Tài liệu So sánh mối quan hệ logic ngữ nghĩa trong tổ hợp cú tiếng anh và tiếng việt

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI ------------------------------------------------------------------------UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES NGUYỄN THỊ MINH TÂM LOGICO-SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CLAUSE COMPLEXES (SO SÁNH MỐI QUAN HỆ LOGIC-NGỮ NGHĨA TRONG TỔ HỢP CÚ TIẾNG ANH VÀ TIẾNG VIỆT) Major: English Linguistics Code: 62 22 15 01 DOCTORAL DISSERTATION OF ENGLISH SUPERVISOR: PROF. DR. HOÀNG VĂN VÂN HANOI -2013 KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Rationale Aims of the study Significant of the study Scope of the study The research question The research design, methodology, and data The organization of the study 1 3 3 3 4 4 5 CHAPTER 1: SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL LINGUISTICS AND THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF LOGICO-SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP IN CLAUSE COMPLEXES 1.1. . Systemic functional theory 1.1.1. Historical context of the emergence of systemic functional theory: a brief overview 1.1.2. Functional approach – a general description 1.1.3. Systemic functional linguistics 1.1.3.1. Text and context in the view of SFL 1.1.3.2. How ―systemic‖? 1.1.3.3. How ―functional‖? 1.1.4. Review of related studies 1.1.4.1. An overview of studies in Vietnamese grammar 1.1.4.2. SFL studies in other languages 1.1.5. Summary 1.2. The theoretical framework of logico-semantic relationship in clause complexes 1.2.1. The notion of clause complex in the light of SFL 1.2.1.1. Concepts revisited 1.2.1.2. What is a clause complex? 1.2.1.3. Where is the clause complex located in the overall linguistic system? 1.2.1.4. How is the clause complex organized? 1.2.2. Analytical frameworks of logico-semantic relations in clause complexes 1.2.2.1. Projection in clause complexes 1.2.2.2. Expansion in clause complexes 4 6 6 6 9 11 12 13 15 20 20 22 22 23 23 23 29 36 38 41 41 50 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY, DATA, AND GENERALFINDINGS 2.1. Research question restated 2.2. Research design 2.3. The methodology 2.4. Methods of the study 2.5. . Data collecting procedure 2.5.1. Corpus compilation 2.5.2. Corpus annotation and data processing 2.5.2.1. The computational tool 2.5.2.2. The process of annotating and processing the data 2.6. . Data analysis 2.6.1. Describing the data 2.6.2. Comparing the two groups of data 2.7.General findings 59 59 59 61 62 62 62 64 64 67 71 71 72 73 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: PROJECTION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CLAUSE COMPLEXES 75 3.1. Projection in English Clause Complexes 3.1.1. ow is projection realized in English Clause Complexes 3.1.1.1. Projecting clauses 3.1.1.2. Projected clauses 3.1.1.3. Projecting and projected clauses paratactically related 3.1.1.4. Projecting and projected clauses hypotactically related 3.1.2. ow does Projection work in English clause complexes 3.1.2.1. How does quoting work in English clause complexes 3.1.2.2. How does hypotactic reporting work in English clause complexes 3.1.2.3. How does paratactic reporting work in English clause complexes 3.1.2.4. How does projection facilitate other linguistic phenomena in English clause complexes 3.1.3. ummary 3.2. Projection in Vietnamese clause complexes 3.2.1. ow is projection realized in Vietnamese Clause Complexes 3.2.1.1. Projecting clauses 3.2.1.2. Projected clauses 3.2.1.3. Projecting and projected clauses paratactically related 3.2.1.4. Projecting and projected clauses hypotactically related 3.2.2. How does projection work in Vietnamese clause complexes 3.2.2.1. How does quoting work in Vietnamese clause complexes 75 75 75 85 87 88 90 90 91 94 96 100 104 104 104 113 115 117 118 118 KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii 3.2.2.2. How does hypotactic reporting work in English clause complexes 3.2.2.3. How does paratactic reporting work in English clause complexes 3.2.2.4. How does projection facilitate other linguistic phenomena in English clause complexes 3.2.3. Summary 3.3. . Comparing logico-semantic relation of projection in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.1. Realization of projection in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.1.1. Projecting clauses 3.3.1.2. Projected clauses 3.3.1.3. Projecting and projected clauses paratactically related 3.3.1.4. Projecting and projected clauses hypotactically related 3.3.2. eration of projection in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.2.1. Operation of quoting in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.2.2. Operation of hypotactic reporting in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.2.3. Operation of paratactic reporting in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.3.2.4. Projection in relation with other linguistic phenomena in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 3.4. Summary CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION: EXPANSION IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE CLAUSE COMPLEXES 4.1. Expansion in English clause complexes 4.1.1. ow is expansion realized in English clause complexes 4.1.1.1. Expanding clauses 4.1.1.2. Expanded clauses 4.1.1.3. Conjunctions in English clause complexes of expansion 4.1.1.4. Expanding clause and expanded clause paratactically related 4.1.1.5. Expanding clause and expanded clause hypotactically related 4.1.2. ow does expansion work in English clause complexes 4.1.2.1. How does elaboration work in English clause complexes 4.1.2.2. How does extension work in English clause complexes 4.1.2.3. How does enhancement work in English clause complexes 4.1.2.4. How does expansion facilitate ellipsis in the clause complex 4.1.3. ummary 4.2. Expansion in Vietnamese clause complexes 4.2.1. ow is expansion realized in Vietnamese clause complexes 119 122 124 127 130 130 130 132 132 133 133 133 133 134 134 135 136 136 136 136 139 141 143 145 147 147 150 152 155 156 160 160 4.2.1.1. Expanding clauses 4.2.1.2. Expanded clauses 4.2.1.3. Conjunctions in Vietnamese clause complexes of expansion 4.2.1.4. Expanding clause and expanded clause paratactically related 4.2.1.5. Expanding clause and expanded clause hypotactically related 4.2.2. ow does expansion work in English clause complexes 5.1.2.1. How does elaboration work in English clause complexes 5.1.2.2. How does extension work in English clause complexes 5.1.2.3. How does enhancement work in English clause complexes 5.1.2.4. How does expansion facilitate ellipsis in the clause complex 4.2.3. ummary 4.3.Comparing the logico-semantic relation of expansion in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.1. Comparing the realization of expansion in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.1.1. Expanding clauses 4.3.1.2. Expanded clauses 4.3.1.3. Conjunctions 4.3.1.4. Expanding clause and expanded clause paratactically related 4.3.1.5. Expanding clause and expanded clause hypotactically related 4.3.2. Comparing the operation of expansion in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.2.1. Elaboration in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.2.2. Extension in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.2.3. Enhancement in English and Vietnamese clause complexes 4.3.2.4. Expansion and ellipsis in English and Vietnamese clause complexes CONCLUSION THESIS-RELATED PUBLICATION BIBLIOGRAPHY SOURCES OF DATA 160 162 164 168 170 172 172 175 178 180 181 186 186 186 186 187 188 189 189 189 190 190 191 192 202 203 210 7 KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii LIST OF FIGURES Fig.1: ―Systemic‖ means making choice in a network 14 Fig 2: The Stratification 15 Fig. 3: The View of the Grammar so far, Relative to Expansion by Metafunction and 16 Rank Fig. 4: Metafunctions as manifested in the system network of the clause 19 Fig. 5: Rank-based Constituency (Matthiessen & Halliday 24 Fig. 6: The Rank scale 25 Fig.7. Delicacy in relation to the metafunctions of language and rank 26 Fig.8. Univariate and Multivariate Structure 27 Fig. 9: Three lines of meanings in a clause – 1 29 Fig. 10: Three lines of meanings in a clause – 2 30 Fig. 11: Combining clauses into clause complex 31 Fig. 12: The rank of the clause complex 33 Fig. 13: The Location of Clause Complex in the Overall Linguistic System 38 Fig. 14: Clauses in paratactic and hypotactic clause complexes 39 Fig. 15: The Logico-semantic Relations 40 Fig.16: Positions of Projecting Clauses 42 Fig.17: Speech Functions of Projected Clauses 43 Fig. 18: Clause Moods of Projected Clauses 44 Fig. 19: Quoting vs. Paratactic Reporting 44 Fig. 20: Paratactic vs. Hypotactic Projection 45 Fig. 21: Projecting Processes and Mood of Projected Clause in Combination 46 Fig. 22: Projecting Processes in Quoting and Hypotactic Reporting 47 Fig. 23: The framework of projection in clause complexes 49 Fig. 24: Possible Positions of Expanding Clauses 51 Fig.25: An Analysis of a Clause complex of Expansion 51 Fig. 26: Clause Moods of Expanded Clauses 52 Fig. 27: Expanding and Expanded Clauses Paratactically Related 53 Fig. 28: Meaning of some Verbal Hypotactic Expanding Markers 54 Fig. 29: Modes of Elaborating Relation 55 Fig. 30: Modes of Extending Relation 56 Fig. 31: Modes of Enhancement 56 Fig. 32: The Framework of Expansion in Clause Complexes 58 Fig. 33: Overview of the analysis process in SysFan 66 Fig. 34: Chunking a group into clause complexes 68 Fig. 35: Chunking a clause complex into clauses 69 Fig. 36: Seven possible levels of chunking clause complexes 69 Fig. 37: Labeling the clauses in analysis 70 Fig.38: Distribution maps of clause complex relation types 71 Fig. 39: Complex Combination of Clauses – 1 124 Fig. 40: Complex Combination of Clauses - 2 125 Fig.41: The multi-function expanded clause in English 140 Fig.42: A Multi-function Expanded Clause in Vietnamese 163 9 KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii LIST OF SYMBOLS SYMBOLS MEANING OF SYMBOLS || clause divider ||| complex divider ^ clause conjunction α , β, Ɣ … hypotactic related clauses 1, 2, 3,… paratactic related clauses ‟ Idea ” Locution . Proposition ! Proposal + Extension = Elaboration x Enhancement […] Embedding INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Over the years, functional approach has had a significant impact on the study of grammar. This theoretical approach tries to incorporate meaning, function, context, and grammatical categories. Funtionalism has been developed by many functional grammarians like Dik (1978), Halliday (1985, 1994), Bloor (1994), Eggins (1994), Thompson (1996), Lock (1997), Martin (1997), VanValin and LaPolla (1997), Matthiessen (2002), and many others. Different functional theories have emerged, representing a great range of theoretical opinion, but the central theme of the functionalist theories is: functional motivation is an alternative to innateness. Linguistic theories which reject the syntactocentric or formal view and adopt the communication and cognition perspective include Functional Grammar (Dik, 1978, 1991), Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday 1994), Role and Reference Grammar (RRG; VanValin and LaPolla 1997), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG; Bresnan 2001), etc. Unlike the linguistic theory that is still the received tradition in school, functionalism takes the resource perspective rather than the rule perspective; and it is designed to display the overall system of grammar rather than only fragments. It wishes to be a theory which is 'functional' in at least three different, though interrelated senses: i. It takes a functional view on the nature of language; ii. It attaches primary importance to functional relations at different levels in the organization of language; iii. It wishes to be practically applicable to the analysis of different aspects of language and language use. Functional theories can be described in three groups: extreme, moderate and conservative, all are common in basically a rejection of the syntactocentric view of formalists and a recognition of the importance of the communicative factors, cognitive factors or both in grammatical theory and analysis. Among the three, systemic functional grammar (SFL) belongs to the moderate group. Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to language developed mainly by M.A.K. Halliday in the UK and later in Australia. This approach has its origin in the main intellectual tradition of European linguistics that developed following the work of Saussure. Its primary source was the work of J.R. Firth (1957) and his colleagues in London, who defines ―system‖ in systemic functional 1 linguistics, as, in its technical sense, the ―theoretical representation of paradigmatic relations, contrasted 2 KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii with ―structure‖ for syntagmatic relations‖, and who characterizes systemic theory as the theory in which the system takes priority, the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. As well as other schools of thought in Europe such as glossemantics, this theory also draws on American anthropological linguistics, and on traditional and modern linguistics as developed in China. While American-style linguistics evolved in the modeling of the world‘s languages, SFL was developed to address the need of language teaching and learning. A significant milestone in the development of this theory is when it was wholly developed in the work on the grammar of Chinese by Halliday (1956); and it has been used in educational and computational contexts from an early stage. With the primary goal of addressing the needs of language teaching / learning, systemic functional grammar (SFG), the theory of grammar in the light of SFL, lays an emphasis on the functions of language - what language is used for. Although SFG is a theory of grammar, it focuses more on the meaning, not the pure form of what is said like what formalists have long been doing. Since 1980, SFL has been expanded considerably in various directions; further studies have been devoted to languages other than English, notably Chinese, French, Indonesian, Japanese and some other Asian and African languages. It has not been of much popular use in Vietnam studies of grammar. In Vietnamese, the first functional studies that should be counted are Tiếng Việt: Sơ Thảo Ngữ Pháp Chức Năng by Cao Xuân Hạo (1991), Ngữ Pháp Kinh Nghiệm của cú Tiếng Việt: Mô tả theo quan niệm chức năng hệ thống by Hoàng Văn Vân (2002), Ngữ Pháp Chức Năng Tiếng Việt: Câu trong Tiếng Việt, and Ngữ Pháp Chức Năng Tiếng Việt: Ngữ Đoạn và Từ Loại by Cao Xuân Hạo (2007), and some PhD thesis by Hoàng Văn Vân (1997), Thái Minh Đức (1998), and Đỗ Tuấn Minh (2007). These studies are the first attempts to bring the contemporarily not widely applicable theoretical perspective which has not yet been highlighted much in Vietnamese grammar studies. SFG is a complex and comprehensive model, so in order to master all its concepts and categories, it is necessary to receive the cooperation from many people, not from one individual who can classify a further of a category only. Hundreds of PhD theses have been conducted studying different areas of grammar in different languages in the light of SFG. The studies on Vietnamese grammar using the same theoretical framework were on the system of transitivity, clauses, and thematic structures, leaving the area of clause combination an untouched topic which the author of this paper therefore takes this area as the topic for her thesis. In the light of SFG, a comparison between English and Vietnamese clause complexes in this linguistic area not only helps shed light on the nature and realization of logico-semantic relationship in both languages but also allows teachers and students of English as well as other people who work in the field of linguistics to have deeper understanding of the language they are dealing with, whether as material or tool. For such reasons “Logico-semantic Relationship in English and Vietnamese Clause Complexes” is chosen as a theme for this PhD disertation. 2. Aims of the study The study aims at comparing the logico-semantic relationship in English and Vietnamese clause complexes so as to find the similarities and differences in the realization and operation of logico-semantic relationship in English and Vietnamese clause complexes. The two languages are thoroughly compared basing on meticulous criteria in the analytical framework of logico-semantic relationship which is accumulated from different approaches in systemic functional theory, as described in chapter 1. 3. The significance of the study Because logico-semantic relationship between clauses in a clause complex in English has been extensively investigated in the systemic functional model, but it has never been investigated in Vietnamese from the view of SFL, this thesis, therefore, takes the linguistic area of logico-semantic relationship as the subject for observing, describing, and comparing. Conducted as a comparative study in the light of SFL, the thesis is hoped to make significant contribution to building up the systemic functional model of Vietnamese grammar, in comparison to the systemic functional model of English grammar. 4. Scope of the study The thesis studies the logico-semantic relationships in English and Vietnamese clause complexes. In terms of theory, the scope of the study is narrowed down to observing, analyzing, describing, and comparing the realization and operation of logico-semantic relationship in clause complexes in the light of systemic functional linguistics only. In terms of data collection and data analysis, as the corpora of the dissertation are compiled from written sources, the data collected are mostly written language, only a certain part of the language collected in the corpora is the quotation of different types of spoken speech. The features of logico-semantic relationship in spoken language are, therefore, not the focus of the findings. KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii 5. The research question With such aims as mentioned, the research question of the dissertation is: What are the similarities and differences in the realization and operation of logico-semantic relationship between English clause complexes and Vietnamese clause complexes? 6. The research design, methodology, and data The dissertation is designed as a comparative study conducted in the methodology of a corpus-based linguistic study. To answer to this research question, the following methodology is applied: (i) In the light of SFL, framing the theoretical frameworks of logico-semantic relations in clause complexes by modifying the existing theories from the studies on the same linguistic area in English and other languages; (ii) Collecting texts to build up the corpora of English clause complexes and Vietnamese clause complexes as the source of real-life evidence for investigating and validating the theories, and comparing the findings. (iii) Applying the modified framework to re-examine the logico-semantic relations in English clause complexes, suggest any minor corrections and adjustments needed; (iv) Applying the modified framework to investigate the logico-semantic relations in Vietnamese clause complexes, building up the framework of logico-semantic relations in Vietnamese clause complexes The dissertation takes SFL as the theoretical perspective, which provides a more comprehensive view on the functions of languages without rejecting the other theories on language. In this dissertation, therefore, the terms from traditional grammar are sometimes exploited so that a more detailed and comprehensive explanation on the feature being described can be achieved. Conducted in the methodology of corpus linguistic, the 300,000-word corpora of the dissertation are compiled from 135 articles from 135 journals in English and Vietnamese, from which 2000 clause complexes (1000 in English and 1000 in Vietnamese) are randomly selected for close observation. The data analysis process is done manually with the assistance in annotation from SysFan, a software for systemic functional annotation and statistics. Data analysis therefore offers close observation of the clause complexes in the corpora, from which findings on the realization and operation of logico-semantic relations in English and Vietnamese clause complexes are re-examined, explored, and then compared. In the discussion of the findings, more than 200 clause complexes are retrieved from the corpora for illustration in the form of numbered examples with clause complex IDs. As the whole corpora with all the raw materials and analyzed data are too long, which can reach the number of 4000 pages when printed out, only the clause complexes used as examples in the dissertation, together with their detail analyses are then provided in the appendix of the dissertation. Quantitative analysis is not used as the major instrument for analysis in this dissertation; it is just used to sketch the general findings on the big trends of data and reinforce the description and comparison in the discussion. 7. The organization of the study The dissertation is developed in four chapters: Chapter 1- Systemic Functional Linguistics and the Theoretical Framework of Logicosemantic Relation in Clause Complexes- extensively reviews the historical context of the emergence of functionalism and, specifically, SFL, accumulate the characterizing features of this approach in language study, and related literature in Vietnamese language and the logicosemantic relations in Vietnamese and other languages. The chapter then explains and justifies the notion of clause complex and the concept of logico-semantic relationship, the relations of projection and expansion and their subtypes, then set up the analytical framework of projection and the analytical framework of expansion in clause complexes. Chapter 2 - Methodology, Data, and General Findings - explains the steps of conducting the study, the procedures in collecting, analyzing, and exploiting data, and some general findings based on statistical data. Chapter 3 - Findings and Discussion: Projection in English and Vietnamese Clause Complexes – describes and then compares projection in English and Vietnamese Clause Complexes. Chapter 4 - Findings and Discussion: Expansion in English and Vietnamese Clause Complexes - describes and then compares expansion in English and Vietnamese Clause Complexes. KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii CHAPTER 1 SYSTEMIC FUNTIONAL LINGUISTICS AND THE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF LOGICO-SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIP IN CLAUSE COMPLEXES 1.1.Systemic Functional Approach 1.1.1. Historical Context of the Emergence of Functionalism: a Brief Overview We use language to interact with one another, to construct and maintain our interpersonal relations and the social order that lies behind them; and in doing so we interpret and represent the world for one another and for ourselves. Language is a natural part of the process of living; it is also used to 'store' the experience built up in the course of that process, both personal and collective. It is (among other things) a tool for representing knowledge or, to look at this in terms of language itself, for constructing meaning. Since human beings began to be curious about the languages they speak and started examining them, linguistics has been developed through many periods of time with different approaches. Grammatical analysis was developed very early in ancient India and in ancient Greece, a description of grammar also appeared. The division of sentences into subject and predicate by the great Greek scholar Aristotle (384-322BC) and the first step of Dionysius Thrax, who produced the first complete grammar of Greek) in dividing words into classes, which are now called parts of speech, are still recognized today. nd After the Roman conquest of Greece in the mid 2 century BC, the Greek work was much concerned and perceived by Roman scholars who then applied the same analysis to their language, Latin, constructing what is called traditional Graeco-Roman, also called traditional grammar, which has continued to be taught in European schools down to present day. However, in English-speaking countries, the teaching of English grammar was largely discontinued in the 1960s. Since then, a diversity of linguistic approaches have been introduced by linguists, mostly in English-speaking countries, Germany, and France. th The initiative of universal grammar first emerged in the 17 century, when French scholars, known as the Port-Royal Circle put together a universal grammar of French, which is remarkably similar to Chomsky‘s earliest 1950s version of transformational grammar. The German polymath Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767 – 1835) likewise tried to develop a universalist and philosophical approach to the study of languages. He believes 6 that every language has its inner structure which determines its outer form and which is the reflection of its speakers‘ minds, which excited a great deal of attention but still failed to establish a continuing tradition. This general trend of analyzing language structure seemed to be paused temporarily when the study of language change and of prehistory of languages, called historical linguistics, which came to be by far the most important way of studying th languages, was established towards the close of the 18 century. th Only towards the end of the 19 century did the non-historical study of language structure begin to reassert itself. This kind of work is now called general linguistics: the study of how languages are put together and how they work. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 – 1913), originally trained as a historical linguist, made important contribution to the development of general linguistics through his effort in describing how the Proto-IndoEuropean languages are put together and how they work. Saussure‘s viewpoint on language is different from the other linguists in that: while most linguists take an atomistic approach to language structure, perceiving a language as a collection of objects such as speech sounds, words, and grammatical endings, he argued that language was best regarded as a structured system of elements, in which the place of each element is defined chiefly by how it relates to other elements. This approach quickly came to be called structuralism. Today almost all work in linguistics is structuralist in Saussure‘s general linguistic sense. The anthropological and cultural factors are then, step by step, added into linguists‘ consideration in their linguistic analysis. Fraz Boas (1858 – 1942), a student of Saussure, later recognized as the father of American linguistics, initiated the idea in his anthropological work that investigation of any culture required knowledge of its language. In turn, Boas‘s student Edward Sapir was deeply interested in uncovering possible relations between language and culture and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf kept on with the same cultural argument to develop the Sapir – Whorf hypothesis, or the linguistic relativity hypothesis, which states that the structure of our language, to some extent, determines the way we perceive the world. Such a view has fascinated a lot of linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists ever since, though the degree of validity has been much debated. KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii Another American linguist, Leonard Bloomfield, however, turns American linguistics somewhat away from its anthropological and cultural connections, and toward a more tightly focused concentration on language structure in its own right. The next generation of American linguists took their inspiration mainly from Bloomfield. The brand of linguistics these post-Bloomfieldian structuralists developed, known as American structuralism, took no interest in the meaning or functions of words and utterances, preferring to concentrate on linguistic forms alone. In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky took the formalist methods from his teacher, Zellig Harris (1909 – 1992), who grew American structuralism to something of an extreme with his ―unusual‖ algebraic analysis of language. Chomsky then combined them with certain ideas from mathematics. The result was a strikingly new approach to the description and study of language, and especially of sentence structure (syntax), which he called generative grammar. With this approach, he attempts to provide a fully explicit and mechanical statement of the rules governing the construction of sentences. But he then further developed instead a much more powerful kind of generative grammar, called transformational grammar, or TG, which is the dominant formal theory which is also referred to as the syntactocentric view of language. In this light of TG, the point of a good theory of grammar is its power to tell us what is possible and impossible in the grammars of human languages. From this point of view, the form of sentence is an algebric system of rules which operate largely independent of the meaning of the sentence. Consequently, language is considered as an abstract object whose structure is to be studied independently of psycholinguistic, communicative, sociocultural and other considerations. Chomsky argues his transformational grammar to be the best theory for describing grammar structures of languages, but he and his colleagues actually have to modify their ideas repeatedly to manage the complicatedly unstable data. For these reasons, among others, many linguists prefer to steer clear of what they see as excessive formalism in favour of more human-centered approaches which focus far more directly upon what people are trying to do when they speak, and how they go about this task. One such human-centered approach, preferred by many linguists is the functionalist approach, in the light of which linguists try to determine what purposes are being served by languages, and what linguistic forms are available to serve those functions. The emergence of functional approach is the milestone in the historical development of world linguistics, with its separation into two trends: formalism and functionalism 1.1.2. Functional Approach – a General Description As previously introduced, contemporary linguistic theories are usually divided into two broad schools of thought which are labeled formal versus functional orientations. From a formal point of view, grammar of a language is a set of structural descriptions of sentences where a full structural description determines the sound and meaning of a linguistic expression. In this most dominant formal theory which is also referred to as the syntactocentric view of language - syntax is the central aspect of language. The phonological and semantic aspects of language are derivative of and secondary to syntactic structure. Functionalists, however, believe that language must be studied in relation to its role in human communication. In the light of functional approach, language is defined as a system of communication. The starting points for functionalists is the view that language is first and foremost an instrument for communication between human beings and this fact is central in explaining why languages are as they are. Functionalists, typically, are those who argue for a higher degree of involvement of other domains (semantics, pragmatics, discourse, extra-linguistics exigencies deriving from the context of communication, etc.) in syntactic phenomena, and for hierarchies, gradients, and other non-categorial analyses. Indeed, functionalists believe that human beings do not communicate with each other in a vacuum but rather in socioculturally defined activities and situations in which the participants take on socially defined roles and status. Whereas adherents of the syntactocentric paradigm view language as a potentially infinite set of structural descriptions independent of matters of use, functionalists take the very opposite approach in considering all aspects of the structural organization of language in the light of its role in human social interaction. The basic difference between functionalist and formalist linguistic frameworks is in where explanations are lodged, and what counts as an explanation. Formal linguistics generates explanations out of structure so that a structural category or relation, such as command or subjacency (Newmeyer 1999:476-477) can legitimately count as an explanation for certain facts about various syntactic structures and constructions. Most contemporary formal theories, certainly Generative Grammar in all its manifestations, KKeett--nnooii..ccoomm kkhhoo ttaaii lliieeuu mmiieenn pphhii provide ontological grounding for these explanations in a hypothesized, but unexplored and unexplained, biologically-based universal language faculty. Functionalists, in contrast, find explanations in function, and in recurrent diachronic processes which are for the most part function driven. They see language as a tool, or, better, a set of tools, whose forms are adapted to their functions, and thus can be explained only in terms of those functions. Since functionalists assume a broader notion of language than formal theories, the extent of linguistic investigation is correspondingly wider. Language function (what it is used for) is often more important than language structure (how it is composed). Generally speaking, the guiding principle of functionalism is the fact that the form of a sentence is determined by its meaning with reference to pragmatic and social considerations. As Newmeyer (2000) points out, the central theme of the functionalist theories is: functional motivation is an alternative to innateness. Linguistic theories which reject the syntactocentric or formal view and adopt the communication and cognition perspective include Functional Grammar (Dik 1978, 1991), Systemic Functional Grammar (Halliday 1994), Role and Reference Grammar (RRG; VanValin and LaPolla 1997), Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG; Bresnan 2001), etc. Unlike the linguistic theory that is still the received tradition in school, functionalism takes the resource perspective rather than the rule perspective; and it is designed to display the overall system of grammar rather than only fragments. Different functional theories represent a great range of theoretical opinion, and by listing them together no claim is made that they are in agreement on all major issues. What they have in common is basically a rejection of the syntactocentric view of formalists and a recognition of the importance of the communicative factors, cognitive factors or both in grammatical theory and analysis. Different functional theories can be placed along a continuum according to their reduction of grammatical structure to discourse. Nichols (1984) distinguished three groups of functionalism: extreme, moderate and conservative. + Extreme functionalist theories deny any relevance to the formal aspect of language. It may claim that rules are based entirely on function and hence there are no purely syntactic constraints. According to advocates of this approach, grammar is reduced to discourse and any apparent structural system being taken as an epiphenomenon of recurrent discourse patterns, formulaic expressions, etc. Therefore, this approach rejects any notion of grammatical structure other than that of discourse. As Newmeyer (2001) and Croft (1995) 10