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Interpersonal modality, bifurcating modalization and modulation, is an important construct of interpersonal meaning in the architecture of Systemic Functional Linguistics. By meticulously reviewing relevant studies from the perspectives of traditional modality and modality’s semantic map, three respects with respect to the system of interpersonal modality have been supplemented. Firstly, modalization, being subcategorized into possibility and usuality, is suggested to entertain evidentiality from the traditional sense. Secondly, considering the delicacy of the system of interpersonal modality, possibility in modalization should be further categorized into epistemic and root possibility; necessity as one subtype of modulation, superseding the original obligation in modulation, is subclassified into obligation and permission; inclination, being the other subtype of modulation, should be specified as the superordinate of volition and ability. Thirdly, the shifting of modal meanings from root possibility to epistemic possibility in modalization and from inclination to necessity in modulation should be clearly specified as far as language evolvement is concerned.

In Systemic Functional Linguistics, meanings in semantic stratum could be realized by congruent/premetaphorical, metaphorical, or demetaphorical/post-metaphorical expressions in lexico-grammatical stratum. This paper, evidenced from the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), explores the specific pathway from metaphorical expressions to post-metaphorical ones guided by principles of Context-first and AS IF and the principle of double functionality. The findings show that grammatical postmetaphorization is mainly realized by post-metaphor of ideation and that of modality. The former finds its expressions from common nouns to proper nouns (e.g. from security to Security), or from uncountable nouns to countable nouns (e.g. from security to securities), and the latter is evidenced by expressions shifting from explicit objective orientation to its explicit subjective counterpart (e.g. from it is possible that to it might be possible that), or by modal probability of I think type shifting from clausal initial position to clausal medial or final position (e.g. I think in the medial or final position of the clause).

The aim of this study was to develop a scale to measure students' STEM continuing motivation (CM). In accordance with the conceptualisation of CM by Maehr (1976. Continuing motivation: An analysis of a seldom considered educational outcome. "Review of Educational Research," 46(3), 443-462. doi:10.3102/00346543046003443), we define STEM CM as students' tendencies to actively engage in STEM-related activities. The STEM Continuing Motivation Scale was developed from a literature review and student cognitive interviews, and was validated on a sample of 465 Chinese 7th and 8th graders. The results demonstrated that the developed scale had high reliability (Cronbach's a = 0.91) and good validity. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that boys had significantly higher STEM CM than girls and there were significant differences in engineering CM among students from different schools. The implications of the findings of this study are also discussed.

Both collexeme analysis and correspondence analysis were implemented to investigate the relationship between congruent patterns of modality and metaphorical patterns of modality in different genres of American English and British English in this paper. The findings are summarised as follows: 1) modal adverbs and/or adjectives that are significantly attracted to congruent patterns of modality are also significantly attracted to metaphorical patterns of modality in both varieties of English; 2) the significant attraction in both congruent and metaphorical patterns of modality is genre-sensitive, i.e., it preferably happens in academic genre for the purpose of making propositions at issue non-negotiable and projecting authoritative stances to non-communicative readers; 3) the same significant attraction in both patterns of modality occurs more preferably in British academic genre than in American academic genre. This research is of significance in that it highlights not only metaphorical patterns of modality but also congruent patterns of modality; additionally, it also bridges theories in Systemic Functional Linguistics and advanced approaches such as collexeme analysis and correspondence analysis in Corpus Linguistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammatical metaphor in M. A. K. Halliday's sense has long been extensively investigated by researchers in terms of theoretical and empirical studies. Regarding the empirical studies, they have predominantly employed observed or normalized frequencies of grammatical metaphor to uncover its distribution in different text types. Few studies, however, were conducted to quantitatively examine the complexity of grammatical metaphor in that no indicator presently is proposed to measure the degree of complexity in grammatical metaphor. This paper targeted at investigating the feasibility of implementing entropy to measure this complexity. The findings demonstrate that the entropy value could be afforded as an indicator of complexity of grammatical metaphor to efficiently uncover the way that disciplines of different registers build knowledge by means of employing such linguistic features as grammatical metaphor. This research is significant in that it sheds light on the quantitative comparison of complexity of grammatical metaphor in text analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]