Adverbial groups tend to have less complex structure than nominal or verbal groups. The adverbial group normally has an adverb as its Head. In (24), somewhat earlier is the adverbial group; earlier is the Head, and somewhat the Modifier.
(24) Somewhat earlier the first application of glaze to pottery was made.
A conjunction group usually consists of just the conjunction as Head, and is rarely analyzed as such. Conjunctions can have Modifiers, however: in the clause just until you go, the conjunction until is modified by just; in even if he answers, if is the Head and even is the Modifier. Linking conjunctions are not modified.
A prepositional group has a preposition as Head and this is not often modified. Some prepositional groups do contain Modifiers, however; for instance: just inside has inside as Head and just as Modifier. Other examples are right on (as in right on target), slightly over (as in slightly over the edge), far beyond in far beyond our expectations.
Except in elliptical structures, a prepositional group (with or without mod-ification) always occurs with a nominal group to make up a prepositional phrase. For example in the office is a prepositional phrase made up of a preposition in (strictly speaking a prepositional group without a Modifier) and a nominal group the office. Slightly off the point is a prepositional phrase made up of a prepositional group slightly off (off Head; slightly Modifier) and a nominal group the point.
Groups of the same type can be linked together to make up a group com-plex. Jack and Jill is a nominal group complex, and so is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth in Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? A verbal group complex can be formed sim-ilarly: She speaks and thinks like a lawyer. Also classed as verbal group com-plexes are the italicized items in: She wants to understand; Things are beginning to develop; They seem to thrive here.
2.6 Three ways of looking at a clause
We have said that any item of language may have more than one function.
Any sample of language would serve to illustrate this. Take the following sen-tence, for instance:
(25) Boole had already written an important paper on this subject.
We can examine this from various points of view. We can analyze the struc-tural relations of the clause, commenting on its mood, which concerns the fact that it is a statement (in grammatical terms, a declarative) and not a question
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(an interrogative), and therefore the Subject Boole comes before had. If the sentence were a question, the interrogative form would require had to be placed before Boole to give (25a).
(25a) Had Boole already written an important paper on this subject?
This has something to do with the nature of the exchange between the speaker (or writer) and the listener (or reader). The fact that the writer is asking rather than telling leads to the choice of a particular ordering in the wording, a choice made from a number of possible options in the structure of clauses in English. In order to examine this aspect more fully, we would need to consid-er such mattconsid-ers as which items take on the functions of Subject, Complement, and so on. In this case, Boole is the Subject. The remaining functions will be discussed in Chapter 3.
On the other hand, we might be more interested in considering what some people might think of as the ‘meaning’ of the clause, but what for Systemic Functional linguists is just one of several kinds of meaning. What kind of event or state of affairs is being represented here? Or, in the words of the limerick:
Who does what, which way up, and to whom? Here, the analyst’s attention is directed to the question of whether the process is one involving action, or thought/feeling, or speech, or whether it specifies some relationship such as identity or similarity. In this case, we might label Boole as Actor on the grounds that this is an action and that Boole is the one who performs it. So we see that we have now labelled Boole twice: once as Subject and once as Actor. Each label says something different about the function of the item Boole in this clause.
There is yet another way in which we can look at it. We can concentrate attention on the choice the writer has made about which item to place first in the clause. Once a declarative has been opted for, Boole is the obvious choice for starting point, because in most declarative clauses in English the Subject comes first. The grammar of English would also permit other choices, for example, one of the following:
(25b) Already, Boole had written an important paper on this subject.
(25c) On this subject, Boole had already written an important paper.
(25d) An important paper Boole had already written on this subject.
It is true that some of the choices seem less likely than others, but all are pos-sible. In all these alternatives, the function of Subject is realized by the nom-inal group Boole, and in all of them Boole has the role of Actor; but in (25b), (25c) and (25d) the author has chosen to start off with something other than the Subject/Actor. The item with which we start a clause can usually be labelled the Theme. In the original, authentic example, (25), Boole is Subject, Actor and Theme. In the others, Boole is Subject and Actor, but not Theme.
The Themes in the other examples are as follows: Already, On this subject, and An important paper. Chapters 4 and 5 return to the question of Theme and Three ways of looking at a clause 33
related issues. If (25d) seems a little odd out of context, compare (26) from the same page of the same text.
(26) He also began to have some ideas of his own. These he wrote up [. . .]
In the second clause here, we have the same sort of structure as (25d). The author might have chosen to place the Subject/Actor he first in the clause, as in (26a), but for textual reasons opted for These, thereby pushing the Subject into second place.
(26a) He also began to have ideas of his own. He wrote these up [. . .]
So, we have suggested three different ways of looking at the clause. The first, involving such functions as Subject, is described in Halliday’s grammar as the
‘clause as exchange’ and relates primarily to the interpersonal metafunction.
The second, involving such functions as Actor, is the ‘clause as represen-tation’ and relates primarily to the ideational metafunction. The third, which concerns the choice of starting point and the optional ordering of elements and which involves the function Theme, is the ‘clause as message’ and relates primarily to the textual metafunction. Each of these will be discussed further in subsequent chapters.
Summary
In this chapter we have argued that grammatical terminology, rather than being a device intended to exclude the public from the deliberations of spe-cialists, is valuable, even necessary, for talking about the way in which a lan-guage works. Starting with the familiar notion of word classes (or parts of speech), we see that the criteria for classification may produce different groupings of items, and we list Halliday’s eight word classes, paying particu-lar attention to nouns and their subclass, pronouns. Verbs can be described in a number of different ways and various subclassifications emerge. The func-tions Subject, Actor and Theme serve as an illustration of the fact that the same samples of language can be usefully labelled in more than one way, reflecting co-existing dimensions. Functions such as Subject are realized not so much by nouns as by nominal groups. Nominal groups consist of a Head (usually a noun) and possibly Modifiers.
Further study
Many linguists working within a Systemic Functional framework posit the existence of adjectival group with an adjective as Head (for example, Downing and Locke, 2002; Fawcett, 1974; in later Cardiff analysis it is labelled quality group but is essentially an adjectival group: Fawcett, 2000a;
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Tucker, 1998). This appears to be consistent and predictable in terms of the analysis of other groups. (Note that in IFG adjectives which occur as Modifier in a nominal group are not themselves groups.) Halliday himself, however, dispenses with adjectival groups, classifying these structures as nominal groups with adjective as Head on the grounds that, like nominal groups with noun as Head, they frequently function as Complement (see Chapter 3) and in other roles typical of groups with noun as Head. In comparing Fawcett and Halliday on this point, Butler (1985, p. 101) seems to favour Fawcett, and much later (Butler 2003a) his remarks on Halliday’s position on this issue are slightly negative.
Different Systemic Functional linguists vary in the use of the term preposi-tional group. In much Systemic literature, the preposipreposi-tional group applies to combinations of a preposition and a nominal group: for example: on your bike, over the rainbow. Halliday, at least in later writings, calls this structure a prepositional phrase, and treats it, somewhat ambivalently, as outside the rank scale of clause, group, word, morpheme. As explained in Section 2.5, he applies the term prepositional group to the preposition itself (as Head) plus Modifiers, if any (IFG Section 6.5).
IFG Section 6.3 discusses the verbal group in somewhat different terms from those used here. The SFL treatment of tense and aspect in particular is strikingly different from that of most other linguists. More conventional treat-ments of verbs can be found in Palmer (1974; 1979; 1986).
Exercises
Exercise 2.1
Read Text 2A and carry out the tasks below.
Exercises 35
[1] Water makes up over three-quarters of most living things and is con-stantly used up in cell processes. [2] Small plants are kept upright by being distended with water [3] just as a motor car tyre is firm when filled with air.
[4] A tyre, [5] when it is flat, [4 continued] cannot support the car, and [6]
a plant short of water on a hot day wilts. [7] Most of the water taken up by a plant is lost by evaporation from the leaves, a process called transpir-ation. [8] A maize plant loses about two litres a day because, [9] when the stomata are open to exchange gases during photosynthesis, [10] water vapour is lost very rapidly. [11] Transpiration actually helps to draw water up the plant in a way similar to sucking liquid up a straw.
Text 2A (Martin et al. (eds), The Penguin Book of the Natural World, (1976 p. 42), numbers added).
(a) 1. Identify the nominal groups which function as the Subjects of the numbered clauses in the text. (Clauses without an explicit subject are not numbered.)
2. Identify the Head noun in each group.
(b) Identify each word in the last sentence according to its word class.
(Treat to draw as a single unit.)
(c) Label the following groups as nominal, verbal, adverbial or conjunc-tion. Clause numbers are given in parentheses.
constantly (1) evaporation from the leaves (7) cell processes (1) about two litres (8)
just as (3) is lost (10) wilts (6) very rapidly (10)
Exercise 2.2
(a) Identify the verbal groups in the following examples and label them as active or passive.
(b) Label the elements of the verbal groups as lexical, non-finite auxil-iary, finite operator, modal operator.
(c) Identify the nouns and label them as: common noun, proper noun or pronoun.
(d) Identify prepositional phrases and label the preposition and the nom-inal group.
1. Robins had quoted a passage from Stevenson.
2. The government was willing to use that strategy.
3. Johnson must have smiled.
4. Eventually seventeen people were wiretapped by the FBI.
5. One more ingredient must be mentioned [. . .]
6. He worked with Bronstein, who had been brought into the firm by Kaplan.
7. [. . .] we did not know it at that time [. . .]
8. Her future in corporate public relations must have looked rather dim at that moment.
Exercise 2.3
One of the eight parts of speech in the most widespread version of traditional grammar is interjection. This is exemplified by such expressions as Ouch!
Oh! Ah! Help! Try to think of reasons why many grammars exclude this category.
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Exercise 2.4
From texts of your own choice, find examples of numerals functioning as (a) Modifier of a Head noun (b) as Head.
Exercise 2.5
Think about the alternating pronouns in the following examples or discuss them with a friend or colleague. You might consider questions of ‘correct-ness’, common usage versus grammatical regularity, and so on.
1. (a) I don’t mind giving money to they who need it.
(b) I don’t mind giving money to them who need it.
2. (a) He first met my wife and I during our honeymoon.
(b) He first met my wife and me during our honeymoon.
3. (a) Me and Bill go back a long way.
(b) Bill and I go back a long way.
4. (a) Unlike She Who Must Be Obeyed, he was kind enough to laugh.
(b) Unlike Her Who Must Be Obeyed, he was kind enough to laugh.
5. (a) Speaker 1: Who did this? Speaker 2: It was I.
(b) Speaker 1: Who did this? Speaker 2: It was me.
Exercise 2.6
Go to example (11) in Section 2.3.7 and pick out all the adverbs.
Note
1. Martin, E., Larkin, S. and Bernbaum, L. (eds.) 1976: The Penguin Book of the Natural World. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Note 37