{"title":"Functions of Expressions of Futurality in Professional Economic Texts","authors":"M. Mikulas","doi":"10.1515/pjes-2016-0010","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The aim of this corpus-based study is to identify the functions that selected expressions of futurality can express in professional economic texts. The classification of functions is established on the corpus of seven economic books. Excerpted instances of futural constructions are analysed with respect to textual and interpersonal functions as defined by Halliday. Futurality is interpreted broadly to include all lexical and grammatical means referring to the future. This approach makes it also possible to analyse futurality as a means of text coherence. Hence the core grammatical means are interpreted along with co-occurring lexical means under the two categories of functions to provide a comprehensive model of text coherence with regard to futurality. Frequency analysis shows that core futural expressions are not distributed equally throughout the corpus. While some expressions (e.g., will and the present simple tense) dominate, others prove to be rather insignificant (e.g., be on the point/verge of, the present progressive tense). In addition, both lexical and grammatical constructions regularly co-occur in clusters, contributing to the coherence of the economic texts.","PeriodicalId":402791,"journal":{"name":"Prague Journal of English Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2016-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Prague Journal of English Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1515/pjes-2016-0010","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"","JCRName":"","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Abstract The aim of this corpus-based study is to identify the functions that selected expressions of futurality can express in professional economic texts. The classification of functions is established on the corpus of seven economic books. Excerpted instances of futural constructions are analysed with respect to textual and interpersonal functions as defined by Halliday. Futurality is interpreted broadly to include all lexical and grammatical means referring to the future. This approach makes it also possible to analyse futurality as a means of text coherence. Hence the core grammatical means are interpreted along with co-occurring lexical means under the two categories of functions to provide a comprehensive model of text coherence with regard to futurality. Frequency analysis shows that core futural expressions are not distributed equally throughout the corpus. While some expressions (e.g., will and the present simple tense) dominate, others prove to be rather insignificant (e.g., be on the point/verge of, the present progressive tense). In addition, both lexical and grammatical constructions regularly co-occur in clusters, contributing to the coherence of the economic texts.
摘要本研究以语料库为基础,探讨未来性在专业经济语篇中所能表达的功能。在七本经济专著的语料库上建立了功能分类。本文从韩礼德所定义的语篇功能和人际功能两方面分析了将来式的节选实例。未来性被广泛地解释为包括所有涉及未来的词汇和语法手段。这种方法也可以分析未来性作为文本连贯的一种手段。因此,在两类功能下对核心语法手段和共现词汇手段进行了解释,从而提供了一个关于将来性的综合语篇连贯模型。频率分析表明,核心将来式在语料库中的分布并不均匀。虽然一些表达(例如,will和一般现在时)占主导地位,但其他表达被证明相当无关紧要(例如,be on the point/verge of,现在进行时)。此外,词汇和语法结构经常在集群中共同出现,有助于经济文本的连贯性。