Dongbing Zhang

University of International Business and Economics · School of International Studies

This paper analyses the positioning of dialogically alternative voices in Khorchin Mongolian conversations, drawing on the engagement system developed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The paper shows how the analyses of dialogic positioning resources in conversation need to take into account the spatial-temporal comple...

This paper aims to develop the description of move systems in Systemic Functional Linguistics based on dynamism in knowledge exchanges, that is, the possible move options made available at different points in an exchange concerned with the negotiation of information. Using conversational interactions in Khorchin Mongolian as examples, the paper arg...

This paper examines the TENSE system in Khorchin Mongolian from an interpersonal perspective based on the theoretical assumptions of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Previous studies on TENSE in Khorchin Mongolian have mainly taken a representational view, focusing primarily on the way different tense suffixes construe relationships between events....

This chapter provides a description of the basic interpersonal clause system in Khorchin Mongolian – i.e., MOOD. The categories in the traditional description of Khorchin Mongolian clause grammar are mostly defined notionally and are not grammatically motivated. In contrast, the description in this chapter motivates the clause classes in the MOOD s...

The main focus on nominals in traditional descriptions of Mongolian is in terms of word class. Their combinations are described either with respect to their role as clause constituents or in terms of a simple modifier-modified relationship. This paper, on the other hand, recognizes the Khorchin Mongolian nominal group as a unit, whose structural co...

In this introductory paper for this series of special issues, we review the development of nominal group description in SFL – focusing on its syntagmatic and paradigmatic modeling, and stepping through a number of the principles that underpin SFL description more broadly. We then explore a number of issues that have arisen in relation to nominal gr...

The present study examines the ways Chinese high school EFL learners organize information in their writing. A class of 50 students at grade 9 from a local high school in Guangzhou, China, were recruited as participants. The students' writing at grade 9 was collected as a corpus, comprising ten writing tasks from different text types. In order to ga...

Over the past two decades the quantity and scope of research drawing on the system of APPRAISAL in SFL has massively expanded. It is reasonable to claim that the majority of these studies have foregrounded the subsystems of ATTITUDE and ENGAGEMENT. Our aim in contributing to this special issue celebrating two decades of APPRAISAL research is to foc...

This study provides a discourse semantic characterisation of the Khorchin Mongolian modal particles within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Studies on the interpersonal organisation of interactions are used to make explicit the nuanced distinctions in the interpersonal functionality of the modal particles. Detailed analyses of an i...

This thesis describes the interpersonal discourse semantic and lexicogrammatical systems in Khorchin Mongolian based on conversational data within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The systems described in this thesis are resources for enacting social relations. They are modelled at the strata of discourse semantics and lexico...

This chapter provides a systemic functional account of the verbal group in Khorchin Mongolian, a dialect of Mongolian spoken in eastern Inner Mongolia. Two basic verbal group systems, VG DEIXIS and VG TYPE, are established based on the role the verbal group plays in a clause. The VG DEIXIS system includes the features [elaborated] and [restricted]....

The study investigated the effect of autonomous text dictation on engineering-major EFL learners' listening comprehension. The six participants in this study are from China University of Mining and Technology (Beijing) and they have extensive English learning experience, yet have serious English listening difficulty. The participants did dictation...