Chapter 2 : Towards A Functional Grammar
2.1 Towards A Grammatical Analysis
Before we start analyze sentence or text, here are three kinds of content word that we should to
know :
1. Names of entites
a. Common names : example
- person compatriots
- things, concrete, soil, country, trees
general
- things, concrete, jacaranda, mimosa
specific
- things, abstract hesitation, sense, renewal, mood
b. proper names : Pretoria
2. Names of process
a. doing & happening touches, change(s), bloom
b. sensing & saying saying, feel, moved
c. being & having have, is, are, turns
3. Names of qualities
evaluative Beautiful, famous
emotive Attached, intimately, personal, national
Here are some example about word class :
a. Syntagmatic/lexical
Change : mood, season
Grass : flower, garden
Flower : bloom
Its about what you see or read, with what you think about it.
b. Syntagmatic/grammatical
The formula is : determiner + adjective + noun + noun + preposition + noun
Example
D A N N P+N
The famous jacaranda trees of Pretoria
The mimosa trees of the bushveld
The soil of this beautiful
country
c. Paradigmatic/lexical
Word association tests carried out many years ago showed that people associated words
along both axes: if asked what other words sprang to mind when they heard tree they would
come up both with words that were related syntagmatically, like green and grow, and with words
that were related paradigmatically like grass and bush. Of course, many pairs of words are
related in both ways, like tree and branch; they enter into a systemic contrast (a branch is part of
a tree), but they also collocate, as in climbed up the branch of a tree.
d. Paradigmatic/grammatical
Please see the table below
person : Speaker (+) Addressee (+) Other (+)
Number : (1st person) (2nd person) (3rd person)
Singular I/me you He/him she/her, it
Plural We/us They/them
2.2 The lexicogrammar cline
It has some techniques, either of these techniques may be extended all the way along the
cline – but with diminishing returns: what the dictionary has to say about ‘grammatical words’
like the and to and if 3 is not very helpful; and while we can quite helpfully describe lexical
items in terms of systems of features, the level of generality achieved is low. It is helpful because
it shows how, when you choose a word, you are selecting among certain sets of contrasting
features.
In our grammatical perspective they appear, as we have said, as medium delicacy
grammar – the most delicate grammar being lexis itself. If we maintain the grammarian’s
viewpoint all the way across the cline, lexis will be defined as grammar extended to the point of
maximum delicacy. It would take at least a hundred volumes of the present size to extend the
description of the grammar up to that point for any substantial portion of the vocabulary of
English; and, as we have noted, the returns diminish the farther one proceeds.
2.3 Grammaticalization
didn’t succeed ... nowise (or in no way) succeeded ... failed
These all contain a semantic feature ‘negative’; but it is construed in different ways – at
different points along the lexicogrammatical cline. In failed the ‘negative’ is lexicalized; in
didn’t succeed it is grammaticalized; while in nowise succeeded it is semi-grammaticalized – it is
construed somewhere around the mid-point, with nowise occurring in an extended system
including never, at no time/seldom, rarely/hardly ever/nowhere/... These expressions also
contain a semantic feature ‘past time’. But this is grammaticalized in all three, with the vd form
(the past tense form) of the verb.
Grammaticalization is not dependent on how the categories are realized. They may be
realized in a variety of ways: a change in the form, articulatory or prosodic, of some word or
words; an addition of some element, to a word, a group or a clause; a change in the order of
words, groups, or clauses. The realization may not be the same for all categories or in all
environments; but it will be systematic in some way in the majority of cases, enough to establish
and maintain the proportionality – with only a minority of ‘exceptions’ (which are likely to
include some of the more frequent items).
2.4 Grammar and the Corpus.
The corpus was originally conceived as a tool for the study of grammar: Quirk referred
tohis Survey as ‘an NED of English usage’, and it played a fundamental part in the preparation of
A comprehensive grammar of the English language. But as it evolved into its present
computerized form, the corpus was taken over by lexicologists (particularly lexicographers), and
it is still thought of mainly in this connection today7 although the recent Longman grammar of
spoken and written English, developed by D. Biber et al. (1999), is a corpus-based grammar.
It is much easier, if one is using automated techniques, to retrieve lexical information
than to retrieve grammatical information. The data are stored in orthographic form, using
standard spelling and punctuation: if the text originated in writing, it is stored exactly in the
original form (at first keyed in on a word processor, subsequently either scanned or obtained
already in electronic form); if the text was originally spoken, it is transcribed (and often
normalized) according to the same orthographic conventions.
Please see this table
Highest Highest axis of analysis : Automatic analysis Manual analysis
rank of
analysis :
Clause Paradigmatic + syntagmatic Sysfan [Wu, 2000];
WAG Coder
[0’Donnell, 1994];
UAM CorpusTool
[0’Donnell, 2011]
Syntagmatic only : function Functional Grammar
structure Processor [Webster,
1993]; Systematic
[Kay 0’Halloran &
Kevin Judd]
Syntagmatic : syntagm Standard parses, example
Helsinki functional
dependency parser
Word Taggers; concordancing
programs, example
MonoConc, WordSmith,
ConcGram [Greaver, 2009],
SysConc [Wu, 2000],
COBUILD tools.
2.5 Classes and Function
What grammarians do, as we have been suggesting in these first two chapters, is to
construct an abstract model of the system of language, based on observation of language
instantiated in use. The computerized corpus has made this evidence available in sufficient
quantity for the first time. But the relation between what we observe on the screen (or take in in
any other form, as written or spoken discourse) and the abstract categories that we construct in
order to explain how the language works – how people exchange meanings discursively in real-
life situations – is extremely complex and indirect.
A class is a set of items that are in some respect alike (cf. Halliday, 1963c). The most
familiar, in our traditional grammar, are classes of words: verb, noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun,
preposition, conjunction (and sometimes also interjection), in the usual list. But every unit can be
classified: there are classes of group and phrase, classes of clause, and, at the other end of the
rank scale, classes of morpheme. Word classes were traditionally called ‘parts of speech’,
through mistranslation of the Greek term meroi logou, which actually meant ‘parts of a
sentence’.
Please see the table bellow
Inflection for : Word Classes :
Number, case Noun
Number, case, gender Adjective
Tense, person Verb
(none) (other words)
Consider for example the class of ‘noun’ in English. A general definition would involve
both grammatical and semantic considerations, with some of the grammatical features having an
overt manifestation and others not:
(semantic:) expresses a person, other being, inanimate object or abstraction, bounded or
unbounded, etc.
(grammatical:) is either count or mass; if count, may be either singular or plural, plural
usually inflected with -s; can be made possessive, adding -’s/-s’; can take the
in front; can be Subject in a clause, etc.
When we say that something is a noun, in English, we mean that it displays these
characteristics, or most of them, in common with some (but not all) other words in the language.
2.6 Subject, Actor, Theme
Subject’ is the label for a grammatical function of some kind (subject being the
Latin translation of a word in Greek, hypokeímenon, used as a grammatical term by Aristotle in
the sense of ‘that which is laid down, or posited’). There seems to be something in common, as
regards their status in the clause, to all the elements we have labelled in this way. But it is not so
easy to say exactly what this is; an it is difficult to find in the grammatical tradition a definitive
account of what the role of Subject means.
See the table bellow
a.
I Caught The first ball
Theme
Subject
Actor
b.
I Was beaten By the second
Theme Actor
Subject
c.
The third I Stopped
Theme Subject
Actor
d.
By the fourth I Was knocked out
Theme Subject
Actor
2.7 Three lines of meaning in the clause
Each of the three forms part of a different functional configuration, making up a separate
strand in the overall meaning of the clause. As a working approximation, we can define these
different strands of meaning as follows
a. The Theme functions in the structure of the clause as a message. A clause has meaning
as a message, a quantum of information; the Theme is the point of departure for the
message. It is the element the speaker selects for ‘grounding’ what he is going on to say.
b. The Subject functions in the structure of the clause as an exchange. A clause has
meaning as an exchange, a transaction between speaker and listener; the Subject is the
warranty of the exchange. It is the element the speaker makes responsible for the validity
of what he is saying.
c. The Actor functions in the structure of the clause as representation. A clause has
meaning as a representation of some process in ongoing human experience; the Actor is
the active participant in that process. It is the element the speaker portrays as the one that
does the deed.
These three headings – clause as a message, clause as an exchange, and clause as a
representation – refer to three distinct kinds of meaning that are embodied in the structure of a
clause. Each of these three strands of meaning is construed by configurations of certain particular
functions. Theme, Subject and Actor do not occur as isolates; each occurs in association with
other functions from the same strand of meaning.
Please see the table bellow
Metafunction Clause as… System Structure
Textual Message Theme Theme and Rheme
Interpersonal Exchange Mood Mood [subject+finite] + Residue
[Predicator (+Compliment)
(+Adjunct)]
Experiential Representation trasnsitivity Process + participant(s)
(+circumstances), example like
Process+Actor+Goal
Review
Analysis grammatical structure in sentence or text isn’t just talk about grammar in
ordinary way, but there are some specific parts that we should know and learn before trying to
analyze something. Which is “grammatical structure” is that really complex, different with
ordinary grammar that we see and teach in our ordinary life. So, we should know about it before
we start analyzing some sentence and text.