The main notions of functional grammar

Generativism

Generativism unlike transformational grammar included the semantic component into its study. Unlike descriptivism it preceded from empirical study to deductive approaching (they did not simply collect the data but analyzed it and tried to make some conclusions) that is forming hypothesis about the most important features of language. They also focused on syntax but on deep rather than surface structures. They were the first to approach language as a mental process thus connecting linguistics and psychology.

Functionalism

Many functional ideas were derived from the works of F. de Saussure (Geneva school). Later on functionalism developed in the works of the Prague school, London school and Copenhagen school. It is explicitly incorporated in the functional grammatical models of Halliday and Van Dijk. In Russian linguistics functionalism is represented by such linguists as Bondarko, Zolotova, Shendles, Nikolaeva, Slusareva and others. And Russian functionalists developed the ideas of structural linguistics into the modern school of cognitivism represented by such scholars as Kubrakova, Demiankov and others.

Cognitive linguistics finds its main objective in the study of correlation of language structures and their mental representation, the study of the way our knowledge of reality is packed in the language units, and the study of way man’s thought are actualized in speech in the process of communication. Cognitive linguistics is sometimes characterized as an umbrella science because it has close links with other subjects such as functionalism, psychology, physiology, sociology, etc.

Cognitive grammar tries to explain how grammatical structures participate in the formation and language representation of the main categories and concepts of the world.

Functional grammar is a special type of grammatical description and grammatical theory. At the same time it is not a simple denial of structural grammar but a special development of the functional aspect of grammar as a structural and functional unity. Functionalism is not a universal method, the approaches differ in 2 aspects:

1) the interpretation of the term “functional” and the notion of function

2) the direction of linguistic analyses

- from form to meaning (semasiology)

- from meaning to form (onomasiology)

The first opposition is function and meaning. There is a universally adopted description between functions of language and functions of elements of language. As to functions of language their number differs from 2 to 25 but the 2 generally excepted functions are:

- cognitive

- communicative

The number of functions of language elements was also different.

Professor Stepanov introduced a semiotic approach to notion of function and described 3 basic functions:

- denotation is studied by general semantics (sign-object relations)

- predicationis studied by syntax (relation between signs themselves)

- performanceis studied by pragmatics (use of language signs by a speaker)

Another approach to language functions was suggested by Halliday. His treatment of function is purely semantic. He distinguished 3 components of the semantic system of a natural language:

- ideational (it corresponded to a notional function)

- interpersonal (it corresponded to a social function)

- textual (it corresponded to a discourse function)

Yet another approach is when functional is opposed to semantic. The representatives of this school are Bloomfield, Shnedels, Balley. For them functions of grammatical forms are determined through their position in the sentence (function = syntactical function)

To sum it up, the principle approaches to the notion of function can be described as follows:

1) A semantic approach (function is treated as a meaning of language unit)

2) A syntactic approach (function is equal to a syntactic function)

3) A teleological approach (function is equal to the purpose or aim of using this or that language unit) Bondarko

4) A communicative approach (function is understood as a communicative intention of a speaker in a speech act)

Bondarko suggested yet another approach to the trend function. He preceded from the assumption that the principle function of language is communicative. By him the function of a language element is the purpose of its use in an utterance or text. The notion of semantic function is not equal to the notion of meaning:

1) It can partially coincide with the meaning of a grammatical form

2) A semantic function can completely coincide with the grammatical meaning

e.g. A bunch of flowers – grammatical meaning is partitiveness, the semantic function is the same

3) A semantic function coincides with the invariant meaning of a number of grammatical units having different structure

e.g. A bottle of…

A bottle with ….

A bottle containing…. - semantic function is content

A bottle that contains…

4) A semantic function is a combination of the meaning of a grammatical form and othe language units

e.g. definite description = The + N + means

The second opposition within the functionalism is semasiology and onomasiology analyses.

Semasiology approach starts with revealing the meanings of language units in speech and then investigates the use of these units in different situations.

Onomasiology analyses precedes from the meaning revealed a priory and studies all the possible ways of expressing this meaning. Onomasiological grammar is not actually grammar because it takes into consideration different language means and not only grammatical ones.

Plain of content

Plain of expression

Semasiology Onomasiology

The last opposition is language vs. user of language. Functionalism can take into consideration some social factors effecting the choice of language means such as discourse conditions, social status, age and gender characteristics. Here functionalism borders with sociolinguistics. An example of this approach is the theory of speech acts. This theory is associated with the name of J.Austin. He claimed that in the performative sentences the speaker produces 2 actions at a time: uttering a sentence (locution) and expressing a communicative intention of request, advice, etc. (illocution)

· locution – what you say

· illocution – why you say

· perlocution – the result

Within speech acts theory illocutionary functions were studied not only in direct but also in indirect speech acts.

The main notions of functional grammar

Notional category – NC (conceptual category, philosophical category, logical category)

Functional Semantic category – FSC

Semantic function – SF

Functional semantic field – FSF

Plane of content NS time space

↓ ↓ ↓

FSC temporality locality

↓ ↓ ↓

SF1 SF2 SF3

Plane of expression FSF

FSF of futurity

NC is a component of the most general character which belongs to the level of mental content thus opposed to functional semantic categories (FSC) and semantic functions (SF) which belong to the level of language content.

NC: time, space, quantity, action, object, etc.