A Case Study of ESWIS in Written and Oral English

This paper first draws a distinction between English inanimate sentences(EIS) and English sentences with inanimate subjects(ESWIS) and then,with a written text and its corresponding oral discourse from M.A.K.Halliday as research data,makes a contrastive case study of the distribution and pragmatic features of EIS and ESWIS in the text and discourse.The study shows: 1) EIS are evenly distributed in both the text and the discourse,while ESWIS mostly exist in the text;2) EIS in the written text appear overwhelmingly in the passive construction and EIS in the oral discourse occur mostly in the S+V+C pattern,while ESWIS in both the text and the discourse exist chiefly in the S+V+O pattern;3) ESWIS exist abundantly in the written text and appear scarcely in the oral discourse with different pragmatic features: ESWIS in the written text enjoy a high degree of animacy and metaphoricity and are therefore characterized by their vividness,while ESWIS in the oral discourse bear a low degree of animacy and metaphoricity and are therefore typical of their plainness.