A Tentative Study On Systemic Functional Phonology

Starting from the "scale-and-category" theory (Halliday,1961), systemic grammar (Halliday,1966), and functional grammar (Halliday,1968), systemic functional theories have gone through a proliferation of development and enrichment, especially in the studies on the strata of lexicogrammar and semantics, such as Halliday (1970b,1985b/1994), Matthiessen (1995), Martin (1992), and Martin and White (2008). The stratum of phonology comparatively receives less attention in the studies of systemic functional linguistics (SFL). Prakasam (1972,1976,1977,1992), Mock (1985), Tench (1990,1992a, 1992b,1996) and other functionalists make an initiative move to perform a systemic description of the sound systems of various languages, where systemic phonology came into being. However, the dimension of function has long been ignored in systemic phonological studies. Then it is suggestive that the study of the phonology stratum from the systemic functional perspective should involve both the dimensions of system and function.Systemic functional phonology is proposed in the current study as a non-universal approach to describe the phonology of a language in terms of structures of hierarchically ranked units and systems displayed in functionally diversified networks to conform to the theoretical commitment of SFL as a general and appliable linguistics. This thesis consists of five chapters. After a brief introductory chapter, previous pertinent studies are reviewed, firstly on phonology, then on systemic functional phonology, and finally on Halliday's sporadic study of the Chinese phonological system. In Chapter Three, the theoretical preliminaries of systemic functional phonology are presented, including the proposal, definition and theoretical justification of the discipline. In Chapter Four, Chinese prosodic features are investigated as an important source of meaning-making, according to the hierarchically ranked Chinese phonological units which are proposed as discourse-intonational group-prosodic phrase-prosodic word-syllable. In each rank exemplification on prosodic features, such as stress, segmental lengthening and shortening, pitch ascending and descending, tone, TONE, syllable and tone accordance, and rhyming, etc. are presented in detail for the elastration of the three meta-functions. For example, r-ization and stress (of words) are meaning and word class distinctive in ideational function, revealing our construing of experience and the logical relationship of the grammatical units. Sentence stress and segmental lengthening together can suggest the semantically emphasized information in speech, revealing the information focus of the conversation. Besides, sentence stress is closely related to information structure. Rhyming, syllabic accordance and tone accordance contribute to the cohesion and coherence of discourse, and help to achieve rhetorical effects. And finally, a three-dimensional rank-function-delicacy diagram, and a system-functional matrix of the phonological stratum in Chinese are concluded with the system as the foundation and the function as motive, which is a tentative empirical study of systemic functional phonology. This thesis is concluded by a brief summary of the findings, implications of the current research, and some prospects for future research.