The turf wars are far from  over in modern linguistics. There is still a
strong divide between 'formalists' and 'functionalists'. I haven't seen
Newmeyer's new book, but judging from his past books and what my
functionalist friends have reported, I wouldn't trust him to give an
objective view of the field. I have found his previous books to be
examples of heavily biased and irresponsible scholarship, more editorial
commentary than an objective portrait of what has gone on in linguistics
in the past several decades. Frankly, I don't understand how he gets published.

As to Halliday's functional grammar, I was thinking of it as systemics,
and inadvertently left it out of my list of functional grammars. I have
read a few of the basic introductions. I think Cognitive grammar does
far better with semantics as having reflexes in the grammar, including
verb types etc. I think the great contribution of Hallidayan grammar is
its inclusion of discourse purposes and information-organization
imperatives as influences on the choices people make in constructing
sentences. There is a very similar program here under 'discourse
analysis' or 'discourse linguistics', which examines actual usage
(usually spoken) to see how utterances get structured and what
relationships structure bears to use. There is a big center of discourse
linguistics at UC Santa Barbara. Some of the big names are Paul Hopper
(at Carnegie Mellon), Sandra Thompson, Susanna Cumming, John DuBois (all
at UCSB). Hopper and Thompson are famous for several papers about how
grammatical structure emerges from discourse function, for instance
'Nouns and Verbs' and 'Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse' (both old
papers from Language --the 80s, I believe).

There was an interesting conference a while ago in Milwaukee on
'Formalism and Functionalism in Linguistics'; a proceedings volume came
out of it which I have been using lately for work on a book. There are
numerous very interesting papers in it, and there are also responses to
papers and responses to the responses. I recall hearing stories, mostly
of frustration, from functionalist friends who attended. Their reports
were that most of the formalists didn't really open their minds to the
functionalist arguments. I don't know what the formalists reported to
their friends, but I bet they were similarly frustrated!

A number of years ago I taught a course in syntax at the U of Montana. I
taught both 'formal' or generative syntax and some Cognitive Grammar.
What I found in teaching the syntax was that enriching the discussions
of various structures with semantics would have made them much more enlightening.

I don't see any mystery with these sentences:

a. John wants someone to work for.
b. John wants someone to work for him (= John).
c. John wants someone to work for him  (=not John).

The phrasal verb 'work for' has an argument frame of 'X work for Y'.
Either X or Y can be gapped and coded with 'someone'. When there is no
pronoun after the verb, we understand the 'someone' to fill the gap
after the verb, and be participant Y. If the pronoun is present, we
understand 'someone' to fill the gap before the verb 'work', being
participant X. The presence or absence of the pronoun triggers which
interpretation we go for. What is so challenging about these constructions?

We need to realize, too, that such sentences arise with 'John' as
subject for non-arbitrary reasons. A speaker wants 'John' to be subject
for some reason, hence we don't get John in the 'someone' position,
though we could:

d. Z wants John to work for him.
e. There is no one for John to work for.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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