Functional Theories of Grammar - Frameworks

Frameworks

There are several distinct grammatical theories that employ a functional approach.

• The structuralist functionalism of the Prague school, was the earliest functionalist framework developed in the 1920s.
• Simon Dik's Functional discourse grammar, originally developed in the 1970s and 80s, has been influential and inspired many other functional theories. It has also been continuously developed by Linguists such as Kees Hengeveld.
• Michael Halliday's systemic functional grammar argues that the explanation of how language works "needed to be grounded in a functional analysis, since language had evolved in the process of carrying out certain critical functions as human beings interacted with their ... 'eco-social' environment". Halliday draws on the work of Bühler and Malinowski.
• Role and reference grammar, developed by Robert Van Valin employs functional analytical framework with a somewhat formal mode of description. In RRG, the description of a sentence in a particular language is formulated in terms of its semantic structure and communicative functions, as well as the grammatical procedures used to express these meanings.
• Danish functional grammar combines Saussurean/Hjelmslevian structuralism with a focus on pragmatics and discourse.
• Lexical functional grammar, developed by Joan Bresnan and Ronald Kaplan in the 1970s, is a type of phrase structure grammar, as opposed to a dependency grammar. It mainly focuses on syntax, including its relation with morphology and semantics.

Dik characterises functional grammar as follows:

In the functional paradigm a language is in the first place conceptualized as an instrument of social interaction among human beings, used with the intention of establishing communicative relationships. Within this paradigm one attempts to reveal the instrumentality of language with respect to what people do and achieve with it in social interaction. A natural language, in other words, is seen as an integrated part of the communicative competence of the natural language user. (2, p. 3)

Because of its emphasis on usage, communicative function, and the social context of language, functional grammar differs significantly from other linguistic theories which stress purely formal approaches to grammar, notably Chomskyan generative grammar. Functional grammar is strongly associated with the school of linguistic typology that takes its lead from the work of Joseph Greenberg.