The Changes In Ideational Meaning Realized By English Nominalization

From the perspective of grammatical metaphor, this thesis aims to explore the changes of ideational meaning realized by English nominalization on the basis of systemic-functional grammar and text analysis within the genres of scientific and technical writings. Beginning with the theoretical foundations of nominalization, the thesis firstly discusses the meanings and classification of grammatical metaphor in the scope of functional grammar. And then it probes into the functions of nominalization in three aspects: ideational, interpersonal and textual. The focus is put on the changes in ideational meaning of nominalization. The thesis summarizes five points of the changes at the end of Chapter Five.In functional grammar, nominalization is studied as a concept of grammatical metaphor to express a process. It is a grammatical process in which any part of a sentence can be transferred into an independent part with the syntactic function of nouns or noun phrases, with the result of transference from clausal patterns into nominal patterns, or from clause complexes into one clause.This thesis falls into six chapters. Chapter One is the general introduction to the whole thesis. The concepts of nominalization and their significance are briefly mentioned so as to give the readers an overall idea about the subject matter. The objective of the study is to analyze the changes of the ideational meaning realized by English nominalization. Chapter Two includes mainly the review of the studies concerning nominalization in English. The starting point for our review is Jespersen and his works, in which the phenomenon of English nominalization was touched upon for the first time although he does not mention the concept"nominalization"clearly. Ever since then, linguists have been trying to approach the linguistic device from different perspectives. Considered as a whole, these researches are mainly done within three frameworks, namely, the transformational grammar, systemic-functional grammar, and the cognitive linguistics. Each approach has both its strengths and...