The Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammar.doc

论文：The Systemic Grammar and Functional Grammarabstract:the history and development of the renowned and well-accepted systemic-functional grammar is elaborated under the title of systemic grammar and functional grammar. the theory is mainly proposed by m. a. k. halliday, and in recent years, the hallidayan school has evolved into a team of committed researchers. with the great efforts of halliday and other researchers, systemic- functional grammar has developed into a powerful theory, accepted by the public in the linguistic world.key words:systemic grammar;system;functional grammar;metafunctionclc number：h319 dolument code：aarticle id：1672-1578（2011）02-0009-02introduction:m. a. k. halliday, as the representative of london school and the presenter of systemic-functional grammar, was born in 1925 in england. he took his first degree in chinese studies at the university of london, where he was greatly influenced by his teacher firth, the founding father of london school. later, m. a. k. halliday finished his graduate study in peking with luo changpei and wang li as his teachers and also in cambridge university with firth being his supervisor. in 1976, halliday immigrated to australia and became a professor at the university of sydney and makes remarkable achievements on linguistic study, especially the founding of the systemic-functional grammar.1.the earliest period of systemic- functional grammaras is well known, the systemic-functional grammar is developed by m. a. k. halliday, but it is hallidays supervisor-firth had the original ideas in the systemic-functional grammar and influenced halliday deeply in his later research. firth concentrated on the context of situation, on restricted languages and on system and structure. he was strongly influenced by the anthropologist malinnoswki who considered language as a mode of action, rather than as a countersign of thought.although firth tried his best to establish a linguistic theory from the perspective of the context of situation, his aim was not realized by himself for his ideas were fragmental and not organized systemically. it is his student halliday who inherits and develops firths ideas.2.systemic grammar2.1 development of the systemic grammar:to begin with, the author has to review the swiss linguist de saussure who is the first one to put forward the idea of linguistic system. he made great contributions to linguistics by distinguishing synchronic from diachronic, langue from parole and syntagmatic from paradigmatic. according to de saussure, the syntagmatic relation between linguistic elements forms structure and the paradigmatic one forms system.halliday first mention “system“ in grammatical categories in modern chinese (halliday, 1956) and defined it as a linguistic terminology in categories of the theory of grammar in 1961. in his paper some notes on deep grammar, halliday (1966) lays the foundations for the modern systemic grammar. according to halliday, language is a systemic resource for expressing meaning in context and linguistics, and also is the study of how people exchange meanings through the use of language. his view of language as a systemic resource for meaning potential not only implies that language is a well-defined system of “the set of all grammatical sentences“ (halliday, 1985), but also implies that language must be studied in context such as academic setting, advertisements, classrooms and among family members, etc. 2.2 contents of the systemic grammar.in his book an introduction to functional grammar, halliday points out that “the organizing concept is that of the “system“, which is used essentially in firths sense of a functional paradigm but developed into the formal construct of a “system network“ and “a system network is a theory of language as choice. it represents a language or any part of a language as a source for making meaning by choosing.“ (hhalliday, 1985). and halliday considers language as a multi-layered system within which different levels of language are interrelated with each other. so the language system can be interpreted as a kind of optional semantic networks. in fact, language system is just a general idea containing numerous subsystems which are distributed among different levels of language. a system enables people to choose between two or more items and to be admitted into one system and not the other.in other words, a language consists of networks of system, and each system represents a choice for speakers or writers. it is not a conscious decision made in real time but a decision made among a set of possible alternative choices, such as statements or questions, singular or plural, falling tone or level tone or rising tone, etc. these may be semantic, grammatical, lexical or phonological choices. the system involves three steps: 1) the “entry condition“ 2) the set of possible options and 3) the “realizations“ which are the structural consequences of each of the options. the options start with the most general features and proceed step by step so as to become more specific finally. take the tense as an example to illustrate the selections taking place both within and outside a system. as is well known, the system of tense includes categories of past tense and non-past tense. to be included within the system of tense, the items in the system must have some kind of independency with the system, such as the item between past tense and non-past tense, the present tense and future tense. however, singular which we mention above is not parallel in usage with past tense or non-past tense, so it cannot be regarded as a subsystem within the system of tense, and we can say it is outside of the tense system. once entering the system, people have to make choice between past tense and non-past tenses. if the past tense is chosen, the verb used in the sentence should be changed into the past form, as is often the case, adding the suffix “ed“ or “d“ to the verb. if the non-past tenses are chosen, people then have to make the second choice between present tense and future tense with their features followed the verb. furthermore, if the present tense is chosen, future options may be provided for the further choice according to the specific state of the event discussed in a clause. once the choice within a system begins, it will work through different levels of the system until the end is met. observed from the perspective of the parallel level, halliday thinks that language is as least made up of three levels, and there are no less than two realizations processes involved, and through these processes language becomes a multi-layered system network in which multiple choices are made to express meanings. the system of language in systemic-functional grammar mainly describes three metafunctions of language, ideational function, interpersonal function and textual function. the following part will be the introductions of the functional grammar.3.functional grammar3.1 development of the functional grammar:malinowski in 1923 wrote: “language in its structure mirrors the real categories derived from the practical attitudes of the child.“ and it was malinowski who firstly saw most clearly that it was in the language of young children that existed the functional origins of the language system. later, he modified his view, realizing that linguistic research had demonstrated that there was no such thing as a “primitive language“-all adult speech represented the same highly sophisticated level of linguistic evolution. (halliday,1973). therefore, no matter how abstract and how complex the social structure with which the languages are associated, all uses of language can be explained in terms of certain elementary functions. malinowskis ideas were rather ahead of his time, so they were not backed up by adequate investigations of this aspect. halliday (1973) once argued: “if language development is regarded as the development of the meaning potential it becomes possible to consider the malinowskian thesis seriously, since we can begin by looking at the relation between the childs linguistic structures and the uses he is putting language to.“ and malinowskian thesis brings halliday enlightenment in his later research and investigations of the uses of language.halliday (1968) first proposed the four functional components in one of his papers as the experiential function, logical functional, speech function and interpersonal function. then in the year 1970 he modified the four components in another paper where the experiential and logical function are formed into ideational function, speech function is changed into textual function, and interpersonal function is just as it was. later, the three functions are categorized under the name of metafunctions. (halliday , m. a. k. 1970. language structure and language function). in 1985, halliday published his book an introduction to functional grammar which signaled the maturation of the functional grammar.3.2 contents of the functional grammar3.2.1 ideational metafunction.a fundamental property of language is that it enables human beings to build a mental picture of reality, to make sense of what goes on around them and inside them. when people using the language to represent the material and mental experiences of the world around us and inside us, it is the experiential function that is realized, together with logical function which relates to the connections between messages, and to the ways in which these connections are signaled. these two functions constitute ideational metafunction, one of the three metafunctions. in clause, it is realized by transitivity and voice. briefly speaking, transitivity is a semantic system expressing the experiential metafunction. it serves to divide all the experiences into different processes and identify the participants and circumstantial elements concerned with each process. there are altogether 6 types of processes according to the different types of verbs, namely, material process, mental process, relational process, behavioral process, verbal process and existential process. 3.2.2 interpersonal metafunction.the second is the interpersonal metafunction which embodies the use of language to express social and personal relations. in other words it expresses the speakers identity, status, attitude, motivation and his or her influence of matters. that is just like what thompson says we use language to interact with other people, to establish and maintain relations with them, to influence their behavior, to express our viewpoint on things in the world, and to elicit or change theirs. (thompson, 2000). in clause this component is realized by mood and modality and key. usually, subject and finite make up the concept of mood which expresses the speakers attitude, the mood and the residue together form a clause. subject functions as a reference to which the proposition can be affirmed or denied, while the finite operator expresses tense and modality. here modality is concerned with the status of the proposition that describes the event. the residue is less central to the mood system, so the author does not give a further explanation.3.2.3 textual metafunction.then there is the third metafunction: textual metafunction. to form a text it should have a texture, which makes the difference between a text and a collection of unrelated sentences. the textual function is the function of language which shows how writers organize texts, and how message or information is formed in the texts. in the clause this function is realized by the information structure, thematic structure and cohesion which is often realized by different cohesive devices. in thematic structure, theme according to halliday is a point of departure for a message. it is located as the initial position of the clause and usually expresses the