Discourse functions of the Evaluative Enhanced Theme Construction

By drawing on Halliday’s relevant theories, this paper investigates the discourse functions of what is called, in the present terminology, the Evaluative Enhanced Theme Construction in English or the EETC, (which is termed the extraposition construction in traditional grammar). We prefer the present terminology because this construction is typically employed to express evaluation, and the evaluative meaning is syntactically enhanced. After a structural analysis of the EETC in semantic terms, we put forward our interpretation of the structure of text, whose parts are semantically (rather than structurally) related to each other. Hence to investigate the discourse function of a construction is to see how it is semantically related to its co-text. Observation of occurrence of EETC in actual texts shows that EETC typically relates to its co-text through the logico-semantic relation of evaluation-basis. When it occurs paragraph-initially or finally, it tends to co-occur with hyper-Theme or hyper-New, and it chunks prospectively or retrospectively respectively through this logico-semantic relation, with the chunking force extending over the whole paragraph. When it occurs in between the hyper-Theme and the hyper-New, its discourse functions tend to be more localized. Our data also reveal that different types of EETC with respect to the evaluated entities function differently in the organization of text; such difference is attributable to the different ontological status of the evaluated entities.