Functional Grammar vs Traditional Grammar: What are the Differences and Why do they Matter?
but not that the spoken language is the same as the written language. this is a useful reminder of two different levels of language, and of the need to acknowledge and differentiate these. the second is that the two theories do not work in the same way, because the assumptions of the two theories do not overlap. functional grammar has an emphasis on the use of the language to achieve its effects and a valuing of spoken language, while structuralism has a focus on the structure of the language, with a relative neglect of its effects, and a valuing of written language.
making sense of functional grammar pdf
the two theories could meet to make a new theory. however, the two groups of theorists are not in agreement about the nature of this meeting. for functional grammar, the whole of language is a system and, therefore, the whole can be split up into parts, but, for structuralism, the whole language is a system and, therefore, we can never split up the whole into parts.
the structuralists believe that the rules of the language are contained in a hidden structure that must be discovered, whereas functional grammar believes that the rules of the language are themselves embedded in the use of the language.
in english, you can always find a verb that does not agree with the subject. this is because english is a subject-verb language, where the verb is required to agree with the subject. because the rules of english do not interfere with the ordering of words in the sentence, you can place the verb after the subject, and the sentence will still make sense. in other languages, such as finnish, the rules of the language require the verb to agree with the subject. so, in these languages, you have to think about the effect of the sentence rather than just the form of the words.