Functional grammar

Functional theories of grammar Are those approaches to the study of language that see

the function of language and its elements to be key to understanding linguistic processes and structures.

It differs from formal theories of grammar.

This means that functional theories of grammar tend to pay attention to the way language is actually used in communicative context, and not just to the formal relations between linguistic elements.

Functional Grammar(FG) and Functional Discourse Grammar(FDG) Are grammar models and theories motivated by

functional theories of grammar.

Functional discourse grammar has been developed as successor to functional grammar, attempting to be more psychologically and pragmatically adequate than functional grammar.

The top-level unit analysis in functional discourse grammar is the discourse move, not the sentence or the clause.

HISTORY Functional grammar is a model of a grammar

motivated by functions. The model is originally developed by Simon C. Dik at the University of Amsterdam in the 1970s, and has undergone several revisions since then.

The latest version features the expansion of the model with a pragmatic/interpersonal module by KeesHengeveld and Lachlan Mackenzie.

Constituents of a linguistic utterance are assigned three types or levels of functions: 1. Semantic Function (Agent, Patient, Recipient, etc.),

describing the role of participants in states if affairs or action expressed.

2. Syntactic functions(Subject and Object), defining different perspectives in the presentation of a linguistic expression.

3. Pragmatic function(Theme and Tail, Topic and Focus), defining the informational status of constituents, determined by the pragmatic context of the verbal interaction.

Systematic functional grammar (SFG)

Is a form of grammatical description by Michael Halliday. It is part of a social semiotic approach to language called systemic functional linguistics.

Danish Functional Linguistics Is an open research community which has existed since

1989 at the southern (Amager) campus University of Copenhagen.

Among the central features is the assumption that languages are essentially means of pragmatic interaction, which are specially designed to draw on the cognitive systems of language users in ways that constitute a structured potential for use. Actual practice and linguistic potential mutually presuppose each other: the structured potential is distilled out of ongoing practice, and actual practice only functions if users can draw on the stored potential.

Since the structural revolution in early 20th

century, linguistics has been divided into approaches based on the autonomy thesis and approaches focusing on language as a medium for cognitive, communicative and social processes. On both sides of the divide there has been a gradual increase in the level of sophistication, theoretically as well as empirically. Among other things, the emergence of the umbrella discipline of cognitive science has sparked off a new development where the description of language is part of an integrated exploration of the overall cognitive potential of the human mind.

Since 1989 a number of Danish linguists based in RUC, CBS, and University of Copenhagen, have formed a research community that has made a distinctive contribution to the development of linguistics by exploring how morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of language can be integrated into an overall approach based on function.

Structural features may present misleading picture of language when they are artificially isolated from the rest but they have an important role to play if they are seen as ways of structuring and formalizing functional properties of languages. In the bibliography are listed a number of books and articles where Danish linguists associated with the functional linguistic working community have discussed issues in modern linguistics.

Lexical functional grammar (LFG) Is a grammar framework in theoretical linguistics, a

variety of generative grammar. It is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar the development of theory was initiated by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, in reaction to the direction research in the area of transformational grammar had begun to take.

The primary structures that have figured in LFG research are:

The representation of grammatical functions (f-structure).

The structure of syntactic constituents (c-structure)

For example, in the sentence The old woman eats the falafel, the c-structure analysis is that this is a sentence which is made up of two pieces, a noun phrase (np)and a verb phrase (VP). The VP itself made up two pieces, a verb(V) and another NP. The NPs analyzed into their parts. Finally, the bottom of the structure is composed of the words out of which the sentence is constructed. The f-structure analysis, on the other hand, treats the sentence as being composed of attributes, which include features such as number and tense or functional units such as subject, predicate, or object.

There are other structures which are hypothesized in LFG work: Argument structure (a-structure), a level which

represents the number of arguments for a predicate and some aspects of the lexical semantics of these arguments.

Semantic structure (s-structure), a level which represents the meaning of phrases and sentences.

Information structure (i-structure)

Morphological structure (m-structure)

Phonological structure (p-structure)

The LFG conception of language differs from Chomskyan theories, which have always involved separate levels of constituent structure representation being mapped onto each other sequentially, via transformations.

Another feature of LFG is that grammatical function changing operations like passivation are said to be lexical.

Through the positing of productive processes in the lexicon and the separation of structure and function, LFG is able to account for syntactic patterns without the use of transformations defined over syntactic structure.

A central goal in LFG research is to create a model of grammar with a depth which appeals to linguists while at the same time being efficiently parsable and having the rigidity of formalism which computational linguists require.

Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) Is a model of grammar developed by William Foley and

Robert Van Valin Jr. in the 1980s, which incorporates many of the points of view of current functional grammar theories.

In RRG, the description of a sentence in a particular language is formulated in terms of (a) its logical (semantic) structure and communicative functions, and (b) the grammatical procedures that are available in the language for the expression of these meanings.

Among the main features of RRG are the use of lexical decomposition, based upon the predicate semantics of David Dowty(1979), an analysis of clause structure, and the use of a set of thematic roles organized into a hierarchy in which the highest-ranking roles are ‘Actor’ (for the most active participant) and ‘Undergoer’.

IMPLICATIONS:

Firstly, it is based on the notion of choice - it models grammar as a set of options (a repertoire or resource).

Secondly, functional grammar looks at the way in which grammar is used to construct texts in their context of use

Thirdly, functional grammar is concerned with the way in which grammar is organized to make meaning.

Overall, functional grammar is concerned with the way that the different kinds of meaning that contribute to grammatical structure are comprehensively addressed. It is concerned with resources for

a. analysing experience

b. analysing interaction

c. analysing the ways in which messages are constructed