User:Jambeel/sandbox/transitivity analysis(linguistics)

TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS( LINGUISTICS) TRANSITIVITY: is a theory that goes deep into M A K Halliday'S systemic Functional Linguistics( 2004.)It is as Halliday describes is the grammar of experience that enables the reader to explain 'who does, what, where, when ,why and how' in the text.

Transitivity model. transitivity model has been one of significant tools in stylistics- a branch in linguistics calling for creativity and invention in text- and more generally it may called a method of investigation both of literature and language. it also explores the outer as well the inner working of the characters within the text and draws a complete sketch of their personalities peeling out the complexities as intuitions and hunches about the the character and anatomizes the whole text in a systematic way employing a rigorous and retrievable analysis. ETYMOLOGY: Transitivity refers to theories of systemic functional linguistics proposed by some linguist, especially M.A.K. Halliday (2004) in An Introduction to Functional Grammar. TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS Much of our everyday experience is shaped and defined by actions and events, thoughts and perceptions, and it is an important function of the system of language that it is able to account for these various ‘goings on’ in the world. This means encoding into the grammar of the clause a mechanism for capturing what we say, think and do. It also means accommodating in grammar a host of more abstract relations, such as those that pertain between objects, circumstances and logical concepts. When language is used to represent the goings on of the physical or abstract world in this way, to represent patterns of experience in spoken and written texts, it fulfils the experiential function. The experiential function is an important marker of style, especially so of the style of narrative discourse, because it emphasies the concept of style as choice. There are many ways of accounting in language for the various events that constitute our ‘mental picture of reality’ (Halliday 1994: 106); indeed, there are often several ways of using the resources of the language system to capture the same event in a textual representation. What is of interest to stylisticians is why one type of structure should be preferred to another, or why, from possibly several ways of representing the same ‘happening’, one particular type of depiction should be privileged over another. Choices in style are motivated, even if unconsciously, and these choices have a profound impact on the way texts are structured and interpreted. The particular grammatical facility used for capturing experience in language is the system of transitivity. In the present account, the concept of ‘transitivity’ is used in an expanded semantic sense, much more so than in traditional grammars where it simply serves to identify verbs which take direct objects. Transitivity here refers to the way meanings are encoded in the clause and to the way different types of process are represented in language. Transitivity normally picks out three key components of processes. The first is the process itself, which is typically realised in grammar by the verb phrase (see A3). The second is the participant(s) associated with the process,typically realised by noun phrases. Perhaps less importantly for stylistic analysis, transitivity also picks out the circumstances associated with the process. This third element is typically expressed by prepositional and adverb phrases which, as we saw in A3, fill up the Adjunct element in clause structure.Linguists working with this functional model of transitivity are divided about how exactly to ‘carve up’ the experiential function. How many sorts of experience, for example, should the system distinguish? How easy is it to place discrete boundaries around certain types of human experiences when those experiences tend to overlap or shade into one another? In the brief account of transitivity that follows, six types of process are identified, although the divisions between these processes will always be more provisional than absolute. SIX PROCSSES I TRANSITIVITY ANALYSIS: I. MATERIAL PROCESS. II. MENTAL PROCCESS, III. VERBAL PROCESS, IV. BEAVIOURAL PROCESS, V.ATTRIBUTIVE PROCESS, VI. EXISTENTIAL PROCESS. REFERENCES: SIMPSON,P.(2004) sTYLISTICS A Source Book For Student.( NY) Routledge Halliday,& Matthiessen(2004) An Introduction to Functional Grammar ( NY) Oxford university press Transitivity System Functional Grammar. downloaded from www.youpak.com.pk The transitivity systm. downloaded from www.youpak.com.pk