A Contrastive Study of the Realizations of Elements in English and Myanmar Transitivity Configurations

Abstract

he main purpose of this paper is to contrast the realizations of elements – processes,  participant roles and circumstances in the English and Myanmar transitivity configurations following the network developed within the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics. It is  found that: English and Myanmar show similarity in the realizations of processes as verbal  groups, participant roles as nominal groups, nominalization, adverbial groups, prepositional  phrases, embedded clauses, and circumstances as nominal groups, adverbial groups, or  prepositional phrases. However, they differ in that processes are also realized by copulas and participant roles by adjective/adjective groups in English, while processes are also realized by  compound verbs, reduplicated verbs, or attributive verbs and circumstances by qualifying  reduplicated adverbs or embedded clauses in Myanmar. The findings are rooted in the functional  and typological prominences of the two languages, which may further shed light on a new  perspective on the research of transitivity system for Systemic Functional Linguistics. This study also makes an important contribution to further studies of contrasting the realizations of elements  in the transitivity configurations of Myanmar and other languages.