Zahra Ramezani
Abstract
This study investigates the thematic structure in Middle Persian Texts based on Halliday’s approach. Accordingly, it could be investigated that what changes have happened in the thematic structure during the process of Language development. Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) claim that the theme is ...
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This study investigates the thematic structure in Middle Persian Texts based on Halliday’s approach. Accordingly, it could be investigated that what changes have happened in the thematic structure during the process of Language development. Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) claim that the theme is the point of departure. In order to do this study, two texts of kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān (Text 1) and dinkar šašom (Text 2) were chosen. The results suggest that the highest occurrence of themes belongs to the unmarked multiple theme (almost 65% in both texts) with the pattern of “Textual theme + Topical theme” (70.27% in Text1 and 60.83% in Text2). Based on this fact it could be claimed that in that era this pattern was used to transfer the message.IntroductionThe present research is an attempt to describe themes from the perspective of textual meta-function in Middle Persian texts in Halliday and Matthiessen’s Functional Grammar (2014). Halliday’s systematic order is a meaning-based approach that considers the most significant role of language which is “communicating and meaning”. In this theory, four semantic layers or meta functions are proposed to convey meaning: experiential meta function, interpersonal meta function, textual meta function, and logical meta function. In this research, textual meta function plays the main role. In textual meta-function, themes and rhemes are the structural tools for creating discourse and text. This research is very important in some points, for the first reason, it provides the bed for comparison of the textual characteristics of the texts in present and previous Persian language development. Also, in such researches, different writing styles are examined to convey meaning and pave the way for analyzing the discourse of historical texts.In this regard, two texts of kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān and Dinkard ī šašom were selected to examine the textual characteristics based on the textual meta function of Halliday’s approach (2014), and the first content is about Sassanian dynasty. Dinkard ī šašom is the most complete book of the Middle Persian, and it is included among religious encyclopedias. Research QuestionsThis research attempts to answer the following questions:What are the differences between thematical patterns in two narrative and instructional texts in the middle period?In which of the two narrative and instructional texts, the proportion of marked theme is higher?Literature ReviewVarious studies have been conducted in connection with Halliday's systematic theory (2014), and each of these studies has examined a part of this theory.MethodologyHalliday and Matthiessen (2014) consider the basic unit for understanding meaning in systematic grammar as “clause” and present three layers or meta functions to understand meaning. These three meta-functions are experiential, interpersonal, and textual.Textual meta function deals with the textual structure of the language and organizes the coherence and continuity of the flow of speech. In this theory, the way the structures are arranged inside the clause is important. Based on this, in a clause, there are two roles of theme-rheme, which together represent the theme-rheme system.According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the theme is the point of departure of the message and determines the position of the clause within the text. Also, the theme shows how the message is conveyed with the help of language and context, and how what we say is related to what has already been said. The theme itself is divided into two categories:Simple theme:Simple complex as theme: Ali is Ahmed's best friend.Multiple group complex as theme: Ali's best friend in class is Ahmed.Multiple themes:Textual primer (2014:107): continuative, conjunction, conjunction adjustInterpersonal initiator (2014: 107): vocative, modal adjunct, finite verbalSometimes, multiple themes have all three types of components.ConclusionIn order to investigate the structure of themes in the Middle Persian, 46 sentences were extracted from kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān and Dinkard ī šašom, and these sentences were divided into “clauses” defined in this approach, according to Halliday’s functional grammar.In kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān, 65.04% of themes are multiple and unmarked. The marked themes are rarely seen in this text and the clauses often follow the pattern of unmarked sentences in Middle Persian. Only 4.85% of themes are simple and marked and 6.79% of them are marked multiple.Accordingly, textual themes play an important role in the formation of multiple themes in this text. “ud” (which means “and” in Persian today) as a textual (structural) theme, has the highest percentage of occurrence. The percentage of occurrence of multiple themes with interpersonal themes is only 16.21%. This seems quite logical to consider the nature of this text, which is a narrative one. Another third pattern is “textual theme (structural) + interpersonal theme(facet) + topical theme” and the percentage of occurrence of this pattern is 13.51%. In Dinkard ī šašom, the occurrence of unmarked multiple themes is 64.74%, and in contrast, marked multiple themes occur in only 12.82% of cases, which are often present in the first clauses. The percentage of occurrence of unmarked and marked simple themes is 17.30% and 5.76%, respectively. In this text, interpersonal themes also occupy a significant percentage, which according to the content of this text, the high occurrence of this type of initiators seems logical. Another distinctive feature of themes in Dinkard ī šašom is their discrete themes.In general, it can be pointed out that in the texts of Middle Persian, unmarked and multiple themes were often used to start the message. In the text of kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān, the sentences start with simple and unmarked themes. Then, they move on to multiple themes. Interpersonal themes are rarely seen in these texts.In Dinkard ī šašom, themes are often marked and multiple, and they are the important and significant topics that this text deals with. Then, these primers move to unmarked multiple themes.
