Serbian Nominal Groups: System and Structure

Abstract

This paper presents a study on nominal groups in Serbian grounded in systemic functional grammar (SFG). Its aim is to complement traditional and formal descriptions of nominal group structures in Serbian and contribute to growing SFG research on nominal groups across languages. Adopting a top-down approach to investigating the relationship between systems and structures, this study uses registerial variables (field and mode) and discourse semantic systems (ideation and identification) as points of departure. The study’s data has been extracted from a focus text published by Radio Television Serbia (RTS), complemented by examples from the Corpus of Contemporary Serbian (SrpKor2013). To explore the ideational resources of Serbian nominal groups, this paper reviews the features of four systems: classification, epithesis, numeration, and focus. To investigate the textual resources of Serbian nominal groups, the paper continues with the detailed discussions of the deixis, selection, and qualification systems.