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THE GRAMMATICAL-WPS Office

This document discusses the grammatical framework of systemic linguistics. It covers the following key points: 1. Language is constantly evolving and any descriptive grammar is a snapshot in time. Grammar provides an understanding of how language is structured and the possibilities and constraints of patterns. 2. There are five grammatical units - sentence, clause, phrase, word, and morpheme - that make up utterances and can be related on a rank scale. 3. Units can be composed of sub-units from lower ranks, but the structure is not always hierarchical. Complexes can also involve units of the same rank in paratactic or hypotactic relationships.

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Lifyan Arief
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73 views5 pages

THE GRAMMATICAL-WPS Office

This document discusses the grammatical framework of systemic linguistics. It covers the following key points: 1. Language is constantly evolving and any descriptive grammar is a snapshot in time. Grammar provides an understanding of how language is structured and the possibilities and constraints of patterns. 2. There are five grammatical units - sentence, clause, phrase, word, and morpheme - that make up utterances and can be related on a rank scale. 3. Units can be composed of sub-units from lower ranks, but the structure is not always hierarchical. Complexes can also involve units of the same rank in paratactic or hypotactic relationships.

Uploaded by

Lifyan Arief
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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THE GRAMMATICAL FRAMEWORK

Lifyan Fatkhurrahman Arief

A. The Nature Of Lexico Grammar

1. Lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics is the stratum which handles the wording of a text. It is
the level at which the various patterns of semantic structure are realized in word form and is
concerned with the classes of grammatical (and in principle also lexical) unit and the
relationships which may be established between them.

2. Language is an open-ended organism. Only by recognizing this can we account for the
factthat it does not stand still - indeed has never stood still - but is constantly evolving. Any
descriptive grammar of a language is therefore merely a snapshot in history.

3. The study of grammar exists at all because a language does not consist of a fixed number, say
100,000, of possible sentences.

4. Grammar then provides us, the language user and the language learner, with a basis for
understanding how a language is structured, what the possibilities of patterning are and indeed
what the constraints are.

5. Syntactic structure can be approached in two ways: formal and functional. Formal syntax
deals with how words can combine to create larger units of form and eventually sentences. One
can perhaps visualize this as an orientation towards unit building, with a progression upwards
from the word to the sentence. This bottom-upwards perspective reflects the question 'What
increasingly larger, formal units can we build up with words?'. Functional syntax, on the other
hand, handles the way in which sentences are structured in terms of smaller functional
elements and eventually words.

6. As mentioned in the Introduction, in its early stage the lexicogrammatical framework


for systemic grammar was developed against a background of four categories: unit, structure,
class and system, and three (or four) scales: rank, exponence, delicacy (and depth). In
subsequent chapters, 'class' and 'structure' will be discussed in detail, but we offer here a brief
overview of all the categories and scales, in other words, of the 'scale and category framework'.
Essentially the categories are theoretical constructs, whereas the scales serve to relate the
categories both to each other and to the textual data.

B. Units And The Rank Scale


1. A structure in systemic grammar is traditionally based around five formal units: sentence,
clause, group, word and morpheme. (Henceforth, as a matter of terminology we shall, like
Hudson (1971), use the term 'phrase' in place of'group' to refer to the intermediary unit
between clause and word.) These five grammatical units can be illustrated as follows.
Sentence
\\\After John has finished his exams, he is planning a trip abroad.\\\
Clause
\\After John has finished his exams, \\ he is planning a trip abroad.\\
Phrase
\After | John \ has finished \ his exams, \ he \ is planning \ a trip abroad.\
Word
: After:John:has:finished:his:exams,:he: is:planning:a'.trip:abroad.:
Morpheme -After-John-has-finish-ed-his-exam-s,-he-is-plann-ing-a-trip-abroad.-
2. In terms of the way systemic grammar has traditionally been formulated, all utterances
require to be described at each rank. Thus, the sentence After John has finished his exams, he is
planning a trip abroad would be analysed as consisting of two clauses: After John has finished
his exams, and he is planning a trip abroad, of which the first clause contains four phrases: (i)
After, (ii) John, (iii) has finished and (iv) his exams, comprising six words and eight morphemes
(includingj^wwA and ed, and exam and s), and the second clause contains three phrases: (i) he,
(ii) is planning and (iii) a trip abroad, six words and seven morphemes (including plann and ing).
But it also means that a reply No! is described as a sentence consisting of one clause containing
one phrase composed of one word which is itself a single morpheme.
3. The structure of a unit at one rank is not always composed of units from the rank below. For
example, whilst the phrase the girl does consist of two units of word rank, the phrase the girl in
the corner consists of the same two units of word rank plus the sequence in the corner, which is
itself a phrase unit. In other words we have a phrase operating within a phrase.

C. Sentence, Clause, Phrase, Word and Morpheme

the sentence begins with a capital letter and is terminated by a full stop. With the increased
interest, also, in the nature and structure of text as distinct from grammatical form alone, the
sentence has come to be regarded as an element of textual structure and as such may be seen
as a constituent of the paragraph.

In meaning terms, the typical role of the sentence is to express one or more ideas or
'propositions' from the ideational component, each proposition being realized by a clause.
Indeed, it is very much a matter of the individual writer's style how many propositions, with the
help of commas, semicolons and colons, are incorporated into a single sentence. Compare, for
example, the extremes in the following two texts:
(a) This is the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the
dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

(b) This is the maiden. She is all forlorn. It was she who milked the cow with the crumpled horn.
That was the cow that tossed the dog. It was that dog that worried the cat. The cat had killed
the rat. The rat had in fact eaten the malt. The malt had lain in the house. The house had been
built by Jack.

In the first text, the traditional rhyme is presented as a very complex sentence comprising an
ongoing sequence of propositions embedded inside one another. Potentially, other than that
the writer/speaker might run out of ideas or, perhaps, breath, there is no reason from the point
of view of the sentence structure why the rhyme sequence should not continue on - and on -
still within the framework of a single sentence. In the second text, the sequence has been
broken up and each proposition has been presented within its own sentence. From totally
opposite perspectives, therefore, both passages have an artificiality about their format.

A clause in meaning terms typically expresses a single proposition. Grammatically, it consists of


one or more phrases, e.g. / 've finished that book. As we shall see, clauses do not all share the
same grammatical status, and relationships of subordination and superordination can be
established within groupings/complexes of clause units.

A phrase in meaning terms expresses one of the elements of a proposition. Grammatically, it is


the grouping of one or more words which together fulfil the role that in other circumstances
might be expressed by a single word.

The word is the basic unit of syntax. Orthographically, words are typically bounded by a blank
space either side of them, as for example in a bunch of flowers. Compound words like birthday
and sunshine are still individual units, but the position is complicated by the fact that the same
expression may be written as a single, compound word with or without a hyphen or as two
separate words, e.g. airlock, air-lock, or air lock.

The word, then, is a unit which can be assigned to a recognized word class and which is not a
(hyphenated or unhyphenated) component of a compound unit. In accordance with this, the
analysis of They've and didn't, etc. above as two words is shared by black bird, air lock and
computer game, whereas units such as blackbird, airlock, air-lock and home-made are handled
as one word. It also means that forms such as girls, works, worked, working remain analysed as
single word units because the elements s, ed and ing serve to mark variant grammatical forms
of a given word unit and cannot themselves be assigned to word classes.
At the bottom end of the rank scale, the morpheme is the smallest unit of grammatical form
and meaning - though in traditional grammar a distinction is often made between morph and
morpheme.

The morpheme is involved in word formation in a number of ways:

(a) lexical compounding, e.g. blackbird, sunshine;

(b) lexical derivation of one word (or rather lexical item) from another, often involving a change
of word class, e.g. act, action, active, inactive, proactive, activate, actor, actress;

(c) grammatical inflection altering the form of a word to fit the grammatical context but not
thereby changing the word class, e.g. car - cars (plural), mend- mended (past tense).

D. Unit Complex And Complex Unit


A unit complex may be explained as a coherent grouping or configuration of two or
more units (a complex of units) from the same rank, which together may also constitute a unit
of the rank next above. For example, other words may be grouped round a given headword, as
in a brilliant student, to form a word complex which is a phrase.
If another unit of the same status is involved, then the relationship between them is one
of equality, in other words a relationship involving units of equal grammatical status. In
systemic grammar this has normally been referred to as one of the types of paratactic
relationship. The sentence Jack fell down and Jill came tumbling afterexemplifies a unit
consisting of two main clauses coordinated in one such relationship. In Frank Jones, the
butcher, is the best candidate the type of paratactic relationship between the units is one of
apposition, in which two phrases, Frank Jones and the butcher, are juxtaposed and thus, here,
operate as alternative expressions referring to the same person. Where a subordinate unit is
involved, the relationship between the main and subordinate units is known as a hypotactic
relationship.
A hypotactic relationship thus involves units of unequal grammatical status, as illustrated by the
subordinate and main clauses in the sentence When Jack fell down, he broke his crown.
Traditionally in systemic grammar paratactic and hypotactic structures have been grouped
together as subtypes of univariate structure, that is to say a structure involving the repeated
utterance of the same type of unit, where the relationship between the units is a logical one of
equality or dependence. Where, on the other hand, the relationship is one between different
types of element, as for example between the units in Jack Sprat could eat nofat ('subject',
verbal element, and 'object'), it represents the type of structure known as multivariate. (For
further discussion of types of structure, see e.g. Halliday 1965). In these terms, therefore, a
clause complex comprises more than one clause unit; it is a complex of clauses and typically
operates as a sentence. A phrase complex involves more than one phrase unit (same or
different classes) forming a coherent grouping which in some circumstances can also serve as a
clause. A word complex is more than one word unit and can form a phrase. A morpheme
complex - more than one morpheme unit - normally forms a word.

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