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INTRODUCING FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
WHAT IS LINGUISTICS?
Linguistics is the scientific study of language or of particular languages. There are many branches (cognitive linguistics, structural linguistics, functional linguistics…), depending on the focus we take, and applications (comparative linguistics, computational linguistics, forensic linguistics, historical linguistics… it can also be applied to solve real world problems). WHAT DO WE STUDY HERE? In this course we study systemic functional linguistics, more precisely functional grammar (FG). Systemic functional grammar is a theory of grammar and an area of systemic functional linguistics. It focuses on contextual meaning and language in use. It is oriented towards semantics. It is a functional (many functions) and descriptive (our aim is to provide a description of the functions played by language) way to study and to talk about language. A possible definition of Functional Grammar could be →“Functional Grammar is a descriptive grammar based on empirical research, not a prescriptive one which tells you what you can and cannot say, including rules for correcting what are often referred to as grammatical errors. A functional grammar, in other words, is not a grammar of etiquette or linguistic table manners” DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE [meaning and function are synonyms] the structure is still important because it is the starting point, but we don’t stop there. But, in our analyses, we break texts down into CLAUSES [form: noun, verbs…combining] A text
- is not defined in terms of length;
- must have meaning by itself and it must be self-sufficient; 3)is not necessarily written; 4)it must be coherent and cohesive.
WHY DO WE STUDY FG?
We study FG because there are real applications
- Discourse analysis (e.g. critical analysis of media discourse, including social media, political discourse, advertising etc…thanks to the tools of FG)
- Stylistics (the study of style e.g. studying the language of literature, e.g. “What are the main features used by Jane Austen”)
- Translation studies
- Foreign language teaching and learning
- Register studies
- Etc etc… BASIC TENETS IN FG: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONTEXT IN WHICH A TEXT IS PRODUCED Language takes place in CONTEXT. The 2 contexts of FG are:
- The context of culture (more wide-ranging): it is the set of values, ideas, believes that we share as members of the same culture (e.g. our cultural background is the Italian culture and history and the European background)
- The context of situation: it is our here and now of communication. The context of culture includes the context of situation. The meanings we convey while using language are strictly linked to both the cultural and the situational context in which language is used. Context of culture and context of situation include the text, which is realized through meanings (“meaning” is a synonym for “function”/ The systems of meanings are referred to as SEMANTICS), wordings (The systems of wordings are referred to as LEXICOGRAMMAR) and systems of sounds and symbols (The systems of sounds and systems are referred to as PHONOLOGY-GRAPHOLOGY).
The CONTEXT OF SITUATION is defined by 3 variables:
- FIELD: What is going on? In terms of Social activity Subject matter (topic of communication)
- TENOR: Who is taking part? In terms of Social roles (they are more fixed. It takes a lot of time to change them) Discourse roles (the role I am taking on in the discourse: speaker, listener, receiver; they are more flexible, they can change even during the same interaction, or you can be both at the same time…)
- MODE: What is the role of language? Channel (phonic, graphic e.g. chat, both…) Medium Monologue/dialogue? Spontaneous (face-to-face), prepared, semi prepared…? EXAMPLE: Our lesson
- FIELD Social activity: university lesson Subject matter: functional grammar The field influences our way of speaking because we use specific vocabulary, words like functional grammar , context of situation , analyze.
- TENOR Social roles: Teacher + Students Between teachers and students there is a physical and social distance, a hierarchical relationship. For this reason, we make the choice to use formal language. Discourse roles: respectively Speaker + listener (the teacher is giving out information but if a student participates, she and the student participate in both ways) They influence the use of questions instead of declarative or imperative clauses.
- MODE Channel: both phonic and graphic (slides) Medium Mainly a monologue, but we can participate. On the part of the teacher, semi-prepared also because there are slides; on the part of the students, it depends on whether they prepared for the class by reading in advance or not. If the mode is spontaneous and oral (?) it is less controlled, there are false starts, when we talk we tend to change the structure… On the other hand, in writing, e.g. in a chat, we tend to be less wordy Online, with the webcam off, we can’t relay on non-verbal communication (facial expressions, gestures…)
FG provides a full understanding of the structure/ meaning connection for each and every clause in a language, with three simultaneous views of the clause (called metafunctions; they classify the ways in which human beings use language): 1.IDEATIONAL Language is used to organize, understand and express our perceptions of the world and of our own consciousness. It is concerned with clauses as representations. Field activates Ideational meaning; it involves transitivity, clauses in combination→CLAUSE AS REPRESENTATION 2.INTERPERSONAL Language is used to enable us to participate in communicative acts with other people, to take on roles and to express and understand feelings, attitude and judgements. It is concerned with clauses as exchanges. Tenor activates Interpersonal meaning; it involves mood, modality, appraisal (=the language choices that we make to evaluate something or someone)→CLAUSE AS EXCHANGE
3. TEXTUAL Language is used to relate what is said (or written) to the real world and to other linguistic events. This involves the use of language to organize the text itself. The textual metafunction is concerned with clauses as messages. Mode activates Textual meaning; it involves structural and non-structural cohesion→CLAUSE AS MESSAGE
ESEMPI
SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS 1 (FIELD: IDEATIONAL: TRANSITIVITY: «WHAT IS GOING ON?»)
CLAUSE AS REPRESENTATION
Transitivity is a system of choice: the text maker (J.K Rowling), using language, wants to give linguistic form to this kind of situation. She could have written “hurt” but she chose that. In transitivity the question is: how is language used here to give linguistic form to reality? ES2: CLAUSE→ Professor x published a wonderful book about English literature. Entity, participant entity, participant Professor X: Actor (active role) A wonderful book: the goal (the entity that undergoes the process passively) ES3: CLAUSE→A wonderful book was published
- There is no actor in the linguistic structure, we are hiding who did the action
- Book: still the goal SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS 2 (TENOR: INTERPERSONAL: MOOD: «WHO IS TAKING PART?») CLAUSE AS EXCHANGE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS 3A (MODE: TEXTUAL: STRUCTURAL COHESION: «HOW DOES THE TEXT HANG TOGETHER?») CLAUSE AS MESSAGE SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS 3B (MODE: TEXTUAL: NON-STRUCTURAL COHESION: «HOW DOES THE TEXT HANG TOGETHER?») GOING BEYOND CLAUSE BOUNDARIES E.g.: Harry sprang toward the flame door, but Voldemort screamed "SEIZE HIM!" and the next second, Harry felt Quirrell's hand close on his wrist. Additional info
repetition of noun Harry ; him and his refer backwards to Harry (anaphoric reference)
GOING IN THROUGH FORM: UNIT 2
In this unit we are going to look at the ways in which we can split up the clause into parts, so that we can later go on to look at the particular functions each part serves. The sentence is a unit of writing, beginning with a capital letter and ending with a full stop/question mark. The clause is a unit of grammatical analysis. Some clauses are also, at the same time, sentences… but not all of them! Conversely, one sentence can be made up of more than one clause.
STRUCTURAL LABELS: THE RANK SCALE
The rank scale is a hierarchy to organize the units we can find in language. →MORPHEMES can be divided into 2 groups:
- Free morphemes: can stand alone
- Bound morphemes: can’t stand alone E.g. USEFUL→USE: free, it can be used alone as a noun; FUL: bound; used to form adjectives KEY red: Nominal Group →centered around a noun or an adjective green: Verbal Group pink: Adverbial Group purple: Prepositions grey: prepositional phrase →they start with a preposition; inside we find the different groups WORDS
- stretches of letters separated by spaces;
- stretches of sounds separated by pauses We call it a “group” even if there is only one word because there is potential for expansion: It could have been: “(while) we/have faced/extremely difficult challenges” Past Plural
PRE-MODIFICATION
Pre-Modifiers: they tend to appear in a specific, fixed order (the one below). They can be divided into 4 groups:
1. DEICTIC: possessives, demonstratives, articles (specific, indefinite)). The term comes from a Greek word meaning “to indicate”. They are used to indicate the Thing. 2. NUMERATIVE: quantifiers: cardinal numbers (one, two: how many); ordinal numbers (first, second, last…: in what order) 3. EPITHET: It describes the Thing, providing subjective or objective qualities
4. CLASSIFIER: nouns coming before the Thing, they classify it. Instead of describing the Thing, they specify the class to which the Thing belongs. lassifiers can’t accept the superlative form (very/more electric is incorrect)
POST MODIFICATION
Post-modifiers: they are also called qualifiers. An embedded PP or embedded clause providing additional defining information about the Thing of the NG. Notice that you cannot move a Qualifier to another position in the clause (at least not without strongly affecting the meaning). To embed: to fix something firmly into something else. Embedding: A unit (e.g., a clause, or a group) is expanded by the inclusion of another unit from a higher or the same rank in the rank scale (Thompson 2014: 24).
E.g.:
1.Much [of continental Europe] is hardening its attitude [to Brexit].
2.A large rose tree stood near the entrance [of the garden].
The embedded PPs are attached to the Ng they follow and they complete its meaning. They do not function as PPs in their own right. You cannot move an embedded element away from its NG to another position in the clause because if you do so the new word-order doesn’t make sense. If you remove it, we get a different clause and we lose part of the original meaning. [] ARE POST- MODIFIERS.
3.Harry had never believed/he would meet a boy/ [[he hated more than Dudley]]/,
but that was/ before he met Draco Malfoy/.
An embedded clause is a relative clause (in fact, that/who is missing) that has lost its status of “real” clause. If you take it out the text still makes sense but the meaning changes. We can’t move it. [embedded PP] [embedded PP] [Embedded PP] [[Embedded clause]]
Experiential meaning is expressed through the system of Transitivity. Logical meaning is expressed through the system of Clauses in combination.
PART 1: EXPERIENTIAL MEANINGS → TRANSITIVITY
TRANSITIVITY
Experiential meanings are accounted for by transitivity (Transitivity describes our experience of the world: ideational experiential meaning.) It falls within Field/ What is going on?/ Clause as representation. The transitivity system: actions, activities, events, people, things, animals, abstract things providing additional information and details. Transitivity includes a set of resources for referring to entities in the world and the ways in which those entities act on or relate to each other. The TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM is analysed in terms of:
- a Process (the core) realized by a VG (or by words like “the reading”)
- typically, one or more Participants in the Process (the core), realized by NGs
- often, one or more Circumstances, which provide additional information about the event (optional), realized by PPs, AGs, NGs. →conjunctions have no function in transitivity! There are six Process categories, each with its own Participant roles: Presence or absence of the goal depends on whether the verb is transitive or not
The brass number 4 was lit up by the sun (the brass number 4: goal; by the sun: actor) Remember: actor and subject are not the same! The order in which Participants occur does not change their experiential role (e.g. «They make food» →Actor ^ Mat. Process ^ Goal, but «Food is made by them» Goal ^ Mat. Process ^ Actor).
PART 2: LOGICAL MEANINGS → CLAUSES IN COMBINATION (INCLUDES TAXIS AND
LOGICO SEMANTIC RELATIONS)
1.TAXIS refers to the dependency status of the clauses in a clause complex. There are 2
possibilities: o The term ‘Hypotaxis’ ( subordination) is used to refer to a relationship in which one clause is dependent on another (called ‘main’ clause). o The term ‘Parataxis’ ( coordination) is used when two independent clauses (that can stand alone) are joined. The difference between Hypo- and Parataxis mainly depends on the kind of connector (or connecting device) used to link the clauses, or it depends on the kind of projection. If 2 clauses are linked by parataxis you can omit the subject. →” I went to Santa ristina thinking I’d find my teacher there” (the presence of a non-finite verbs means hypotaxis).
2.LOGICO-SEMANTIC RELATIONS : the fundamental difference is between EXPANSION and
PROJECTION. Within expansion we find EXTENSION, ELABORATION and ENHANCEMENT. The difference between Expansion and Projection (and, within Expansion, between Extension, Elaboration and Enhancement) depends on the logical relation being set up between the clauses. PROJECTION: joining of clauses through verbal or mental Processes (see Unit on Transitivity). Verbal Processes project LOCUTIONS, mental Processes project IDEAS (reported or quoted).
EXPANSION
1)ELABORATION: In elaboration a clause equals the other
→In elaboration, one clause elaborates on the meaning of another by further specifying or describing it […]. The secondary clause does not introduce a new element into the picture but rather provides a further characterization of one that is already there, restating it, clarifying it, refining it etc.
Elaboration and taxis
Paratactic Elaboration : The elaborating clause may be introduced by ‘for example’, ‘for
instance’, ‘e.g.’, ‘that is’, ‘i.e.’, ‘namely’, ‘viz.’… Paratactic Elaboration functions to provide an explanation/exposition (restating something in other words), an exemplification or a clarification
«I do what I can to make the word a happier place: for example, I had my coffee
today» embedded It doesn’t give any new, worth
noticing information. It is just an elaboration.
«The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley and in their opinion there was no finer
boy anywhere»
«The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret»
Hypotactic Extension: The extending clause in this case may be introduced by ‘while’ (with
additive or adversative meaning, i.e. NOT the temporal ‘while’), ‘whereas’, ‘instead of’, ‘rather than’, ‘except that/ for’…
«Alice was surprised to find quite a large crowd collected round the Cheshire Cat:
1)there was a dispute going on between the executioner, the King, and the Queen,/
2)who were all talking at once,/3)while all the rest were quite silent,/4)and looked
very uncomfortable»
2)non-embedded (because it is between commas ), hypotactic, relative clause 3)Hypotactic, extending clause 4)Paratactic, extending clause NOTI E that, in this example, the hypotactic extension introduced by ‘while’ is followed by another extending clause, this time paratactic, introduced by ‘and’.
3)ENHANCEMENT: In enhancing a clause is multiplied by the other.
→ In enhancement one clause […] enhances the meaning of another by qualifying it in one of a number of possible ways: by reference to time, place, manner, cause or condition» CIRCUMSTANTIAL INFORMATION involved, similar to the Circumstances of Transitivity, but this time expressed in/by a different clause: We do not just add a bit of info, but a bit of info that has to do with circumstances.
Es: I locked the door because of fear. →circumstantial info about why
ENHANCEMENT AND TAXIS:
Paratactic Enhancement: The enhancing clause may be introduced by different kinds of
paratactic connectors expressing circumstantial information (when, why, how etc.), such as ‘so’, ‘(and) then’, ‘still’…
«Down, down, down: there was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking
again»
«Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and
bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question»
Hypotactic Enhancement: The enhancing clause is introduced by different kinds of hypotactic
connectors expressing circumstantial information, such as temporal ‘while’, ‘since’, ‘because’, ‘as’, ‘after’, ‘before’, ‘if’, ‘(in order) to’, ‘so that’, ‘unless’, ‘although’…
‘I could tell you my adventures, beginning from this morning,’ said Alice a little
timidly: ‘but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person
then’
«Harry woke early the next morning. Although it was daylight, he kept his eyes shut
tight»
PROJECTION
There are 2 main kinds of projected clauses, depending on the verb (Process) that projects:
o Mental Processes project Ideas
→ ‘I’m glad I’ve seen that done’, thought Alice».
PROJECTED IDEA (think = mental Process)
o Verbal Processes project Locutions
→ ‘I’m Ron Weasley’, Ron muttered».
PROJECTED LOCUTION (mutter = verbal Process)
Projection and taxis
Projecting clause because it contains a mental process
