Systemic functional grammar
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Systemic functional grammar is a grammar model developed by Michael Halliday. This model has been used by Richard Hudson to develop word grammar.
The model is systemic in the sense that it sees grammar as a non-arbitrarily motivated network (system) of potential choices. It is functional in the sense that it attempts to explicate the communicative implications (function) of a selection within one of these systems.
In general, functional approaches to grammar can be differentiated from formal or generative approaches to grammar by their focus on the communicative, as opposed to cognitive, aspect of language. The roots of Systemic Functional Grammar lie in sociology and anthropology rather than psychology and computer science.
Organisation of the grammatical model
Systemic Functional Grammar divides the social purpose of language into three semantic prongs which the grammar interleaves. Language is seen as a representation of reality, transmitted for a specific purpose, and structured as a message. Halliday calls these three aspects metafunctions, and uses them to explain the logic behind wording choices. According to Systemic Functional Grammar:
The ideational metafunction of a clause is the happening it encodes - the 'who did what to whom' of the utterance. Analysed this way, a clause consists of a Process and some number of Participants in it. The participants are given functional labels depending on their role in the clause. Thus: "The duke gave my aunt that teapot." represents a Process of material action, 'giving'. This process has a Participant functioning as Actor ('doer'), the duke, a participant functioning as Goal ('done to'), the teapot, and a participant functioning as Beneficiary ('done for'), my aunt.
The interpersonal metafunction of a clause is the interaction between speakers it encodes. Distinctions of mood, tense and positive/negative fall under this metafunction. Thus, 'Did the duke give my aunt that teapot?' involves the same process and participants, but with a different communicative purpose - the speaker requests information instead of giving it. Similarly, tense distinctions position events relative to the speakers' frame of reference - past, future or present; while 'polarity' (positive/negative) distinctions position them according to the speakers' expectations.
The textual metafunction of a clause is the way it encodes its role in a greater span of communication - a text. Links between what has been said before and what is being said presently inhere in the order and intonation of each clause.
See also
Other significant Systemic functional grammarians:
External Links and References
- Systemic functional grammar (http://www.wagsoft.com/Systemics/index.html)
- Word grammar (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/wg.htm)