1. Introduction

Explored the role of definiteness as a core and controversial grammatical category in linguistics, and its attributes in different grammatical units such as verbs, verb phrases, and clauses. Restrictiveness was originally used to describe the consistency and tense changes between Latin and English, but traditional English grammar views it as a property of verb phrases. Traditional grammar, generative grammar, and functional typology all express the definiteness of clauses, but there is controversy, such as the distinction between finite and non finite clauses in Chinese. Giv ó n proposed that clause qualification is a set of grammatical features with hierarchical characteristics. This study adopts a systemic functional grammar perspective, aiming to provide a new understanding of restrictive categories and address their issues of meaning, form differentiation, and universality.

2. Limitations and limiting components of propositions

The expression of Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG) explores the limitedness of propositions and their relationship with limiting components. The limitedness of clauses is influenced by their degree of freedom, with free clauses being debatable and restricted clauses having weaker limitedness. Dependent clauses and degraded clauses can be either finite or non finite in form, but the debatability of degraded clauses is weaker. The definiteness of a proposition reflects its debatability, and the restrictive components structurally reflect the definiteness of the proposition. In English, finite elements express the definiteness of propositions through tense, modality, and degree of inflection. The research aims to explore the universality of propositional restrictive categories and restrictive components through cross linguistic surveys, as well as the differences in expressing propositional qualifiers in different languages.

3. Research Design

The research design was introduced, including the establishment of a sample of 70 languages covering five continents, 31 language families, and multiple types of word order forms. Research is divided into three steps: observation, description, and comparative generalization. During the observation phase, proposition specific information is locked in through corpus and data, mainly sourced from reference grammar, Ethnologue, and the WALS website. The descriptive stage is based on SFG to describe the syntactic components and clause tone structures of the sample language, using a unified theoretical paradigm and terminology system, while respecting the characteristics of each language. Finally, through cross linguistic comparison, explore the differences in the way and structure of expressing proposition limitation in different languages, and summarize the types.

4. Results and Discussion

This study found that the definiteness of propositions is universal in all languages, expressed through universal mood structural components. There are differences in the way propositions are expressed and the structure of limiting components among different languages. Specifically, the ways of expressing propositional limitations are mainly divided into two categories: temporal methods and speaker judgments.

5. Conclusion

This chapter explores proposition limitation from the perspective of systemic functional grammar, pointing out that it reflects the debatability of clauses in meaning and is structurally related to the degree of freedom and limiting components of clauses. The study found through cross linguistic investigation that proposition limitation has universality, and the limiting component is a universal tone structure component. The ways in which language expresses propositional limitations can be divided into two categories: temporal methods and speaker judgments. Different languages have differences in the lexical, grammatical, and default expressions of limiting components. This study provides a new perspective for the study of restrictive categories in clauses, which is helpful for conducting cross linguistic comparative research and addressing restrictive issues in a single language.