A Functional Analysis Of The Nominal Group Structures In "There Was A Saviour"

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to explore the ways in which a close analysis of linguistic features can show how some key literary meanings are made. In the poem "There was a Saviour" by Dylan Thomas there are careful shifts in the religious representation of "the Saviour", and these shifts can be associated with certain parallel changes or developments in the structure of the nominal groups used throughout the five stanzas of the poem.
The nominal group structure is analyzed carefully into five elements: Head, Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, and Qualifier. Dylan Thomas employed them in different degrees in relation to the structural complexity of the nominal groups; he relies heavily on the Qualifier, and the Epithet to increase the structural complexity of the nominal groups in the poem.