NEWS & EVENTS
Lectures
Beatriz Quiroz: “Transitivity analysis: possibilities and challenges across languages”
Time: 10:00, 22 June 2016
Venue: #214, School of Foreign Languages
Speaker: Dr. Beatriz Quiroz
Abstract:
This talk addresses the possibilities and challenges of so-called ‘transitivity analysis’ in relation to language description. First, the presentation locates the key resources for the lexicogrammatical construal of experience through language within the general SFL architecture. The paper then reviews the ‘trinocular principle’ in relation to the description of process types, that is, the need to look at experiential clause resources ‘from above’, ‘from around’ and ‘from below’. Next, a number of descriptive generalisations are examined in close relation to the description of experiential resources across languages. Considerations emerging from a current two-year research project in this area (VRI grant 1/2014), with a particular focus on the experiential cryptogrammar of Spanish, are also referred to in this section. The paper finally discusses the main challenges and possibilities for descriptive work centred on process types, both cross-linguistically and within particular languages.
Biodata
Beatriz is Assistant Professor at the Department of Language Sciences in the Faculty of Letters of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile), where she teaches and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate students in Linguistics. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Her current research, informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), focuses on a metafunctionally integrated description of clause systems in Chilean Spanish, with special emphasis on the system-structure principle embodied by the theoretical dimension of axis. Other research interests include the interaction between lexicogrammar and discourse-semantics, and systemic functional language typology. Relevant publications include “Towards a systemic profile of the Spanish mood” (recently reprinted in the multi-volume book Systemic Functional Linguistics, edited by Martin & Doran, 2015, Routledge) and “The verbal group” (to appear in The Handbook of Systemic Functional Linguistics, edited by Bartlett & O’Grady, Routledge). Further details about her work and academic interests can be found at http://beatrizquiroz.weebly.com/
