Chapter Three Theoretical Work
3.1 Introduction
The foregrounding and the prominence theory will be explained in this chapter. Especially the distinction will be drawn between foregrounding and prominence. SFG stresses the importance of “meaning and function”. It has a big difference from “traditional grammar” (Hu & Ye, 2010: 131). SFS also focuses on the application of functions. Transitivity system of Chinese will be introduced in detail. What’s more, the transitivity theory of Chinese refers to the system proposed by Halliday & McDonald (2004).
3.2 Theory of SFS
SFS believes that what is really associated with the meaning of a text is the foregrounding. At the same time, SFS makes a distinction between foregrounding and prominence. To…show more content… Transitivity is skilled in exploring the meaning potential of a text. Transitivity is a series of options of process types to describe the external experiential world and internal conscious world. Halliday (1971: 120) states that when “the particular transitivity patterns” are prominent in a text, it’s a significance from the perspective of function. At the same time, it contributes to the “artistic whole.” When there is prominence in transitivity, the prominence found in particular situation will be the critical part of an…show more content… Each process type has a particular “model or schema” to construe “a particular domain of experience”. As an abstract conclusion of human activities, the experience can be mainly divided into two types which are external experience and internal experience. The external experience is defined as explicit doing and happening. Internal experience is nearer to the concept of sensing and feeling. The external experience is represented by material process and the internal experience is by mental process. Relational experience is to describe the state, nature, and features of