A small study of ergativity in an online news article

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47456/cl.v16i33.37297

Keywords:

Systemic Functional Linguistics, Ergativity, Transitivity

Abstract

This paper aims to enquire into ergativity in an online news article from a Hallidayan perspective. This category is not well explored in Brazilian Portuguese from this perspective. The ergative model and the transitive model are complementary – the former is linked to nuclear relations, while the later is linked to linear relations within clauses. The ergative model bears a nuclear relation between Agents, Mediums, Processes, and Circumstances, while the transitive model bears a linear relation between Processes, Participants, and Circumstances. The online news article was segmented into six parts mostly according to the journalist’s own text segmentation. Each part was saved on a DOC file and was annotated with tags regarding the ergative categories. The tags were quantified on AntConc software. Results point out the salient realisation of these categories in the online news article. Middle clauses were more frequent than effective clauses, which relates to the fact that some clauses are agentless in the journalistic text.

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Author Biography

Roberta Rego Rodrigues, Universidade Federal de Pelotas (UFPel)

Licenciada em língua inglesa (2003) pela Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Possui Mestrado (2005) e Doutorado (2010) em Linguística Aplicada, bem como Pós-Doutorado (2019) em Estudos Linguísticos, pela mesma instituição. Área de Tradução. Estudos da Tradução.

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Additional Files

Published

14-09-2022

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 33 (2022): Revista (Con)Textos Linguísticos

Section

Artigos

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