A Systemic Functional Analysis of Clausal Subordination in Daily Trust and Aláròyé Newspaper Columns

Abstract

Clausal and phrasal systems are very often examined in the study of syntax. However, grammatical elements such as subordinators are not often examined especially in a syntactic analysis of a text. It is against this background that this research has a keen interest in the examination of subordination of clausal items in the back page columns of Daily Trust and Aláròyé newspapers published in English and Yoruba respectively. Whereas the newspaper columns possess eclectic linguistic features, the research is limited to a syntactic study of subordinated structures. The choice of these two texts is based on the fact that they are primarily published in North and South of Nigeria respectively even though they both permeate the entire country in terms of spread. Findings show that relative pronouns usually possess the meaning of the preceding nominals in Daily Trust but they do not possess the sense of the preceding nominal in Aláròyé. This implies that relative pronouns entirely lack ideation in the Yoruba-medium newspaper. Similarly, complementizers are mobile in the former but fixed in the latter. It is also discovered that other subordinators, apart from relativizers, have a strong ideational influence on the sense of the subordinate clause in both Aláròyé and Daily Trust.