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"Functional discourse grammar."
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Scientific literacy for participation : a systemic functional approach to analysis of school science discourses
Scientific literacy is approached on the premise that language is key to understand the nature of both learning and participation, in scientists{u2019} practices as well as in liberal education for citizenship. Some of the questions that are addressed in the book are: {u2022} What does it take to be able to participate in different arenas in society involving science? {u2022} How does everyday language relate to scientific language? {u2022} How can students{u2019} texts be analyzed to gain insights into their learning? {u2022} How can images be analyzed alongside verbal language? This book offers a thorough introduction to key ideas in M. A. K. Halliday{u2019}s systemic functional grammar through examples and practical analysis. Detailed analysis is offered of science textbooks and curriculum documents, classroom talk, experimental work, and students{u2019} discussions of complex environmental issues. Further, an analytical model guiding the design and analysis of science learning discourses is introduced. The book starts with introducing excerpts from whole-class discussions, group work, experimental reports and textbooks as text-in-context. From this starting point, key aspects of language are carefully explained. The role of grammatical metaphor in the development of science knowledge is an important topic throughout the book. Tools for analyzing multimodal representations, intertextuality and multiple voices are also among the topics covered for understanding and analyzing school science discourses.
Book
Recent Developments in Functional Discourse Grammar
This volume presents a collection of papers using the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) to analyse and explain a number of specific constructions or phenomena (external possessor contructions and binominal constructions, negation, modification, modality, polysynthesis and transparency) from different perspectives, language-specific, comparative and typological. In addition to applying the theory to the topics in question, these papers aim to contribute to the further development of the theory by modifying and extending it on the basis of new linguistic evidence from a range of languages, thus providing the latest state-of-the-art in FDG. The volume as a whole, however, does more than this, as separately and together the papers collected here aim to demonstrate how FDG, with its unique architecture, can provide new insights into a number of issues and phenomena that are currently of interest to theoretical linguists in general.
eBook
Functional Approaches to Language
Functionalism, as characterized by Allen, (2007:254) \"holds that linguistic structures can only be understood and explained with reference to the semantic and communicative functions of language, whose primary function is to be a vehicle for social interaction among human beings.\" Since the 1970s, inspired by the work of Jespersen, Bolinger, Dik, Halliday, and Chafe, functionalism has been attached to a variety of movements and models making major contributions to linguistic theory and to various subfields within linguistics, such as syntax, discourse, language acquisition, cognitive linguistics, typology, and documentary linguistics. Further, functional approaches have had a major impact outside linguistics in fields such as psychology and education, both in terms of theory and application. The main goal of functionalist approaches is to clarify the dynamic relationship between form and function (Thompson 2003:53). Functionalist perspectives have gained more ground over the past decades with more linguists resorting to functional explanations to account for linguistic structure. The authors in this volume present the current state of functional approaches to linguistic inquiry expanding our knowledge of language and linguistics.
eBook
When English complement clauses meet evidential adverbs
There is much literature about the licensing of complement clauses by complement-taking predicates. However, less has been written about the licensing of adverbs in a complement clause. This article addresses the licensing of English evidential adverbs in complement clauses extracted from the NOW corpus. The article discusses three factors that determine the distribution of evidential adverbs in complement clauses. These are the nature of the evidential adverbs, the constraints of the complement clause and the anchor of the evidential adverb. To explore the role of these three factors, I adopt the hierarchical scopal theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). If a complement clause licenses the inclusion of the evidential adverb, then there is a match. Should there be no alignment between the complement clause and the adverb, there will be a mismatch. The results of the analysis of the data show that there are mostly matches, which occur with either a current speaker anchor or an actor anchor. Secondly, it appears that in cases of mismatches, there is always a current speaker. It thus appears that a current speaker anchor can override the constraints of the complement clause.
Journal Article
The problem of non-truth-conditional, lower-level modifiers: a Functional Discourse Grammar solution
This article discusses two groups of prosodically and linearly integrated modifiers: evaluative (‘subject-oriented’) adverbs (e.g. cleverly, stupidly and recklessly) and non-restrictive prenominal modifiers (e.g. old as in my old mother). What these two groups of elements have in common is the rather puzzling fact that both are (or have been analysed as) relatively low-level modifiers (i.e. as part of the proposition), while at the same time being non-truth-conditional/non-restrictive (suggesting they are non-propositional). In this article it is argued that although there is indeed compelling syntactic evidence that these elements modify a relatively low layer in the clause (proposition or lower), this need not be incompatible with their non-truth-conditional/non-restrictive status. Using the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), an analysis is proposed in which these elements are not part of the proposition expressed by the clause in which they occur, but instead form part of a separate proposition, in which they function as non-verbal predicates taking a specific layer of analysis (e.g. a proposition, State-of-Affairs, entity or property) as their argument. The analysis proposed not only reconciles the specific semantic and syntactic properties of the modifiers in question, but also reveals the similarities between the two groups of modifiers discussed.
Journal Article
The Variation of Classical Greek Wishes
This paper examines several unobserved variations of realizable Classical Greek wishes which radically change our conception of them. Using the layered approach to clause structure from Functional Discourse Grammar, I demonstrate that the wish optative has both a semantic and a pragmatic illocutionary value. Semantically, the wish optative, in Classical Greek, is non-subjective epistemic (instead of the previously proposed deontic) as witnessed by its contextual communicative value and its (infrequent) combinations with the subjective particles ἄρα and ἦ.
Realizable wishes have their own specific illocutionary value and sincerity condition. They express the speaker’s psychological commitment to a realizable state of affairs for several contextual reasons. I argue that εἴθε and εἰ γάρ, which, contrary to common opinion, are highly infrequent with wish optatives, are contextually motivated illocutionary particles. The particles occur when the speaker’s current psychological commitment has not been sufficiently established in the interlocutor(s)’ Common Ground, which contains “the sum of [interlocutors’] mutual, common, or joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions” (Clark 1996: 96). The particle νυν combined with the wish optative, a combination which was overlooked in analyses of νυν, marks the Discourse Act of the wish illocution as consequential from the previous acts in the Common Ground.
Journal Article
Γάρ awry at Mark Ev. 5:42
Allen examines S. Zakowski's interpretation of Mark 5:42. Zakowski proposes a \"procedural reading\" of Mark's yap clause at 5:42. He complains that his reading, which claims to identify the clause, in terms of Functional Discourse Grammar, as an Ancillary Act \"of background information\", is not entirely novel. He adds that Zakowski failed to convincingly establish what might be called the Act's subservience to the verse's Nuclear Act.
Journal Article
Headedness and modification in Functional Discourse Grammar
The notions of head and modifier are two basic tenets of general linguistic theory and play a fundamental role in the view of grammatical structure endorsed by Functional Discourse Grammar. The aim of this paper is to refine the theory’s current approach to headedness and modification, according to which linguistic expressions that lack a head at the semantic or the pragmatic level are not available for any sort of lexical modification. It is argued that this assumption originates from a view of headedness and modification inherited from traditional Functional Grammar, where heads and modifiers were conceived of, respectively, as “first” and “second” restrictors of the variable to which they apply; such an approach, I will suggest, is no longer tenable in the light of the theoretical principles that have meanwhile been introduced in the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar. The main proposal put forth in the paper is that, by shifting to a definition of the head/modifier opposition in terms of internal vs. external specifications of the linguistic units which they serve to qualify, Functional Discourse Grammar becomes perfectly capable of accounting for any possible type of modification of headless pragmatic or semantic units.
Journal Article
La cohesión en la Gramática Discursivo-Funcional: indagaciones a partir de la negación aditiva del español
Este artículo indaga, desde la óptica de la Gramática Discursivo-Funcional, en los efectos cohesivos de los principales exponentes de la negación aditiva del español: ni y tampoco. Si bien el modelo adoptado no ha desarrollado todavía una teoría de la cohesión textual, sí contempla ciertos parámetros que acotan y clasifican sus distintos tipos. La aplicación de dichos parámetros (procedimiento de expresión, naturaleza estratégica, dimensión y alcance) al análisis de la negación aditiva del español permite identificar las semejanzas y diferencias del potencial cohesivo de las dos unidades consideradas. En concreto, queda de manifiesto que ni es una conjunción que lleva a cabo prototípicamente una cohesión interna de combinación paratáctica, mientras que tampoco es una partícula gramatical que transmite una cohesión de encadenamiento, la cual puede ser tanto interna como externa (esta última en su doble vertiente contextual y conceptual).
Journal Article
Analysis of Inserted Clauses in the Legal Discourse from the Pragmatic Perspective
The aim of the given study is to examine the use of inserted clauses in the legal discourse and their unique role in this speech genre. The investigation of the topic is conducted in line with the principles of Functional Discourse Grammar. In the course of analysis we apply the theory of speech acts, namely performatives, the fundamental tenets of which permit to view the specific combination of shall+inserted clause as a particular feature of legal discourse. These overcomplicated grammatical structures are shown to fulfill the immediate function of performatives, that of enacting legal acts and doing things in the pragmatic sense of word, to the full extent.
Journal Article