Động từ trạng thái và tình thái trong các bài báo kinh tế Tiếng Anh
Trong lĩnh vực ngôn ngữ học, “nghĩa tình thái” là
một thuật ngữ liên quan đến thái độ của người
nói đối với những gì đang được nói. Động từ trạng
thái là một nhóm động từ đưa ra yêu cầu hoặc đề
xuất trong một trường hợp nhất định. Nghĩa tình
thái và động từ trạng thái trong các văn bản kinh
tế đại diện cho một lĩnh vực nghiên cứu nhỏ về
khả năng ngữ dụng học (khả năng thực tế). Phần
lớn sự chú ý tập trung vào lý thuyết, tập trung
vào các ví dụ trực quan và vào các ví dụ từ những
ngữ cảnh thực tế. Do đó, bài viết này sẽ xem
xét các khái niệm trong một số chiến lược rộng
hơn cho việc thay đổi lực ngôn trung dựa trên
sự phân tích nguồn đáng tin cậy từ các bài báo
nghiên cứu kinh tế. Theo đó, bài viết này cố gắng
nghiên cứu xa hơn về biểu hiện phương thức và
động từ tình thái bằng cách tập trung vào phân
tích các phát ngôn tình thái và động từ trạng thái
sử dụng trong các văn bản kinh tế được lựa chọn.
Bài viết này dựa trên nghiên cứu 15 bài báo kinh
tế tiếng Anh. Thông tin trong 15 bài báo kinh tế
tiếng Anh bao gồm toàn bộ bài báo không tính
phần tóm tắt vì tác giả cho rằng ngôn ngữ của
phần tóm lược thuộc một thể loại khác so với các
phần còn lại trong một bài báo khoa học.
er’s research) Modal Verbs Material Mental Relational Active Passive Active Passive Active Passive Can 6 7 15 34 4 - May 10 5 4 15 20 1 Would 12 4 7 3 15 1 Will 11 1 3 5 7 - Should 1 4 3 3 8 - 67KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰSố 3 - 9/2016 NGHIÊN CỨU - TRAO ĐỔI v Could 6 4 1 4 2 - Must 7 2 1 2 4 - Might - 1 - 6 3 - The above tables indicate that can makes up almost half of the modal verbs occurring. This is true for both the active and passive cases, with 42% and 47% respectively in mental processes. May is also accounts for a high ratio. These two modal verbs can and may will further be considered in the next section. 3.1. Mental process and passive May and Can Huddleston (1971) claims that there are six uses of the epistemic may as follow: 1. Qualified generalization: x is true for at least some members of the group but not necessarily any particular individual. 2. Exhaustive disjunction: x is at least one of the attributes proposed. 3. Uncertainty: the truth of x is not certain (i.e. possibility). 4. Concession: whether x is true or not, y is the case. 5. Legitimacy: x is legitimate, valid. 6. Ability: people are able to do x. The epistemic can has the same uses as may with the exclusion of the fourth use: concession. Besides, Huddleston seems to imply that there is little difference between may and can. Palmer (1974) when mentioning English verbs also shares the same idea links can to the notion of non-assertion. Of the notions suggested by Huddleston (1971), those of the uncertainly/possibility, legitimacy and ability seem to cover all of the examples found in the sample. The examples of passive can in the mental process are never of a deontic type. All of the examples can be classified as epistemic in some forms. To the extent that these can be divided into an ability type and a possibility type. For example: (8) Hence, it can be argued that the nature of and changes in corporate governance have potential implications for the firm’s riskiness; (9) The differences in securities underwritten by commercial banks (or their affiliates) can be neglected. However, a considerable number of the examples are not easily classified as being one rather than the other, and seem to combine aspects of both possible interpretations, or indeed to be neutral as to which one should be selected. The examples of passive, may in the mental process are also exclusively of the epistemic type, i.e. indicating some form of possibility. (10) the present work may be considered an extension of Walter’s analysis Here the majority of the cases of passive may in mental process (15 out of 17 cases) are examples of the legitimacy use: (11) without controlling for other factors that will affect this spread, no strong conclusions may be drawn from these univariate results. The ability category of may can also be seen in the economic research articles (here again some cases are not easy to categorize). 68 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰSố 3 - 9/2016 v NGHIÊN CỨU - TRAO ĐỔI To the extent that can and may cover similar semantic areas in similar proportions, it might seem that the “virtually no difference” approach is justified, and it is true that in many cases substituting may for can or vice versa would make “virtually” no difference. However, in this example, “can” does not lend themselves to this ploy. (12) it can be shown that the procedure is reasonable The substitution of may in example (13) in the United States, the capital market needs of smaller firms may be ignored places the reasonableness much more in the domain of possibility. This seems to go against Palmer’s use of non-assertion as a distinguishing feature of epistemic can. Both may and can express a procedure which is considered legitimate. However, in the case of can, this legitimacy is considered to be the only one available in the present state of our knowledge, and it is used until it is shown to be less adequate than some other procedures. This interpretation is supported by the fact that in many cases there seems to be little difference, or at least only marginal difference, between the use of can and a non-modal sentence. 3.2. Mental Process and Active May and Can Mental process, by definition, typically requires an intelligent agent. Economic discourse tends to avoid the use of human agent subjects. It might expect then that active mental process would be rare in this type of document. As far as may is concerned, this is true. In addition, example with human subject is rarely found. Subject in most of the cases might be called “untypical animacy” (the term used by Berry (1975)); that is, in this case, an inanimate subject occurring where the process would normally require an animate one. For example, (14) This firm-specific error can control for unobservable firm effects not captured in the OLS model; (15) According to our hypothesis, a conflict of interest may exist when a firm with a loan outstanding issues a security underwritten by the bank There is a rather higher number of examples of active can in the mental process. Furthermore, one might add here that the pronoun we as subject, which constitutes an unusually high concentration for this type of discourse, occurs quite often. Most of the examples with the pronoun we as subject express legitimacy: (16) We can now statethat there is no evidence; (17) The second alternative not only can account for the increased productivity While the other examples express ability, for example: (18)lacking suitable data we cannot quantify the loss from that economic decision. Some examples are neutral as to an ability or legitimacy interpretation as (19) We can check whether the loss Profile B is plausible; (20) We may conduct further tests to clarify the effects of time on the perception of a conflict of interest. The above corpus examples then present two basic differences between active may and active can in mental process. Firstly, may, but not can, occurs more frequently with untypical animacy; whereas may expresses primarily uncertainty and secondarily legitimacy, can expresses primarily legitimacy and secondarily ability. The numbers are too small to warrant extrapolation, but it would be interesting to see if these results are confirmed in a larger sample. 4. CONCLUSION In conclusion, the study presents some observations concerning transitivity and modality in economic research articles. It can be concluded that there is a series of relationships between processes (transitivity) and modality. These are manifested in the form of tendencies, in some cases particularly strong, for particular processes to have strong collocations with specific forms of modal choice in economic writing. Transitivity is then a significant parameter in the analysis of modality in economic research articles. Because of the scope of a seminar topic, the study is only an extrapolative result found for transitivity and modality in a small numbers of the sample. It would be interesting to see whether the tendencies found here are corroborated in a larger sample. Also, further research on the other categories of transitivity and modality would be useful./. References: 1. Berry, M. (1975), Introduction to Systemic Linguistics, Structures and Systems, 1. U.K: Batsford 2. Coats, J. (1983), The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London and Canberra: Croom Helm. 3. Halliday, M.A.K. (1970), Functional diversity in 69KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰSố 3 - 9/2016 NGHIÊN CỨU - TRAO ĐỔI v TRANSITIVITY AND MODALITY IN ENGLISH ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES PHAM THI THANH THUY Abstract: In the linguistics literature, modality is a semantic term concerning the speaker’s attitude toward what is being said. Meanwhile, transitivity is the number of objects a verb requires or takes in a given instance. Much of the attracted attention has been on theoretical nature, and intuitive and de-contextualized examples. The paper, therefore, helps situate the concept within wider strategies for modifying illocutionary force basing on an analysis of authentic sources from economic research articles. Accordingly, the study attempts to further advance research on modal expressions and transitivity by focusing on analyzing modal verbs and transitivity used in selected economic texts. The study is based on a corpus of 15 economic research articles drawn from English economic field. The corpus contains the whole of the text of the articles, excluding the abstract since the language of an abstract is a register in itself, so it is not like an academic article. Keywords: economic research articles, modal verb, transitivity, modality Ngày nhận: 18/7/2016 Ngày phản biện: 02/9/2016 Ngày duyệt đăng: 20/9/2016 language as seen from a consideration of modality and mood in English. Foundations of Language, 6, 322-361. 4. Halliday, M.A.K. (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar. U.K.: Edward Arnold. Huddleston, R.D. 5. Huddleston, R.D. (1971), The Sentence in Written English, a Syntactic Study Based on an Analysis of Scientific Texts, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. 6. Lyons, J. (1977), Semantics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 7. McCloskey, D.N. 1985, The Rhetoric of Economics. Harvester Press. 8. Palmer, F. (1974), The English Verb. U.K.: Longman. 9. Palmer, F. (1986), Mood and Modality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 10. Palmer, F. (1990), Modality and the English Modals. Longman, London and New York. 11. Quirk, R. et al. (1972a), A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London and New York: Longman. 12. Quirk, R. et al. (1972b), A Grammar of Contemporary English. London and New York: Lonman. 13. Von Wright, G.H. (1951), An Essay in Modal Logic. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company.
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