Linguistica inglese 1

The purposes of linguistic analysis

There are two main approaches to language analysis: formal (or structural, or traditional) grammar and functional grammar.

• Focus on contextual meaning, language in use.
• Functional, semiotic, semantic, descriptive.

“A descriptive grammar based on empirical research, not a prescriptive one which tells you what you can and cannot say, including rules for correcting what are often referred to as grammatical errors. A functional grammar, in other words, is not a grammar of etiquette or linguistic table manners” (Martin, Matthiessen & Painter, 2010: 3).

What is the difference with traditional grammar?

Added value of SFL: particularly suitable not only for European languages like English, but also for Oriental languages. SFL’s founder, M.A.K. Halliday (1925-2018), started his linguistics career in Chinese, in the 1950s, before moving on to English in the 1960s. Many of Halliday’s most innovative ideas of grammar originally developed from his deep knowledge of Chinese.

To summarize

• Systemic Functional Grammar is a theory of grammar that focuses on meaning. It is oriented towards semantics.
• It concentrates on language in use.
• It provides a full understanding of the structure/meaning connection for each and every clause in a language, with three simultaneous views of the clause: ideational (Field), interpersonal (Tenor), and textual (Mode).

Going in through form

The most fully developed and most influential version of the approach through form is the one proposed by Noam Chomsky and his followers, originally known as the TG (Transformational – Generative) approach, although several variations have developed from it.

Chomsky insisted that linguistics should go beyond merely describing syntactic structures and aim to explain why language is structured in the way it is. He thought language description had to be explicit. A common metaphor for this is the computer: it cannot interpret what you mean and will do exactly and only what you tell it to do. Instructions must be explicitly unambiguous.

TG set out to provide rules of this kind for the formation of grammatically correct sentences. TG started from a seemingly simple insight: every verb has a Subject and understanding a sentence means above all identifying the Subject for each verb. In English, the Subject is normally in front of the verb, but there are many cases where it does not appear in the “right” position or does not appear at all. One of Chomsky’s examples is this:

• John is eager to please.
• John is easy to please.

On the surface, these two sentences appear to have the same structure, but we understand that in the first case it is John who does the pleasing, while in the second it is an unnamed person or thing.

Which burglar did the policeman say Mary thought had shot himself?

Here, we understand that the Subject of ‘had shot’ is ‘which burglar’, even though there are other possible candidates for the Subject. But how do we understand all this? And how can the linguists show, in an explicit way, what it is that we understand?

In order to label a part of the sentence as a ‘Subject’, we must first recognize that it has a particular relation to the verb. We need to work with labels that tell us what a part of the sentence is, and not what its function is. Chomsky’s famous first rule captured this: S  NP VP. This means that every sentence in a language consists of a noun phrase, followed by a verb phrase – if it does not show these features, it is not a grammatically correct ‘sentence’. S actually refers to a clause, rather than what is traditionally called a sentence. VP here includes everything in the clause, apart from the first NP. Every clause must have a verb and every verb must have a Subject.

We can now use this rule for the previous sentence:

S1  NP VP

• The policeman did say (sth)
• S2  NP VP
• Mary thought (sth)
• S3  NP VP
• Which burglar had shot himself

This analysis also begins to reveal why ‘himself’ refers to the burglar. When the Object of a verb refers to the same entity as the Subject, a reflexive pronoun is normally used. As the final S above suggests, the VP element does not only include the verb, but any other elements that depend on the verb. We can therefore go on splitting the clause elements into smaller units so that we reach the basic constituents. For example,

VP  V NP

NP  Det N

means that some verb phrases consist of a verb and a noun phrase.

In order to analyse the VP in S1 and S2, we need to add another rule:

VP  V S

This means that verb phrases may include not only a verb, but also another S (this is known as recursion: a clause appears where an Object might be).

So, the complete analysis of the sentence is:

• S1  NP VP [V S]
• The policeman did say (S2)
• S2  NP VP [V S]
• Mary thought (S3)
• S3  NP VP [V NP]
• Which burglar had shot himself

The same kind of analysis can be done for the Object and other constituents. This approach is almost exclusively interested in what we can call ‘propositional meaning’ – the ‘content’ of the sentence.

The following two sentences have the same propositional content and therefore the same analysis in terms of Ss:

• The burglar shot himself = Had the burglar shot himself?
• S1  NP VP [V NP]
• The burglar had shot himself

The fact that a statement and a question serve different functions in communication is regarded as irrelevant in the grammatical analysis. The model is not designed to show, for example, that one sentence functions as the answer to a preceding question. The aim is to discover the rules that govern how constituents can be put together to form grammatically correct sentences, and to find rules that are as general as possible (ideally, so that they apply to all languages). Generative linguists think it is only worth describing those aspects of language that can be scientifically (and explicitly) described.

So, we need to take a different approach, starting from the human brain. How we arrange various types of sentences – and language in general – seems to tell us a lot about how our brains must work. Thus, a rigorous, formal approach to language inevitably leads us towards neurology and genetics.

Going in through meaning

There are doubts about whether this approach explains what goes on in the mind when language is produced, and there is little doubt about the fact that it does not reflect how speakers themselves produce or understand language. For the user, the following sentences have very different meanings despite the fact that they have the same propositional content, because they are designed to elicit different responses from the addressee.

• Colds last seven days on average.
• Colds last seven days on average, don’t they?
• Do colds last seven days on average?

Similarly, there are differences based on the speaker’s choice of formal or colloquial wording:

• Would you mind helping me with this?
• Can you gissa hand [= give me a hand]?

The exact nature of the tools used depends on the task at hand. In linguistic terms, if language has evolved for the function of communication, this must have a direct influence on its features in other words, the form of language can be explained by examining its functions.

Of course, we need to consider its constraints: the pre-determined genetic characteristics of the human brain that allow or encourage certain language forms, and disallow or discourage other kinds. Generative approaches provide a possible way of analysing those characteristics, but we still need to examine the influences of the uses to which language is put.

(We can see the contrast between the two approaches as a reflection of the dichotomy nature vs. nurture, and the answer is most likely to lie in a combination of both.)

What happens then when we start from meaning, like language users? The meanings that we want to express through language are so varied and dependent on the infinite range of different contexts that it might be difficult at first to impose some order on them. But if we look at our grammatical, we can relate them to different kinds of meaning. For example, we can relate the presence of modal verbs to (amongst other things) expressing the speaker’s feeling that what they are saying needs to be negotiated with the addressee.

If we take meaning as being the sum of what the speaker wants the hearer to understand – in other words, if we equate the meaning of a sentence to its function – then understanding how the present message is part of the context is clearly part of the meaning.

Is there any way of establishing generalised groupings of meaning types without ending up with a random-seeming list of functions, so that we can start to explain why we find the particular kinds of function that we do? For this, we need to think about what we do with language. In the broadest terms, we use language to talk about things and events and to get things done. These are not mutually exclusive: indeed, every time we use language, we do both simultaneously. There is also a third major function (a language-internal ‘service function’).

If we want to examine what a piece of language is intended to do (i.e. its function), we cannot avoid thinking in terms of choice. Speakers clearly have reasons for saying something, and for saying it the way they do.

For example, if you want to find out some information, you are probably going to use a question, and, if you are with a friend, you are more likely to use an informal wording: “What the hell was that noise?”

Here we have set up two sets of contexts – dependent choices: question vs statement, informal vs formal.

Functional grammar sets out to investigate what the range of relevant choices are, both in the kinds of meanings that we might want to express and in the kind of wordings that we can use to express these meanings; and to match these two sets of choices. In order to identify meaning choices, we have to look outwards at the context. At the same time, we have to identify the linguistic options (the lexical and structural possibilities that the language system offers for use), and to explore the possibilities that each option expresses.

These are complementary perspectives on the same phenomenon: one, as it were, from the bottom up – form wording to context – and the other one from the top down – from context to wording.

We need a description of the social context which includes degrees of familiarity between people interacting with each other as a relevant factor influencing their language choices.

Note that the use of the term choice does not necessarily imply a conscious process of selection by the speaker. It is only in consciously trying to imagine the “wrong” choices that such choices even...