： 352）. Halliday （2000） states that the semantic transference in English nominalization consists of three aspects： grammatical class， grammatical function and semantic function. Respectively， grammatical class transfers from verbal form into nominal form； grammatical function transfers from transitivity system into Thing； semantic function transfers from Process into Entity. He calls this phenomenon “the drift toward thingness” and draws the path of transference as “relater→circumstance→process→quality→entity”.

In functional grammar， ideational meaning is mainly realized by transitivity system. Transitivity is a semantic system in the description of clauses， with the purpose to classify peoples experience in reality into various processes. Transitivity system consists of six processes altogether： material process， mental process， relational process， behavioral process， verbal process and existential process. Among them， relational process refers to one which represents the relationship between two things or entities. In the transference of nominalization， two clauses are combined into one； as a result， the two processes in the congruent mode are accordingly combined into one process and form a new logical relationship. Therefore， the two clauses in the congruent form become the two participants in the new process.In fact， this kind of transference in nominalization represents its functions of encapsulation and condensation （Thompson， 1996：170）. By this means， the wording becomes more economic and the meaning is more precise. In Jespersens discussion about the syntactic change brought by nominalization， rankshift is employed to interpret this phenomenon. He also points that nominalization can get the rhetorical effect of avoiding the clumsy expressions because it expresses the meaning by clause complexes （Jespersen， 1924：136）. Later， Halliday gives a further research about rankshift. English is usually said to have five basic grammatical units： the sentence， the clause， the group， the word and the morpheme. In a nominal structure， the meaning of a sentence or a clause complex is encapsulated into a noun or a noun phrase， and so a clause is condensed into a group or a word. That is to say， this part drops from clause rank to group rank in the whole structure， which is what Halliday called downward shift. This phenomenon is called rankshift in syntactic structure and called encapsulation and condensation in semantic transference.

Reference

[1] Halliday， M. A. K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar （2nd edition） [M]. London： Edward Arnold， 2000.

[2] Jespersen， O. The Philosophy of Grammar [M]. New York： W. W. Norton & Company， 1924/1965.

[3] Thompson， G. Introducing Functional Grammar [M]. Beijing： Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press， 1996.

[4] 常晨光. 語法隐喻与经验的重新建构[J]. 外语教学与研究，2004（1）：31-36.

作者简介：

王红，女，东北大学秦皇岛分校讲师，硕士，主要研究方向为英语语言学及英语教学。