Syntax in Functional Grammar This page intentionally left blank Syntax in Functional Grammar An introduction to lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics G. DAVID MORLEY CONTINUUM London and New York Continuum Wellington House 370 Lexington Avenue 125 Strand New York London WC2R OBB NY 10017-6503 First published 2000 © G. David Morley 2000 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-4734-1 (hardback) 0-8264-4735-X (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Morley, G. David (George David), 1943- Syntax in functional grammar : an introduction to lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics / by G. David Morley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8264-^734-1 - ISBN 0-8264-4735-X (pbk.) 1. Grammar, Comparative and general - Syntax. 2. Systemic grammar. I. Title. P295.M67 2000 415-dc21 00-021925 Typeset by Paston PrePress Ltd, Beccles, Suffolk Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Guildford and King's Lynn Contents Introduction 1 Part I The linguistic framework 1 The systemic functional framework 7 1.1 The linguistic system 7 1.2 Context of situation 8 1.3 Language functions and the semantic stratum 11 1.4 The systemic orientation 17 2 The grammatical framework 21 2.1 The nature of the lexicogrammar 21 2.2 Units and the rank scale 23 2.3 Sentence, clause, phrase, word and morpheme 25 2.4 Unit complex and complex unit 27 Part II Class 3 Word class 31 3.1 Noun 31 3.2 Verb 33 3.3 Adjective 39 3.4 Adverb 40 3.5 Preposition 42 3.6 Conjunction 43 3.7 Interjection 45 3.8 Article 45 3.9 Pronoun 45 3.10 Determiner: a functional element 50 3.11 Labelling the word classes 51 4 Phrase class 53 4.1 Nominal phrase 53 4.2 Verbal phrase 55 4.3 Adjectival phrase 55 4.4 Adverbial phrase 55 4.5 Prepositional phrase 56 4.6 Subordinator phrase 56 4.7 Genitive phrase 57 4.8 Labelling the phrase classes 58 vi Contents 5 Clause class 59 5. 1 Main and subordinate clauses 59 5.2 Nominal clause 63 5.3 Adjectival clause 64 5.4 Adverbial clause 66 5.5 Labelling the clause classes 68 6 Sentence class 69 6. 1 Formal types of sentence 69 6.2 The sentence as clause complex 70 6.3 Labelling the sentence 71 7 Formal syntactic analysis 72 Part III Structure 8 Sentence structure 83 8. 1 Free and bound elements 83 8.2 Traditional classification of bound elements 86 8.3 Contemporary classification of free and bound elements 86 8.4 Integral and supplementary bound elements 89 8.5 Functional analysis of sentence structure 90 9 Clause structure 91 9.1 Subject 91 9.2 Predicator and Finite 95 9.3 Complement 99 9.4 Adjunct 104 9.5 Z element 108 9.6 Functional analysis of clause structure 109 10 Elements of clause structure revised 111 10.1 Determining the elements of clause structure 111 10.2 Nominally functioning elements 113 10.2.1 Subject 113 10.2.2 Object 114 10.2.3 Complement 116 10.3 Adjectivally functioning elements 117 10.4 Adverbially functioning elements 117 10.4.1 Circumstantial adverbials 117 10.4.2 Adjunct adverbials 120 10.5 Predicator 122 10.6 Functional analysis of clause structure revised 123 11 Phrase structure 126 11.1 Nominal phrase 126 11.1.1 Determiner 127 11.1.2 Modifier 131 11.1.3 Qualifier 134 1 1 .2 Adjectival phrase 136 11.3 Adverbial phrase 137 1 1 .4 Prepositional phrase 139 11.5 Genitive phrase 144 Contents vii 11.6 Verbal phrase 146 1 1 .7 Subordinator phrase 149 11.8 Functional analysis of phrase structure 150 12 Word structure 151 12.1 Morpheme, morph and allomorph 151 12.2 Word structure 152 13 Functional syntactic analysis 156 Part IV Complexity and complementation 14 Complexity (1) 165 14.1 Recursion 165 14. 1 . 1 Linear and embedded recursion: the traditional analysis 165 14. 1 .2 Bound and rankshifted clauses reviewed 169 14.2 Discontinuity 175 14.3 Phase 176 15 Complexity (2) 182 15.1 Apposition 182 15.2 Thematic focusing 188 1 5.2. 1 Extrapositional construction 188 1 5.2.2 Predicated theme / cleft construction 189 15.2.3 Pseudo-cleft construction 190 15.2.4 Existential 'there' construction 190 15.3 Prepositional passives 194 16 More on complementation 197 16. 1 Verbal phrase complementation 197 16.2 Nominal phrase qualifiers and complements 203 16.3 Adjectival phrase complementation 210 17 Revised functional syntactic analysis 221 1 7. 1 Clause structure elements - default modes unmarked 221 17.2 Clause structure elements - Predicator and Verbal element 221 17.3 Phrase structure - substructure analysis 224 1 7.4 Phrase structure - headword analysis 225 17.5 Phrase structure - phrasal elements 225 17.6 Postscript 235 Select bibliography 237 Index 242 This page intentionally left blank Introduction One of the many remarkable things about language is that we can use it daily without any real awareness of how it is structured. Likewise we can use it in very different circumstances without being at all conscious of the important role played by the particular situation on our choice of language wording. Yet a change, for example, in the social role we are playing or in who we are talking to will typically prompt us to alter, sometimes quite significantly, the actual form of words we use. Indeed, it is by the selection not just of lexical items but also of grammatical structures that we are able to express different meanings. In this way we can begin to point to the link between language wording, meaning expressed and situational context. The theory of systemic grammar was originally formulated by M.A.K. Halliday in the early 1960s. Michael Halliday had been a student of the British linguist J.R. Firth and his early formulation owes much to the influence of Firth's teaching. But as the theory developed, it increasingly began to represent an advance on Firth's own thinking. From its very beginnings, though, systemic grammar has been marked by its recognition that all language, whether it occurs in the form of a book, a letter, a group discussion, a casual conversation, or a person's emotional outpourings, takes place in the context of a social situation, that the situation has a impact on the nature and meaning of the language used and that any account of language must therefore include reference to that context of use. In the first half of the 1960s the theory was known as 'scale and category grammar' (see Halliday 1961). To begin with, attention was focused largely on grammatical structure alone. The theory saw the linguistic system as comprising the level of form, itself made up of lexis and grammar, together with two interlevels, context and phonology. Context provided the link between situation and form, and phonology provided the link between form and sound. The grammar set out to handle the analysis of stretches of language that had actually occurred, so that at this stage the grammar was descriptive rather than generative. Any corpus of written or spoken language material selected for descriptive analysis was known as 'text' and to facilitate grammatical description a framework of categories ('unit', 'structure', 'class' and 'system') and scales ('rank', 'exponence', 'delicacy' and 'depth') was established. Hence the derivation of the name 'scale and category grammar'. During the latter half of the 1960s Halliday's work became influenced by ideas on the functional nature of language. This appreciation of functions of language was not, of course, in itself new. In the 1920s and 1930s Malinowski1 and Buhler2 had discussed the notions of a conative function in which language acts as a form of social control, of an expressive function in which language serves to express a speaker's feelings, and of an ideational/representational function in which language is a means of communicating ideas. These ideas about function now had a profound effect on the nature of systemic grammar, and a multifunctional semantic dimension was not just added to the overall grammatical framework but in fact became central to it (see, for example, Halliday 1967-68, 1969b, 1970b). Resulting from the inclusion of this new dimension, which was presented in terms of three broad metafunctions - the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual - reflecting three types of meaning in language, the grammar no longer sought merely to analyse the syntactic (or, in Halliday's terms, the lexicogrammatical) structure of stretches of actual text. Interest now switched to accounting for the nature of the total system of linguistic meaning available to the native speaker of a language and for the selection of actual options which a person makes when using that language on any particular occasion. These options are thus selected not from the syntax but from the semantics of the grammar, and they represent the choices of meaning which the speaker or writer selects and 2 Introduction expresses in the context of a given situation. The options are then realized as elements of the language structure, that is to say as the various component parts of the lexical, grammatical and phonological form being spoken or written. In this way the grammar had thus become generative.