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Functional grammar
This article focuses mainly on functional grammar as developed by M.A.K.Halliday (see
Halliday, 1985) and it should be read in conjunction with those on SCALE AND
CATEGORY GRAMMAR and SYSTEMIC GRAMMAR. While Halliday’s version of
systemic grammar contains a functional component, and while the theory behind
functional grammar is systemic, Halliday (1985) concentrates exclusively on the
functional part of grammar ‘that is, the interpretation of the grammatical patterns in terms
of configurations of functions’ (Foreword, p. x); these, according to Halliday, are
particularly relevant to the analysis of text, where, by text, Halliday means ‘everything
that is said or written’ (Introduction, p. xiv). The focus here is on language in use, and,
indeed, Halliday (ibid.) defines a functional grammar as ‘essentially a “natural”
grammar, in the sense that everything in it can be explained, ultimately, by reference to
how language is used’.
Halliday’s functional grammar is not a formal grammar; indeed, he opposes the term
‘functional’ to the term ‘formal’. In this respect, it differs from the functional grammar
developed by S.C.Dik (1978), summarized in Dik (1980), and from Kay’s (1984, 1985)
functional unification grammar (see FUNCTIONAL UNIFICATION GRAMMAR). All
three types of functional grammar, however, display some influence from Prague School
linguistics, and Dik’s description of ‘a functional view of natural language’ differs from
Halliday’s in terminology only, if at all (1980, p. 46):
A language is regarded in the first place as an instrument by means of
which people can enter into communicative relations with one other [sic].
From this point of view language is primarily a pragmatic phenomenon—
a symbolic instrument used for communicative purposes.
However, while Halliday’s functional grammar begins from the premise that language
has certain functions for its users as a social group, so that it is primarily sociolinguistic
in nature, Dik concentrates on speakers’ competence, seing his grammar as (1980, p. 47)
‘a theory of the grammatical component of communicative competence’. The notion of
communicative competence derives from Hymes (1971a). It consists of grammatical
competence, the speaker’s ability to form and interpret sentences, and pragmatic
competence, the ability to use expressions to achieve a desired communicative effect.
Dik shares, in some measure, Chomsky’s view of grammar as a part of cognitive
psychology. Halliday makes no separation of grammatical and pragmatic competence; he
sees grammar as a meaning potential shared by a language and its speakers.
Dik’s functional grammar falls within the broad framework of transformationalgenerative
grammar, but differs from it in that it does not allow underlying constituent
order to differ from surface constituent order, and in that it does not allow constituents
which are not present in surface structure to be posited at some point in the derivation