Connecting textual patterns to text aboutness
This thesis investigates the relationships between cohesion in texts and the meanings of the texts. I analyze hard news texts and the summaries written by competent readers for the texts in terms of nuclei (i.e. the combinations of Process and Medium) (Halliday, 1994), and examine the characteristics of the nuclei that recur in a text and are also considered as important to the meaning of the text. There are two main findings of my present study. The first is that when two or more recurrent nuclei in a text are considered as important to the meaning of the text, the relationship in the lead that holds between the nuclei are also thought of as important to the text's meaning. This finding provides evidence for the claim made by many linguists that the conjunctive relations that hold between the propositions in a passage are important to the meaning of the passage. The other main finding of my study is that when the nuclei that are considered as important to the meanings of the texts in which they occur are found in leads, they have a strong tendency to occur in primary or independent clauses; on the other hand, when the nuclei occurring in leads are however not considered as important to the meanings of the
Li, Yuan ke
Connecting textual patterns to text aboutness. This thesis investigates the relationships between cohesion in texts and the meanings of the texts. I analyze hard news texts and the summaries written by competent readers for the texts in terms of nuclei (i.e. the combinations of Process and Medium) (Halliday, 1994), and examine the characteristics of the nuclei that recur in a text and are also considered as important to the meaning of the text. There are two main findings of my present study. The first is that when two or more recurrent nuclei in a text are considered as important to the meaning of the text, the relationship in the lead that holds between the nuclei are also thought of as important to the text's meaning. This finding provides evidence for the claim made by many linguists that the conjunctive relations that hold between the propositions in a passage are important to the meaning of the passage. The other main finding of my study is that when the nuclei that are considered as important to the meanings of the texts in which they occur are found in leads, they have a strong tendency to occur in primary or independent clauses; on the other hand, when the nuclei occurring in leads are however not considered as important to the meanings of the
textual pattern text investigates_relationship cohesion_text meaning text analyze hard news text summary write competent reader texts term nuclei combination process medium halliday examine characteristic nuclei recur text also_consider important meaning text two_main finding_present study first_two recurrent nucleus text consider_important meaning text relationship lead hold nuclei also think important text meaning find provide_evidence claim_make many linguist conjunctive relation_hold proposition passage important meaning passage main_finding study nuclei consider_important meaning texts occur find lead strong tendency occur primary independent clause hand nucleus occur lead however consider_important meaning