A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF MODIFICATION IN ZAYNAB ALKALI’S THE STILLBORN AND GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

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A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF MODIFICATION IN ZAYNAB ALKALI’S THE STILLBORN AND GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

Abstract:

The effective use of modifiers makes a difference between a dull sentence and an interesting one. Modifiers breathe life into phrases, clauses, sentences and the entire paragraph of a text. They are used for contrasts, emphasis, description and for shades of meaning. Thus, both the syntactic and semantic meaning of a sentence is enriched by the appropriate use of modifiers in sentence structures. Adjectives and adverbs for instance are used for making comparisons without which it becomes difficult to show similarities or differences between two or more things in any given language. The components of modification that are considered for analysis in this study include: adjectives, adverbs, prepositional phrases, quantifiers and intensifiers. Others are qualifiers, idioms, adjectival and adverbial clauses. The relationships that exist between the modifiers identified with the headwords were explained in the course of analysis of each sentence. Chapter one presents the background information to this work, examining some working definitions of modification, justification for the selection of the set texts, feminism, themes of the set texts, motivation and statement of the problem. Other highlights of the chapter are aim and objectives which include to compare the effective use of modifiers in Alkali’s The Stillborn and Orwell’s Animal Farm; to determine whether adjectives and adjectival clauses are more extensively used than adverbs and adverbial clauses; others are prepositional phrases, comparative and superlative adjectives; determine to what extent poetic and idiomatic expressions are used to modify the works of Alkali and Orwell. And finally, to determine from our analysis whether gender has effect on the text that he/she creates. Significance of the study, scope and delimitation also concludes this chapter. Chapter two examines literature related materials to this study. In this respect the materials selected for review are modifiers as linguistic elements, structure of modification, ordering of modifiers, traditional grammar, structural grammar, constituent structure grammar, immediate constituent grammar, systemic grammar and the theoretical framework. Chapter three presents the methodology for this research, elicitation materials, the sampling procedure and sample analysis. The theoretical syntactic framework of Quirk et al’s (1985:62), Halliday and Hasan’s (1976:40) semantic model and Bloomfield’s immediate constituent (IC) analysis model were adopted and modified for the analysis. The data are analyzed in chapter four and the same chapter discusses the findings. The major findings have revealed that Alkali has used more modifiers than Orwell. Alkali has used more adjectives and adjectival clauses than Orwell while Orwell has used more adverbs and adverbial clauses than Alkali. Alkali has used more intensifiers than Orwell which suggests that women use emotive language more than men and that gender has effect on the creation of texts. This analysis identifies a number of similarities and dissimilarities between Alkali’s and Orwell’s texts which are explained in chapter five. Finally, chapter five examines the summary of the study in which the findings are stated. The same chapter also concludes that modifiers are very crucial in the modification of texts. Other aspects which the chapter also examines are implications for the study and suggestions for further research.

A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF MODIFICATION IN ZAYNAB ALKALI’S THE STILLBORN AND GEORGE ORWELL’S ANIMAL FARM

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