Table 1 shows the distribution of modal verbs in economic research articles from the corpus by process and distinguishes between active and passive where appropriate.. Table 1: Distri[r]
(1)1 INTRODUCTION
Modality and transitivity has been the subject of linguistic studies and research Modal expressions allow us to talk about a certain state of affair that may never occur in the actual world Particularly, modality is a facet of illocutionary force, signaled by grammatical devices that expresses (i) the illocutionary point or general intent of a speaker or (ii) a speaker’s degree of commitment to the expressed proposition’s believability, obligatory, desirability, or reality In the linguistics literature, it is widely acknowledged that modal expressions may be used to communicate two great clusters of meanings: (i) epistemic modal meanings dealing with the possibility or necessity of an inference drawn from available evidence, and (ii) deontic modal meanings concerning with the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally responsible agents, e.g obligation and permission (Lyons, 1977; Palmer, 1986, 1990) The paper attempts to answer the following questions: (1) Are modal verbs or non-modals used in economic text more passive or active? (2) Which kind of modal verbs are frequently used in mental process? And (3) Is there any relationship between transitivity and modality? The study is based on a corpus of research articles drawn from English economic field The corpus is made up of 15 economic research articles from The Economic Journal (5 articles); Journal of Economic
ĐỘNG TỪ TRẠNG THÁI VÀ TÌNH THÁI
TRONG CÁC BÀI BÁO KINH TẾ TIẾNG ANH
PHẠM THỊ THANH THÙY Đại học Kinh tế Quốc dân
TÓM TẮT
(2)Economics (2 articles); The American Economic Review
(3 articles); Australian Economic (2 articles)
Only articles written by native speakers are chosen in order to avoid possible interference from other languages The articles which make up the corpus relate to the macro and micro-economics issues Based on the structure of the active English verb:
(modality) (perfect aspect) (progressive aspect) tense
in which brackets indicate optional elements, all verbs which fit into the above modality slot are chosen as modal verbs The study excludes ought,
which requires the inclusion of the particle to, and
have to, which, in any case, has syntactic features which distinguish it from the modal verbs
2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 2.1 Transitivity
Halliday’s (1970) way of classifying processes instructively shows his balancing the plausible with the technical as well as the semantic with the grammatical Mental processes have the principal subtypes of perception (“seeing, hearing”, etc.), affection (“liking, fearing”, etc.), and cognition (“thinking, knowing, understanding”, etc.) Meanwhile, material processes are divided into dispositive (“doing to”) and creative (“bringing about”), each of which may be either concrete or abstract
According to Halliday, every language accommodates in its grammar a number of distinct ways of being and English has intensive (i.e., ‘a relation of sameness’) (as in “Tony is the leader”), circumstantial (as in “the fair is on a Thursday”), and possessive (as in “Kate has a car”) Each of these three comes in two modes: attributive which has the functions of ‘attribute and carrier’ (as in “Sarah is wise”), and identifying which has identified and identifier (as in “tomorrow is the tenth”) Only identifying clauses are reversible and have a passive (as in “Tony plays the leader” and “the leader is played by Tony”); but attributives not (as in “the fair lasts all day” but not “all day is lasted by the fair”), because an attribute is not a participant and so cannot become a
Since there are indefinitely many ways of drawing lines on purely semantic grounds, we must inquire which have systematic repercussions in the grammar We see a good illustration in the criteria to show why mental processes (i.e ‘sensing’) and material processes (i.e ‘doing’) constitute distinct grammatical categories ‘Mental process’ is distinct from ‘material process’ in: (a) having as ‘participants’ a ‘human sensor’ endowed with consciousness and a ‘Phenomenon’ (as in “I like the quiet”), which cannot be equated with Actor and Goal in a material process (as in “the lion caught the tourist”); (b) being ‘representable’ as two-way or ‘bi-directional’ (as in “Mary liked the gift” versus “the gift pleased Mary”); (c) being a ‘Fact’ or a representation ready packaged, (as in “Jane saw that the stars had come out”) as well as ‘a Thing’, or ‘a phenomenon of our experience’ (as in “Jane saw the stars”); and (d) having as unmarked simple present tense (as in “I see the stars”), whereas the material process has ‘present in present’ (as in “they are building a house”)
2.2 Modality
From various points of view, despite an enormous amount of work done on the analysis of modality in languages, it is still not easy to identify what modality actually means (Palmer, 1986)
According to Quirk et al (1972), modality is used as a cover term for different types of modification the speaker can express towards a state of affairs contained in the proposition In this usage, it is identified with the speaker’s comment or evaluation on the representational content of the utterance “Attitude” and “opinion” in this sense have nothing to with the emotional state that a person undergoes such as “like”, “love”, “hate”… Moreover, modality excludes factual evaluation from its domain Linguistic discussions witness three kinds of modality: epistemic, deontic and dynamic. Epistemic modality deals with the degree of the speaker’s commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed and thus indicates some degree of certainty (as in “He must know the answer of the question”) or uncertainty (as in “He might know the answer of the question”)
(3)obligation (e.g “You must take care of the child until 31st Dec.”) and permission (e.g “You may check in
books for weeks).
According to Von Wright (1951), dynamic modality is introduced for cases where circumstances in the real world make possible or necessary the actualization of a state of affairs Dynamic modality includes two sub-categories: subject-oriented, where the circumstances are characteristics of the subject (as in “She can’t think on her own”); and neutral, where the circumstances are general conditions holding in the world (as in “that career might be the most wanted job in the next few years”) However, dynamic modality is not as clear as it seems not to relate to the speaker Therefore, linguists always mention to two broad kinds of modality only: epistemic and deontic, and many of them use “root modality” or “non-epistemic” modality as a term covering both deontic and dynamic cases (Coates, 1983)
3 MODALITY AND TRANSITIVITY IN ENGLISH ECONOMIC RESEARCH ARTICLES
Data from the corpus show that while 31% of finite verbs are passive, 41% of modal verbs occur in the passive form Based on a simple transitivity network introduced by Berry (1975) and Halliday (1985), passivization and transitivity are considered
In economic research articles, all processes are either mental or relational Material processes are either unrestricted or restricted In other word, the number of inherent participants is fixed (restricted) or not (unrestricted) Unrestricted processes may occur with two participants, and thus be causative: (1)… corporate insiders must promote risk-taking decisions to capitalize or, with a single participant, in which case they are non-causative: (2)… petrol price will similarly increase Restricted processes may be restricted to a single participant, and thus be middle: (3) When we use the three years at the same time, N in that model can be bigger than the N of each year.
Where restricted processes are restricted to two participants (effective process), both participants may be expressed giving the transitive process: (4) … they [insiders] can create an adversarial relationship among partners…or only one participant may be expressed
perception (reaction) may not then increase in the firm’s systematic risk level.
Relation processes are either attributive, where a qualitative attribute is assigned to the subject: (6)
… increasing price in… may be risky…or identifying, where the process serves to define the identity of the subject: (7)…both financial and non-financial private benefits of control… which may create incentives for corporate insiders…
Only four positions in the network introduced by Halliday (1985) accept a selection between active and passive voice; they are the causative, transitive, mental, and identifying processes Table shows the distribution of modal verbs in economic research articles from the corpus by process and distinguishes between active and passive where appropriate
Table 1: Distribution by process and active, passive voice (data from writer’s research)
Processes and Voices Number of
modal verbs Frequency Causative ActivePassive 33 1%1%
Non-causative 4%
Middle 17 7%
Transitive ActivePassive 2126 11%9%
Intransitive 1%
Mental ActivePassive 3472 14%29%
Attributive 49 20%
(4)are evenly divided between active and passive The transitive cases are also fairly evenly divided, with a slight bias towards passive (55%) The identifying cases are not many but are more so than causative Passive is rare in this case with only 12% of the cases
From the results, there seems to be some slight correlation between modality and mental process: 42% of the modal verbs in the corpus are mental processes, compared with 33% material and 25% relational processes In the material process category, active and passive examples seem equally probable; in the mental process category, there seems to be a strong tendency towards the passive On the other hand, passive seems extremely rare in the relational process
It is reasonable that there are some links between modality and mental process According to Halliday (1985), mental process deal with the human appreciation of the world, it may be well that this is a situation where the normative economists tend to hedge their bets, leaving themselves an escape route rather than making unqualified statements The qualification provided by the modal would then allow the readers to follow the line of reasoning suggested McCloskey (1985) has shown that when talking about the supposed errors of others, normative economists tend to so in a non-specific way when speaking in a formal situation, as opposed to the informal situations where they tend to be much more specific and assertive Therefore, it would seem reasonable that such a formal situation as in research articles will lead economists to be less assertive to hedge their bets, on points that might be open to disagreement
Table indicates the distribution of the various modal verbs in the corpus occurring in mental processes
Table 2: Distribution of modal verbs in mental processes (data from writer’s research)
Modal
Verbs Active Passive Total Mental
Number Frequency Number Frequency Number Frequency
Will 9% 7% 8%
Would 21% 4% 10 10%
Shall - - -
-Should 9% 4% 6%
Can 15 42% 34 47% 49 46%
Could 3% 6% 5%
May 12% 15 21% 19 18%
Might - - 8% 6%
Must 3% 3% 3%
Table shows the frequency of the various modal verbs by process and by voice The modal verbs are ordered according to their high frequency
Table 3: The distribution of the various modal verbs by process and by voice (data from writer’s research)
Modal Verbs Material Mental Relational
Active Passive Active Passive Active Passive
Can 15 34
-May 10 15 20
Would 12 15
Will 11
(5)-Could 4
-Must 2
-Might - -
-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 Uncertainty: the truth of x is not certain (i.e possibility)
4 Concession: whether x is true or not, y is the case Legitimacy: x is legitimate, valid
6 Ability: people are able to 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.
(6)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 state…that… there is no evidence…; (17) The second alternative… not only can
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
(7)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
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4 Halliday, M.A.K (1985), An Introduction to Functional Grammar. U.K.: Edward Arnold Huddleston, R.D Huddleston, R.D (1971), The Sentence in Written English, a Syntactic Study Based on an Analysis of Scientific Texts, U.K.: Cambridge University Press 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 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.