英语“主从介词短语复合体”的系统功能语言学研究

A systemic functional approach to the hypotactic prepositional phrase complex in English

悉尼语法依据相互依赖关系将英语介词短语复合体分成并列介词和主从介词短语复合体。本文在系统功能语言学框架内,重新对"主从介词短语复合体"进行研究。分析表明,英语中不存在"主从介词短语复合体"。所谓"主从介词短语复合体"可分成两类:1)包含嵌入关系的词组或介词短语;2)两个独立的介词短语。本研究还发现了介词短语可充当的新的状语种类。加的夫语法指出从递归的角度出发小句层上没有主从关系,只有并列和嵌入关系。本研究认为该结论也适用于介词短语。

The Sydney Grammar of the Systemic Functional Linguistics believes that English prepositional phrase complexes can be divided into paratactic and hypotactic ones according to the interdependent relationship. This research revisits the hypotactic prepositional phrase complex and finds out that there is no such a structure as 'hypotactic prepostional phrase complex' in English. The so-called 'hypotactic prepositional phrase complex' can be treated in two different ways. One is a single group or a single prepositional phrase with embedding. The other is two independent prepositional phrases, each of which can function as an adjunct in a clause. New types of adjuncts are henceforth identified. This finding echos the proposal of Cardiff Grammar that from the perspective of recursion there is no hypotaxis but only co-ordination and embedding at the rank of clauses and leads to the claim that neither is there hypotaxis at the rank of prepositional phrases.