Transparency in Functional Discourse Grammar

Abstract

Languages differ widely from one another in the extent to which they are transparent, i.e. obey one-to-one relationships between meaning and form. This paper sets up a framework in which these cross-linguistic differences can be studied systematically, using the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar. Transparent and transparent relationships are defined using the multi-level architecture of this model of language, representing these relationships as mappings between and within levels.