Sundanese ideational grammar: perspectives from register and discourse semantics

Abstract

This thesis is about ideational grammar in Sundanese. It describes the grammar from the perspective of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) – the underpinning linguistic theory informing the description. A tri-stratal approach on describing languages is adopted in the thesis whereby patterns of meanings in lexicogrammar are justified in relation to the meanings they realised in higher stratum, i.e., ideational discourse semantics and register variable field. This approach is grounded on the SFL’s dimension of stratification that considers the realisation of register variables by the variations of patterns in discourse semantics (text) which in turns are realised by patterns in lexicogrammar (clause). With regards to Sundanese, it is useful to provide a comprehensive description of Sundanese ideational grammar, particularly for examining patterns of meaning at clause rank and their contributions to the construal of both figures in ideational discourse semantics and field perspective, across texts from various genres and registers. This is important with regards to the development of educational linguistics program, particularly in Sundanese language teaching, that is currently happening. The grammar developed in the thesis is expected to contribute to two major areas. Firstly, it contributes to providing the first comprehensive description of Sundanese ideational grammar that can be linked to meaningful text patterns. This can be regarded a major step forward for Systemic Functional typology specifically, and linguistic description in general. Secondly, the description offered in this thesis can be used as a basis of enacting Sundanese educational linguistic program. It can be taken for developing Sundanese pedagogy orienting to the explicit knowledge of language and its relations to the co-textual (discourse semantics) and contextual features (register and genre).