Hi, Carolyn -- How am I doing? I just sent another
response to Bob Yates. I feel like -- woops, my
Biblical references need to be built up. The little
guy against a huge monstrous crowd, using
SFG as my slingshot. I'm concerned that most
members of ATEG will be getting irritated with
this digression into functional stuff. What
do you think?

Nice to know you're online.
And hope all is well w/you.

Judy



At 11:06 PM 2/5/99 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm enjoying this discussion of grammatical terms.  It shows the wide
>variety of opinions.
> It is what ATEG should be doing.
>
>What words do in a sentence -- or longer text -- is more significant than
>what categories they can belong to elsewhere.  Johanna's  examples of the
>same words as nouns and verbs illustrate this.  The important thing is what
>the words do, how they perform the functions -- or metafunctions, if you
>wish -- that Judy lists.  Sometimes a whole clause is a subject -- and a
>theme and what the sentence is about; and sometimes, but less often, thse
>functions are served by different words.
>
>To solve another problem, a word doesn't have to be called an adjective
>just because it
>modifies a noun.  If you wish, call _arrival_ a noun adjunct in the
>expression _arrival time_.
>And accept two-word verbs, as in _call off_.  (Doesn't _off_ make a better
>particle than preposition anyway?)
>
>Because of the importance of function, I like Hallidayan funtionalism. The
>concepts behind most of its jargon are worthwhile, but I don't feel
>compelled to use its arcane terms when they are avoidable.  I think they
>are a big obstacle, but one worth trying to overcome.  Halliday's
>Introduction to Functional Grammar is not easy reading for us Americans.
>You might instead try to find _Using Funtional Grammar: An Explorer's
>Guide_.  It is by David Butt and other of Halliday's colleagues, published
>in 1995 in Sydney, NSW, by the National Centre of English Language Teaching
>and Research of Macquarie University.
>
>Carolyn Hartnett
>[log in to unmask]
>


Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183

Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake