792 R. Hudson

phonology (especially intonation), lexis (which is roughly what others mean

by '[the theory of] the lexicon'), syntax, semantics, pragmatics (especially in

relation to cohesion and socially significant variation). He has also worked on

language acquisition and on the relations between language and social structure and has been deeply involved for the last two decades in the application of linguistics to school education. He has published on all parts of this broad spectrum, and interested readers will find a complete list of

references in the book by Butler reviewed below.SG is for many synonymous with 'Hallidayan linguistics', which covers all

these many fields of interest. This is entirely to be expected (in view of the way in which 'Chomskyan linguistics' is used as the name for one of the main

alternatives) and reflects the dominant influence which Halliday has held

since the start of the theory. This at least has the advantage, for the reviewer, of making it relatively easy to sort out what counts as 'true' SG: that which Halliday propounds. This is helpful because various other linguists have developed Halliday's ideas in their own directions and have ended up with very different theories which could be included under the label 'SG' only at the cost of enormous confusion. (I myself am an example, and 1 have been careful to minimize confusion by using names other than 'SG' for my ideas once they became clearly incompatible with Halliday's.) The identification of SG with Hallidayan linguistics has a disadvantage, however, which is that SG then comes to include any area of linguistic work in which Halliday has engaged, whether or not it has anything specifically to do with the theory of language structure called SG. I have in mind here the work on cohesion

I

''0Review article

Systemic grammar*

~ ,RICHARD HUDSON

.','

M. A. K. Halliday: An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Arnold, 1985. 387 + xxxv pp. £14.95.

C. S. Butler: Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Applications. London: Batsford, 1985. 259+ix pp. £19.95.

Both the books under review are about systemic grammar (SG), a theory unfamiliar to many readers, so the review starts with a brief historical account of SG. This is followed by a review of the book by Halliday, in which I concentrate on matters of coverage and presentation. The next sections deal with a number of general issues which SG raises, and finally I turn to Butler's book.

1. Historical background

'Systemic grammar' is a name which was coined in the mid-1960s for a theory which Halliday was then developing. (The initiated pronounce it /sisti:mik/; the name comes from the key concept, the 'system', which is just a set of alternatives.) The precursor of systemic grammar was called 'scale and category' grammar (after the two main relations distinguished in Halliday 1961). This was a rather different theory which was less well developed in some important respects, so the difference of name is important. More recently, however, the name 'systemic functional grammar' is often used, but as far as I can see the theories called 'systemic grammar' and 'systemic functional grammar' are more or less the same.

Halliday's ideas were based on those of J. R. Firth, under whom he studied in London, and like Firth's they comprise a comprehensive theory of language structure which applies to all levels. Halliday himself has made significant contributions t6 work at all levels (except morphology):

Linguistics 24 (1986), 791-815 0024-3949/86/0024-:<1791 $2.00@ Mouton de Gruyter

(Halliday and Hasan 1976) and much of the work on social structure and language and on language in education. The question how much of this work is 'really' part of SG is clearly not worth pursuing, but the fact remains that for many people there is no clear distinction between SG and the kind of humane linguistic endeavor which Halliday advocates and practices.

The school called SG is alive and well, socially speaking. Each year a 'systemic workshop' is organized and attended by a hundred or so linguists, and in recent years these events have been retitled 'international systemic workshops' in recognition of the fact that their participants come not only from Britain but also from North America and Australia (where Halliday is now working) - indeed, several recent workshops have been held in North America. Several linguistics departments are predominantly Hallidayan in orientation, and 1 have the impression that the same is true of very many language departments in teacher-training institutions. Not many schools of linguistics can boast such organizational success (one thinks of GLOW as the Chomskyan counterpart, but

~

there is no comparable standing organization for any other school that I know of), so it demands explanation.

One reason is certainly that a lot oflinguists are attracted by Halliday's general philosophy, especially in contrast with the rather dry-as-dust and daunting wares offered by the alternative theories. Halliday is interested in the relations between language and people, and many people with similar interests find his work stimulating. Another reason is that Halliday offers a comprehensive analysis of English grammar which is relatively easy to apply to texts - something which no other school has to offer. This has obvious attractions for applied linguists of various typesnot least for computational linguists, who have taken SG very seriously since Winograd used it to make SHRDLU work (Winograd 1972, 1983). Yet another reason for the organizational success is the energy and efficiency of Fawcett, one of the leading advocates of SG (Fawcett 1980) and the founder of the systemic workshops.

And yet, for all this success, SG remains largely unknown except to the initiated. Very few papers in refereed linguistics journals use SG, or even refer to it as such (though the work on cohesion, for example, is quite often referred to). Indeed, the bibliography in Butler's book contains only three examples of such papers published since 1970 (Hudson 1973,1974; McCord 1975). There has been no shortage of either books about SG or articles about it in anthologies or in departmental working papers, but it is easy to understand why most linguists confess to more or less complete ignorance about SG. Not surprisingly, SG has had little effect on other theories (except for those which, like my own, are direct descendants), but the converse is unfortunately also true: SG shows little sign of being influenced by work in other theories. Halliday complains (p. xxviii) that 'it is often difficult to maintain a dialogue' with other theories, but a good deal more effort could have been made by systemic linguists to establish this dialogue - by listening and learning as well as by talking. If this had happened there might have" been more direct critical comment by outsiders, something which Butler (p. 77) regrets the lack of. Without such a change of attitude, SG looks set to sail on into the next century as an autonomous school of linguistics unaffected by the developments in other schools.

2. Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar

This (henceforward: IFG) is an introductory book about English grammar within the framework of SG. It is introductory in that it assumes no knowledge about linguistic analysis, so for example the first chapters

794 R. Hudson

introduce notions like 'constituency' and 'structure'; but as so often happens in 'introductory' books the pace accelerates rapidly and some of the later chapters become very hard work. (He warns us [po xxxiv] that the writing becomes dense in places; he is right.) It is mainly about English, with very few references to other languages, and indeed rather few references to theoretical issues which would justify the title of the book. It would perhaps have been more helpful to call it something like 'A functional introduction to English grammar'. Facts about English grammar are not brought in to exemplify theoretical matters; rather, the book sets out to give a more or less complete overview of English grammar and is organized accordingly (with a chapter on transitivity, one on the structure of the phrase, and so on).

In case the above gives the impression that IFG is a run-of-the-mill book about English grammar, I must stress that it is not. It is very unusual in most respects one can imagine. The order of presentation is unusual - he starts with poetry to illustrate the nature of linguistic structure, for example. The content is unusual, precisely because this is the grammar that he has been developing over the last two decades, largely without influence from outside (so far as one can tell). The book is stuffed with analyses which could not be matched from other theories or which conflict with analyses offered in terms of other theories. The coverage is unusual - he tends to continue his analyses at the points where other linguists give up in despair, such as intonation, topicalization, adverbials, and the fuzzy area where sentence structure fades into discourse structure. And the presentation is unusual - for instance, his examples are unusually well chosen not only for making the relevant point but also for their inherent interest; a good many are from Alice in Wonderland but there is a fair sprinkling of extracts from taped conversations. IFG is a challenging book - it challenges those of us who are outsiders to see if we can produce anything as impressive in its scope and internal consistency. It is important to bear this in mind in reading the following critical remarks, because I know of only two other attempts to present a unified, theoretically based account of a comparably large section of English grammar, namely the 'UCLA' grammar of Stockwell et al. (1973) and Huddleston (1984), a work which owes a lot to Halliday's influence. For one person to have produced IFG is an achievement to be respected, whatever its shortcomings.

The shortcomings are, unfortunately, numerous. Two are obvious at a first glance. There is no index at all, which makes the book virtually impossible to use as a 'resource for the interpretation of texts' (p. xx). The lack of an index is noted (p. xii) but we are told that the table of contents should do instead. This is certainly not the case for at least one reader

Systemic grammar 795

(me). For example, say I wanted to find out what the book has to say about relative clauses, where do I look? Once you know the system, you know to turn up the sections labeled 'Experiential structure of the nominal group: interpretation of ordering; the Qualifier' and 'Elaboration' (in the chapter on 'The clause complex') - among others. But it would surely take several very careful readings of the book to reach the point where this skill is acquired - and I doubt if many readers would miss the opportunity to build up their own index on the way. It amazes me that the publishers agreed to publish the book without an index, as it must halve the value of the book for its most important population of potential users, those who want a detailed grammatical analysis which they can apply to texts. As it is, these customers will surely turn to one of the more conventional grammars such as Quirk et al. (1972), although in many ways Halliday's grammar is better - at least it is a serious attempt at a fully integrated analysis.

The other obvious point about the book is the total lack of references to the literature. (The one exception that I noticed was a short list of systemic works on p. 315.) All we are given is a bibliography of more or less relevant systemic publications at the end of the book, without any guidance as to the areas they cover. We .are not even told that large portions of the book are very similar to things published by Halliday himself elsewhere; for example, chapters 3 to 5 are very similar in content to his seminal articles, 'Notes on transitivity and theme', published in three parts as Halliday (1967a, 1967b); and chapter 9 summarizes the contents of Halliday and Hasan (1976).

Whether or not one takes the lack of scholarly references as a shortcoming is a matter of opinion, and even of taste. It is true that the book is an introductory one, based on Halliday's lecture notes, and in this context it could be argued that references are out of place. Nevertheless my opinion is that it was a mistake to omit them. One reason is that other linguists are likely to turn to IFG as a convenient source of information on the current state of Halliday's thinking on English grammar (I certainly approached it myself in this way). For such readers the lack of references is disastrous, as they lose all time perspective. Is this all new, or has some of it been published before? Those who are not familiar with Halliday's earlier publications have no way of knowing that many of the ideas were first published up to 20 years ago and might be forgiven for thinking that in some cases they are predated by work which in fact was itself influenced by them. (I think for example of the work by Dik on semantic relations in Dik 1978.) The lack of references is also unhelpful for beginners, who will get no sense of historical perspective and no encouragement to read further.

Since the material in this book has clearly been gestating for a long time, one would expect the successive reworkings and revisions (which are mentioned in the Foreword) to have ironed out all serious inconsistencies. Curiously, this does not seem to be the case. For example,- The Greeks started with morphology according to p. xiv, but with rhetorical effect according to p. xxiii.- Every independent clause selects for mood, and some such clauses are minor, for p. 44; but for p. 61 minor clauses do not select for mood. - In the sample text on p. 65 he marks off two relative clauses but misses two more (he could do about it and he could offer).- On page 229 he introduces the term 'metaphenomenon' as though it had not previously been used ('We will refer to this as a "metaphenomenon".'); but it actually occurs frequently on previous pages (such as p. 227).- There is a section headed 'Tonicity' (p. 273) which does not mention tonicity once, either by name or otherwise.

If a second edition of the book is produced I hope the publishers will consider serious revisions, to cover slips like these, and the production ofan index at the very least.

A deeper problem with the presentation is the level of argumentation or rather, the lack of it. If one were asked to pick out the most important differences between modem linguistics and traditional grammar, I think most of us would agree that the list should include the fact that we now see that analyses are not God-given but need to be justified, whereas traditional grammar tends to take the form of dogma passed on from generation to generation. Any book, whether introductory or not, should show how the analyses have been arrived at; indeed, this is arguably even more important in an introductory book than in a scholarly monograph, since one is trying to bring the novice to some understanding of how linguists work. Otherwise we are simply perpetuating the era of dogma in which traditional grammar flourishes. But in IFG it is hard to find any passage which suggests that the analyses presented are at all problematic, less still any which attempt to justify these analyses in relation to the alternatives which are available.

The ex-cathedra tone would perhaps be justified if the analyses were self-evidently right, and it would be unreasonable to ask for step-by-step justification of every single analysis (I suspect this would lead to an infinite regress and paralysis in the writer, not to mention boredom in the reader). However, this is hardly the case in IFG - in fact Halliday warns us (p. xxxiv) that his descriptions break with the established tradition, so we might expect a good deal of discussion of tJ:leir pros and cons. Let me again give some examples of places where his analyses and claims seem to

be less than obviously right - in fact, where they seem to face fairly obvious problems - and where some attempt at justification would have been in order.- He claims that speech functions are of four kinds, OFFER, COMMAND, STATEMENT, and QUESTION, and that these are related on two dimensions: giving versus demanding, and involving goods-andservices versus information (p. 69). This classification means that OFFER and QUESTION are maximally different (i.e. differ on both dimensions), so why is it that both are realized, in contrast with the other types, as interrogative clause structures?- He tells us that common noun, adjective, numeral, and determiner are all kinds of NOUN (p. 164). This mayor may not be a good analysis, but at least it conflicts both with the traditional analyses and with other current ones, so some explanation is called for.- He analyzes constructions containing direct speech as cases of parataxis (two equal parts, without subordination); so Brutus said: 'Caesar was ambitious'. has a structure similar to that of a pair of coordinated clauses (p. 228). If the two parts are equal, why is there an asymmetry between them, such that the reported may be enclosed in the reported (e.g. 'Caesar,' said Brutus, 'was ambitious'.), but not vice versa (* Brutus 'Caesar was ambitious', said.)? and why can't the reporting occur without the reported (as in * Brutus said.)?

Many of his analyses involve symmetrical tables whose very symmetry could perhaps be taken as a justification of the analyses; but this symmetry is sometimes questionable, as in the table on p. 113 whose symmetry depends on the assumption that the reversibility of Tom is the leader (cf. The leader is Tom) is found also in The piano is Peter's, compared with Peter's is the piano. But why, then, is it possible to say Thepiano is Peter's piano, but not * Peter's piano is the piano (at least, not with anything like the predicted meaning)?

He explains the position of the WH element at the start of a question by saying that it is the 'theme' - that is, what the question is about - but omits to mention that precisely the same could (presumably) be said of the disjunctive element in an alternative question (such as Was the baby a boy or a girl?), which does not occur in initial position - so is the disjunctive element a theme in an odd position, or something which ought to be theme but isn't? Indeed, there is no mention of alternative questions in the whole section on interrogatives, which is odd considering the amount of text that one assumes has been analyzed according to his system.

It is true that Halliday recognizes that analyses must be justified, as witness his claim (p. xx) that he could justify all the categories which he refers to by spelling out how they are manifested in terms of syntactic and

798 R. Hudson

lexical items. He refers to 'an important principle, namely that all the categories employed must be clearly "there" in the grammar of the language. They are not set up simply to label differences in meaning.' It is simply pressure of space that prevents him from including all the details of realization, he says; the details are all 'stored in a computer' (p. xv). This is encouraging news, but surely it is not enough. We also need to know that for each construction he has arrived at the best possible analysis, considering and rejecting a reasonable range of alternatives. No doubt this has happened in Halliday's work too, but we have no evidence of it in IFL, nor is there any attempt to anticipate predictable objections to the less standard analyses.

Another related problem arises, in connection with the justification of analyses. There are many places in the book where he makes a claim which I, for one, was completely unable either to agree with or to disagree with because the categories concerned were so vaguely defined that I could not reliably identifiy instances of them. Take the important category 'theme', for example. The following definitions are provided: 'The theme is what the clause is going to be about' (p. 39). 'The Theme is what the speaker selects as his point of departure, the means of development of the clause' (p. 53). Presumably he finds these definitions adequate, because he is able to pick out the themes in any clause and work out the general rules which govern their use - for example, 'The Theme of any clause... extends up to (and includes) the topical Theme. The topical Theme is the first element in the clause that has some function in the ideational structure (i.e. in transitivity...)' (p. 56). Perhaps he is tuned into language in a way that the rest of us are incapable of, but those of us who can't easily pick out the parts of a clause which define 'what it is going to be about', or its 'point of departure' are simply unable to decide whether any of his claims about themes are right or wrong. What could one give as a counterexample? Indeed, one wonders what criteria he himself is using to identify themes when one reads that the subordinating conjunction that is a theme in the clause it introduces (p. 51) - it is very hard to see it as defining what the clause is going to be about, and if it is 'the point of departure' of the clause, it can only be in the sense of being the first element. Somewhat confusingly, he himself seems to deny it the status of theme when he says (p. 61) that 'if what comes first is "fixed", ... what comes second may retain some thematic flavour' - the implication being, presumably, that what comes first (for example, that) lacks 'thematic flavour'? One also wonders precisely how the computer holding all the details copes with some of these problems.

Very similar problems arise with several other key categories, of which the following are just a sample:

1

Systemic grammar 799

'subject': 'the element that is held responsible, in which is vested the success of the clause in whatever is its particular speech function' (p. 36); 'something by reference to which the proposition can be affirmed or denied' (p. 76).'given': 'information that is presented by the speaker as recoverable' (p. 277); 'what you, the listener, already know about or have accessible toyou' (p.278) (compare 'definite': 'you know which one[s] 1 mean' - p. 292).'reference': something which 'can be taken as a reference point for something which follows' (p. 288).

The only way in which 1 could apply any of these categories in the analysis of texts would be by looking at the (plentiful) examples which Halliday gives and working out my own rules of thumb. 1 doubt if at the end 1 could honestly claim to have 'understood' either the language or the texts any better for this exercise.

The use of ill-defined categories makes it very hard for Halliday to achieve one of his main goals, which is to explain in functional terms why English is as it is. This goal is worthwhile - though 1 shall express some reservations about it below - but it can hardly be reached by means of explanations like the following: 'The basic message of an imperative clause is 'I want you to do something' ... hence [sic] the unmarked Theme is you... as in you keep quiet' (p. 49). By what principle does the conclusion follow from the premise in this case? The example is not isolated.

These shortcomings are all the more regrettable because the book is in many ways so impressive. One of Halliday's strengths is his ability to see connections between apparently unrelated phenomena, and IFG is full of cross-category generalizations. For example, he compares the ordering of elements at the start of the clause with that at the start of the noun phrase (his 'nominal group'):

So there is a progression in the nominal group from the kind of element that has the greatest specifying potential to that which has the least; and this is a principle of ordering that we have already recognised in the clause. In the clause, the Theme comes first. We begin by establishing relevance: stating what it is that we are using to introduce this clause into the discourse, ... In the nominal group, we begin with the Deictic: 'first I'll tell you which I mean' ... (p. 166).

The comparison may or may not be correct; but at least it is interesting and stimulating. Such unexpected comparisons proliferate, and similar remarks apply to all of them. Halliday aims much higher than most of us and really believes in the idea that a language is a system where everything

800 R. Hudson

hangs together. Everyone of his comparisons would provide the basis for a series of testable hypotheses which could lead to some very interesting and worthwhile research, and our understanding of English grammar would thereby have been deepened whether the research confirmed or refuted Halliday's claims. Unfortunately, however, it seems unlikely that his ideas will be widely exploited in this way simply because most linguists will be put off by the shortcomings in their presentation.

Another positive feature of the book is the large number of individual penetrating observations about particular areas of grammar. Some of them are quite general - for instance, with reference to the transitivity system of English, he believes that English is organized around two conflicting patterns, the nominative-accusative and the ergative, and shows how the two patterns interact with one another (chapter 5). An example of a valuable observation at a less general level is the distinction that he makes between the 'attributive' and 'identifying' uses of be (p. 114), exemplified respectively by Fred is happy and Fred is the leader. These are often lumped together by other linguists as 'the copula' although as Halliday shows there are fundamental differences between them. Very particular points of fact abound too; for example, he notes that He said so and He said that are both possible, and could both refer back to the same preceding discourse, but present it respectively in relation to its content and to its wording (p. 234).

In summary, then, IFG is a disappointment. There are lots of good ideas and insights which have been poorly developed and presented. lethe intended user is the nonlinguist with a need to analyze texts grammatically, IFG may be helpful, but I doubt it - it would be very hard to use as a reference manual, too many categories are vague, and too many analyses are debatable. If the debatable analyses turn out to be wrong (in some sense), then I suppose it goes without saying that it is worse than useless to apply them to texts. If on the other hand the intended reader is the professional linguist or student of linguistics, it is unlikely that IFG will make much impact.

3. The aims of systemic grammarians

I think it would not be unfair to say that most people who are attracted to SG are people who enjoy doing things with language, rather than theorizing about it at a distance. The theory makes this possible by providing a rather flexible sorting device, the system network, which can be used for classifying and cross-classifying. Armed with this machinery one can tackle portions of language of any size or type and be guaranteed

to be able to systematize them to some degree. I see nothing wrong with this enthusiasm for systematizing data in itself - and indeed, I confess to sharing it myself. When I was a student of Halliday's I never failed to be impressed by the classifications - usually cross-classifications - which he produced for otherwise unorganized facts, and I derived enormous satisfaction from doing similar things in my own work. It would, I think, have been very much harder to achieve the same degree of satisfaction within any of the other frameworks available at the time (the main alternative being a pre-1965 version of transformational grammar).

If simple systematization is accepted as a goal, then it becomes quite reasonable to aim at an 'exhaustive' coverage of data - in fact, a 'complete' grammar of the language concerned. This is made even more reasonable by one of the general principles which has always informed work in SG, which is that there is no need to aim for maximum 'delicacy' (that is, amount of detail). The systematization can stop once the main categories have been identified, as there is no sense in which the subdivisions of these categories are necessary for the validity of the classification. It immediately follows from this that exhaustive textual analysis becomes possible, because it is possible to provide a pigeonhole for every part of the text. And one of the main selling points of SG hasalways been that it is easy to use for analyzing texts. (This is the main point, for example, of Halliday 1964.) However, a number of questions arise about the validity of this assumption.

One is about the nature of the categories which should be used in the textual analysis. SG makes a fundamental distinction between 'features' and 'functions' (in the sense of 'grammatical functions', that is, what some people call grammatical relations such as 'subject'). What Halliday presents in IFG is the functions (hence one part of the meaning of 'functional' in the title of the book), but Butler argues repeatedly (for example, p. 197f.) that the value ofSG for text analysis lies in the way that SG presents the 'meaningful choices' available to the speaker - which implies that the most relevant categories are the features, because only these are related as meaningful choices. Functions are simply the surfacemanifestation of these choices. It is odd that the practitioners themselves disagree on such a fundamental point.

Another question is about the issue which I raised at the end of the previous section. Is there any point in applying a classification system unless one is reasonably confident that it is in some sense 'right'? As we have seen, Halliday himself stresses that the categories must in some sense be 'there' as part of the grammar, so the question arises how one evaluates alternative systematizations of the same data. It seems obvious that iftwo people analyze the same text using different classification systems they

802 R. Hudson

may come to different conclusions about it. (And it goes without saying that any analysis of text - other than a mere training exercise - must lead to some conclusion about the text, otherwise it is pointless.) A really broadminded approach might seem to be to accept both conclusions as equally valid ways of viewing the data, but this is surely just woolly thinking when presented as a general principle. For example, suppose we want to compare two texts A and B, and one of the dimensions of comparison is their degree of 'nominality' (a topic on which Halliday has had much of interest to say - see Halliday 1967a, 1967b), then it becomes crucial to decide correctly what should count as a noun and what as a verb. Otherwise the ludicrous situation could arise where one analyst claims that A is more nominal than B, and another makes the reverse claim.

The question then arises, how do we decide what counts as a 'true' analysis? Or put less ambitiously, how do we decide which of two competing analyses is the nearer to the truth? I don't think this is a question which has been addressed seriously in SG theorizing. A number of different (but possibly complementary) answers seem to have been given or assumed:

a. One based on elegance: An analysis is correct if it is elegant, and in particular if it can be laid out as a matrix in which all the cells are filled. Such tables are abundant in IFG and seem to be used at least implicitly as evidence of validity. They can indeed be very impressive (and there is a particularly impressive one on pp. 306-307 which brings together a vast number of apparently disparate phenomena). However, as I pointed out in the previous section, they are no better than the individual analytical decisions which lie behind the filled cells, so these decisions must be justified in their own right, rather than by the fact that they conveniently fill an otherwise empty cell. The conclusion then must be that elegance of this type does not vouch for validity.

b. One based on explicitness, or generativity: An SG grammar can be just as explicit as one formulated in terms of any other theory. Thus it is possible, at least in principle, to write a SG grammar so that it is crystal clear what structures it generates and what it does not. Evidence for this comes partly from the work of linguists (most obviously, perhaps, Hudson 1971), but more especially from a variety of computer implementations of SG (Winograd 1972; Davey 1978; Mann 1982). As noted earlier, Halliday says that the grammar of IFG is the functional part of a larger grammar held in a computer, a reference (I assume) to the system developed by Mann and his colleagues in California. However, it should be obvious that if you are clear it is just as possible to be wrong as right; the only difference between clarity and vagueness is in the degree to which

Systemic grammar 803

it is possible to check for correctness. So explicitness, or generativity, in itself is certainly a precondition for being right, but it is in no way a guarantee of rightness. This elementary point is worth stressing because it appears to be called into question by Halliday's remark in IFG (p. xx) that there is a connection between being able to 'spell out all the steps from meaning to wording' (that is, being explicit) and being sure that all the categories are 'clearly "there" in the grammar of the language' (that is, being right).

It is odd, incidentally, to find Halliday justifying his grammar by referring to the explicit rules known to the computer, in view of his remarks about Chomsky's claim that a grammar can be generative (p. xxviii): v

By generative he meant explicit...His tremendous achievement was to show thatthis is in fact possible with a human language, as distinct from an artificial 'logical' language. But you have to pay a price: the language has to be so idealized that it bears little ,relation to what people actually write - and still less to what they actually say.

So does IFG present part of a generative grammar, or not? If it does, how does it manage t<:> avoid the idealization which Halliday claims (wrongly, I think) afflicts Chomskyan linguists? And if it does not, why mention the existence of the rest of the grammar which provides the explicit links up to semantics and down to surface structure?

c. One based on psychological reality: It is obvious, and accepted by Halliday, that language is stored in people's minds, although the main interest of many systemic linguists (including Halliday) has always been in language as a sociological phenomenon ('The orientation is to language as social rather than as individual phenomenon, and the origin and development of the theory have aligned it with sociological rather than psychological modes of explanation' p. xxx). It is not at all clear to me why it should make any difference whether the linguist is more interested in 'society' or in the individual; in either case one's object of study is the language of individuals, and in either case those individuals acquire and use their language in relation to other members of their society. And in either case, the question arises as to precisely what knowledge the individuals have which counts as their language. In this perspective, the ultimate criterion of success in linguistic analysis must be whether the structure of the linguist's grammar matches that of the relevant bits of the individual's knowledge. My own current work on word grammar (Hudson 1984, 1985a, 1985b, 1986) is based on this criterion, but so is that of at least one systemic linguist, Fawcett (1980). It is true that the structure of knowledge is hard to investigate in itself, but it is not totally unknown

territory, and at least it is good to know what the grammarians are trying to do even if we can't always be sure whether they are succeeding.

There is one more question to be raised about the aims of systemic grammarians, relating to the word 'function', Halliday says that the 'conceptual framework' on which IFG is based - by which he presumably means SG - is 'a functional one rather than a formal one' (p. xiii). The implied contrast is between SG, which is functional (and is often called 'systemic functional grammar', as noted earlier), and other theories in the American structuralist tradition such as Chomsky's, which are 'formal'. His explanation of the distinction points to three different senses of 'functional' (p. xiii), but in each case I cannot see any important difference between his goals and those of Chomskyans (though there is no doubt that his interests and emphases are different):

a. SG 'is functional in the sense that it is designed to account for how the language is USED'. But the same is true of a Chomskyan account of language; they too want to explain language use, in terms of a theory of performance of which a theory of competence is a part. Admittedly Hallidayan and Chomskyan linguists fill in different parts of the picture: Halliday says a lot, for instance, about the effects of thematizationjtopi-calization but nothing about unbounded dependencies (for example, What do you think happened? versus * What do you think that happened?), and vice versa for Chomsky; but does that amount to a theoretical difference, or just a matter of personal research interests and priorities? Moreover, Halliday goes on, 'it is the uses of language that, over tens of thousands of generations, have shaped the system. Language has evolved to satisfy human needs; and the way it is organised is functional with respect to these needs - it is not arbitrary.' But it is at least arguable (and often argued) that humans have needs not only as speakers and hearers, but also as language learners and language storers; and that each of these pressures too has influence on the structure of language (for example, pressures toward symmetry, simplicity, and so forth). Indeed, Halliday himself refers to the demand for symmetry as 'the most fundamental of all semogenic processes' (p. 251). So if the term 'functional' is extended to include these other human activities, the difference between Hallidayan and Chomskyan approaches dwindles to nothing.

b. The second point is not too clear, but it seems to be that SG is based on the assumption that 'the fundamental components of meaning are functional components' - that is, there are a small number of main parts into which the semantic system of a language may be divided, and these parts are distinguished by the 'very general purposes which underlie all uses of language: (i) to understand the environment (ideational) and (ii) to act on the others in it (interpersonal)'. This amounts to an empirical

Systemic grammar 805

claim about the nature of semantic structure, that it can be shown to fall naturally into a small number of relatively independent components. The claim mayor may not be valid; but it is presumably one which could have been made within any other theoretical framework. It is by no means obvious that there is anything in SG which makes it specially suited to exploring or formulating the claim.

c. 'Each element in a language is explained by reference to its function in the total linguistic system.' I take it that this is true of ANY account of language structure, and it certainly does not distinguish SG from any other theory.

I have labored the point about the meaning of 'functional' because it seems to me that this is little more than a slogan for eliciting favorable reactions from a particular kind of person - the kind of person who is struck by the truism that language is a tool for communication, rather than an abstract and pointless formal system. SG seems to appeal to many people who find more formal approaches harder to connect with their dayto-day experience, but this may have just as much to do with the method of presentation (with real-life examples and so on) and with the selection of areas of language to be discussed as it does with the actual theories concerned. (Similar remarks could be directed, incidentally, at the various other linguistic theories whose names include the word 'functional'; a fair selection of these is included in Moravcsik and Wirth 1980.)

4. The nature of grammatical structure

SG is a theory of language structure and (consequently) of sentence structure as well. The most well developed areas of the theory are those to do with rhythm and intonation; syntax; and certain aspects of semantic structure. I shall concentrate in the following remarks on syntax.

As far as the view of sentence structure is concerned, SG is firmly within the American structuralist tradition started by Bloomfield. It has close affinities with Pike's tagmemics (Pike 1982): a relatively flat version of constituent structure, with each node carrying two labels (or sets of labels), one showing its class membership, the other its grammatical function. Only surface structure is recognized, and the part played in transformational theories by underlying structures is played in SG by (a) the relatively rich labeling of constituents and (b) the relatively powerful mapping devices which relate mothers to their daughters. I shall comment below on various parts of this theory.

The units which are recognized in SG have structures of two types: 'univariate' and 'multivariate'. Multivariate structures are those of single

806

words, phrases, or clauses. (I shall drop Halliday's distinction between 'phrase' and 'group', as nothing much seems to depend on it, and 'phrase' is likely to be more familiar to most readers.) Univariate ones are strings of units in one of two relations to each other: 'parataxis' (for example, coordination) or 'hypo taxis' - that is, subordination, or dependency. It is this last type that I want to explore a little. Dependency is the relation which Halliday recognizes, for example, between the following pairs of words (the arrow points toward the dependent; this is not Halliday's notation):

very ← small (p. 173)electric ← trains (p. 172)has ← eaten (p. 177)is ← eaten (p. 178)

Now it is very hard to see any reason why the relation between (say) has and freckles, or that between is and happy, should not be treated in the same way. As relations, they seem very similar to those in the list above: in both cases, one word is clearly dependent for its occurrence on the lexical properties of the other (namely, have allows either a perfect participle or an object, and be allows either a passive participle or an 'attribute'). However, the relations between verbs and their objects or attributes are treated in SG in terms of a completely different type of analysis: as cosisters of a shared mother, the clause. In this respect, of course, SG is a completely orthodox variant of constituent-structure theory.

Let us pursue the difference between these two treatments of grammatical relations. In the constituency-based treatment, the sisters are not related directly to each other, but only to their shared mother, whereas the dependency approach (in SG as elsewhere) does establish direct links between sisters. This means that each of the terms of a dependency relation is free to be related, by dependency, to another item, without the need to recognize any constituent structure. The following dependency structures are given by Halliday, for example:

rather ← more ← impressive (p. 171)has → been → eating (p. 177)

Suppose we were to treat objects and attributes in the same way; we would then have dependency structures like the following:

has → been → eating → peanutshas → been – – – – –→ happy

very ←

An analysis of this kind is clearly very much against the spirit not only of SG but of all constituency-based theories. And yet it is hard to see any

Systemic grammar 807

good reason why it should be rejected, once dependency analyses are admitted as part of the descriptive apparatus. It is true that the relation of happy to been is different from that of very to happy, but at the level of delicacy where we are simply representing them as dependency relations, there is no difference. (The differences cannot be ignored; I return to them below.) The same applies to the difference between been happy and been eating. So the question is how far we can or should develop these possibilities. I have argued elsewhere that dependency should be taken as the basis for analyzing all syntagmatic relations except coordination (Hudson 1984), because all such relations are asymmetrical and can be expressed as relations between SINGLE WORDS. For example, in been very happy, it is just the word happy that is related to been, and not the phrase very happy. Similarly, we could extend the analysis above by adding in the subject:

He ← has → been →→ happy. very ←

What I am suggesting (without at this stage providing anything more than negative evidence in support of the suggestion) is that everything that needs to be said about the relations among these words can be said about them WITHOUT REFERRING TO ANY UNIT LARGER THAN THE WORD. Thus if some relation involves the whole clause, it can be expressed as a relation to the word on which all the other words in the clause depend, which is has. For example, we can add because at the beginning of the whole clause, as a link to whatever clause precedes it; and in the main clause we can pick out the verb again as the bearer of the relation :He ← is → lucky ––––––→because ––→ has → been → happy he ←

Somewhat surprisingly we find ourselves back now in an orthodox position vis a vis SG, because SG also treats relations between main and subordinate clauses in terms of dependency. The following sentence is analyzed on p. 193, for example:

It won't be surprising if people complain if they don't punish him if he's guilty.

In the SG analysis, the clauses are related in a chain of dependencies. As we have seen it is possible to refer just to the verbs and the subordinating conjunctions instead of the clauses, so a dependency analysis ignoring the irrelevant words would be like this:

won't → if → complain → if → don't → if → 's

808 R. Hudson

All these observations may strike the reader as simply perverse, because one of the most widely accepted tenets of modern linguistics is the belief in the fundamental importance of constituent structure. Replacing constituent structure by dependency structure has many advantages (Hudson 1984), but I shall simply make some observations which relate directly to the account of SG presented in IFG. First, it is interesting to be reminded that SG already allows dependency to play such an important role. Second, Halliday himself repeatedly stresses that constituent structure is relatively unimportant; for example, 'As one explores more deeply into language, constituency gradually slips into the background...' (p. 18). Third, the constituent structures allowed by SG are extremely unconstrained: constituents may be discontinuous (p. 81), they may overlap (p. 72), and several conflicting constituency analyses can be applied simultaneously to the same sentence (p. 121). Not surprisingly, perhaps, very few of the constituents thus identified do any work in the grammar - in particular, few of them carry any features, and few of them have definable internal structures.

And fourth, no clear principle seems to govern the choice between dependency and constituency as the basis for analyzing particular con-structions. Take the sentence which is analyzed on p. 194:

I don't mind if you leave as soon as you've finished,A | B | C |

as long as you're back when I need you. D I E

The relations among the first three clauses are shown in terms of pure dependency - in particular, no constituent is recognized for the pair B + C, though one is recognized for A + B + C. Clauses D and E, however, are taken as a constituent. It is not clear what principle, if any, underlies this distinction. As far as dependency analysis is concerned, there is no need for it, so long as we show both Band D as dependents of A:

don't → if → leave → as soon as → finished→ as long as → 're → when → need

Indeed at times total confusion seems to reign in this part of SG, because the dependency relation is given a completely different interpretation when applied to the internal structure of the noun phrase. Take the sequence very small one; to judge by the structure given on p. 173, this should have very small as a constituent, although very depends on small and small on one in precisely the way clauses A, B, and C above are related - where no intermediate constituent is recognized at all. When an unbracketed string of dependents does occur within the noun phrase it is

Systemic grammar 809

interpreted as though there were bracketing 'from the top' (instead of 'from the bottom', as in clause sequences). Thus splendid old electric trains is shown (p. 170) as having the following dependency structure:

splendid ← old ← electric ← trains

If we interpret this structure in the same way as we would a clause sequence, it makes nonsense (with splendid modifying just old, as though it were some kind of adverb like very). Conversely, if we apply the interpretation demanded by this analysis to clause sequences, we again get nonsense. One conclusion which is reasonable is that perhaps it would be better if no constituent structure were ever mixed up with dependency structure. If that had been the case the problem could not have arisen.

The problem of sorting out the formal relations between dependency and constituency looms large in SG, because both kinds of analysis are available for showing that one clause is subordinate to another. The analyses offered in IFG are unimpressive in this respect. A subordinate clause which functions as subject in the main clause is considered to be a part of its structure, but one that is object is not (p. 196). One wonders (inter alia) how the rules for passivization can be formulated under these circumstances. It would clearly be more satisfactory for the relations to be treated in the same way unless there is very clear evidence of differences, and one way of achieving this would be to abandon constituent structure entirely, leaving all the work to dependency.

It would be misleading to imply that this step could be taken without far-reaching ramifications for other parts of the theory. Other, equally drastic, changes would be needed - abandonment ofthe 'rank scale' (the hierarchy of units from 'word' to 'sentence'), and abandonment of realization rules (the rules which map an item's features onto a suitable internal structure), for instance. Sometimes major surgery is the only route to a fuller and richer life.

5. Categories

As noted earlier, two different kinds of category are distinguished in SG: features and functions. I consider this to be one of the most positive characteristics of the theory, and certainly one which has contributed a lot to my own thinking. A feature is a paradigmatic category, which relates the item in question to other items in the language which are similar in the relevant respect. A function is a syntagmatic category which, as its name implies, shows the function which the item carries out in the sentence in which it occurs. For example, an item might have the features [singular,

810 R. Hudson

nominal] and the function SUBJECT. Every item (except the main clause itself) has at least one feature and at least one function, even if the two are in a one:one relation (as is often the case).

In some respects the SG treatment of categories is superior to what we find in other current theories. Take features. Syntactic features are one of the weakest areas of many theories, because of the lack of constraints on them. In the 1970s it was common to invoke syntactic features as a deus ex machina for fixing up a transformational grammar - for example, for dealing with exceptions - but they hardly seem to play any part in the current version of transformational grammar, government and binding theory (Chomsky 1981), except as the latter-day incarnation of the major word-class categories (N, V, etc.). And yet the same apparatus of features still seems to be available in principle. The theory in which features play the most prominent part is generalized phrase structure grammar (Gazdar et al. 1985). Several different types of feature are distinguished, some of which are allowed to have rich internal structures, but there is no discussion of restrictions on the combinability of features.

In SG, on the other hand, features have been one of the main focuses of interest since the early days, and the 'system', the cornerstone of the theory, was developed specifically to describe the ways in which features can combine with one another. Systems can be subjected to various formal constraints which make it impossible to generate certain types of feature combination. If two features occur as part of the description of an item, it is always because a system network has permitted them to cooccur; features cannot be slipped in as ad hoc rescue devices. Nor can they have any kind of internal structure - their names are always arbitrary and unanalyzable. Linguists of other persuasions who are concerned about the unconstrained ways in which features are used might well find interesting ideas in the SG literature.

Functions are comparable with the 'grammatical relations' of other theories, and SG is one of the theories which indicates these explicitly (in contrast with both transformational grammar and GPSG). One of the positive contributions that SG can make to the pool of ideas from which linguistic theories can draw is the idea that a single item can have more than one function - to take an obvious example, who in Who came? can be taken simultaneously as subject and as interrogative theme (that is, 'complementizer', in other people's terminology). It is generally assumed in other theories which deal in grammatical relations that they should not combine with one another (and a comparable assumption applying to semantic relations is explicit in government and binding theory in the form of the 'theta criterion' - Chomsky 1981: 36). Once again SG seems in advance of other theories, since multiple functions clearly are needed.

811Take for example a sentence like He drinks coffee black. There is at least a prima facie case for saying that coffee has a dual function in both the syntax and the semantics: as object of drinks and as subject of black. We return to this point below.

I have two suggestions for improving the SG treatment of functions. One is to allow them to be related hierarchically (as indeed was the case in the very earliest version of the theory, 'scale and category' theory - seep. 19 of Butler). For instance, the function INDIRECT OBJECT would be shown as a particular case of OBJECT which in turn would be a kind of COMPLEMENT. These hierarchical relations could easily be shown by means of systems, just like the hierarchical relations among features; at present this is not permitted by the theory but I see no reason in principle why it should not be. A number of advantages would follow from a hierarchical organization of functions, notably that the functions higher in the hierarchy could always be predicted from those lower down; so as soon as some element is defined as INDIRECT OBJECT it would automatically follow that it was also OBJECT and COMPLEMENT. At present I think it would be necessary to specify all three functions independently. Given this proposal, what would we put in the functional hierarchy above categories like COMPLEMENT? In the light of my previous suggestion about dependency, the answer is obvious: all functions are a particular case of DEPENDENT. Moreover, we could even extend the hierarchy up higher still, by introducing 'relational category' to include both HEAD and DEPENDENT, and maybe even 'concept' above this. (These suggestions have in fact been implemented in my own recent work, but I shall have to leave them as programmatic ideas in this review.) The resulting hierarchy looks something like the following:

My second suggestion is that functions should indeed be treated as relational categories, in line with this proposal. It

could be objected that this is already how they are treated, by virtue of being distinguished from features, but this is not so. It is true that in SG grammars (such as the one

concept

relational category

feature

head dependent

subject complement

object predicative

direct indirect

812 R. Hudson

in Hudson 1971) functions are introduced in a different way from features (functions are introduced by rules which realize features, and features by rules which realize functions), but as far as the sentence structures thus generated are concerned their status is just the same. Each could be represented as a one-place predicate (for example, 'is a nominal', 'is a subject'). In some other theories, such as relational grammar and dependency theory (including my own word grammar), relational categories are treated differently from features, as two-place predicates. Thus instead of saying simply 'X is a subject', we should say 'X is the subject of Y'. This approach is clearly more in line with the relational nature of relational categories, and it brings various advantages with it. In particular it allows any rule which refers to a relational category to have access to BOTH of the relata. This means, for example, that we can distinguish between the notion 'modifier of a common noun' (such as nice (person]) and 'modifier of an indefinite pronoun' (such as [someone] nice) without having to introduce any additional relational category for the purpose. Had I treated functions in this way in my 1971 book, I should have needed far fewer than the outrageous 90 functions that I had to postulate there!

We now return to my earlier observation about the need for multiple functions, in connection with the example He drinks coffee black. Let us assume that functions are truly relational categories, whose specification involves reference to a second element, and further that they are a type of dependent whose relata are single words. In order to distinguish the different kinds of dependent from one another we can write an appropriate symbol on the dependency arrow ('S' for 'subject', 'A' for 'attribute', and so on). The analysis of the sentence is as follows:

He ←S– drinks –O→ coffee ←S– black

–––––––A––––––→

The analysis with old-style one-place functions would be more complicated. First, it would be necessary to distinguish two different kinds of attribute, according to whether they had the subject or the object of the verb as their own subject; otherwise there would be no way of disambiguating sentences like He left her angry (it was in lectures by Halliday that I first became aware of this problem). And then rules would be needed for interpreting this distinction in terms of semantic links between the attribute and the relevant other element.

These changes in the SG treatment of functions have brought us to a sophisticated dependency-based theory in which (for instance) multiple dependencies are permitted. I have pointed out just a few of the many advantages of adopting such a theory, and I am not aware of any

Systemic grammar 8 I 3

compensating losses. It has always been a characteristic of SG to favor an approach where the hierarchy is relatively flat rather than the typically many-layered structures of phrase-structure grammar (p. 24 of IFG; Hudson 1967); the move toward dependency can be seen as the logical conclusion of this tendency, where the constituent hierarchy is totally flat. I leave it to others to present counterarguments.

6. Butler's Systemic Linguistics: Theory and Applications

Butler's book (SLTA) is very different from IFG. It sets out to present a factual and critical account of the development of the theory of SG, so descriptive matters come in only incidentally. The whole of Halliday's analysis of English is contained in a single chapter - a very useful summary for anyone planning to embark on IFG. SL T A aims to cover all work in SG, and not just that of Halliday, so it includes a chapter on the work of Fawcett and myself and sections on such topics as computer implementations ofSG and the discourse work of Sinclair and Coulthard.

Butler is himself one of the main advocates of SG, but the book is extremely well balanced and nonpartisan. It relates work in SG to movements in other theories and includes a good number of references to work by non-SG linguists. Moreover it contains a large number of critical comments about SG, all of which are well taken. Some of the criticisms contained in the present review duplicate criticisms which Butler makes, and SLTA contains a good number of other negative remarks about SG. As mentioned earlier Butler complains of the lack of critical comment from outsiders (p. 77). Maybe this does not matter as long as insiders like Butler are as honest and objective about the theory in their criticisms. (Another penetratingly honest review of SG by an insider is Berry 1980.)

I have few complaints of substance about SL T A. In my opinion the last chapter could well have been omitted - it is an attempt to evaluate SG by the criteria which Moravcsik proposed at the comparative conference on current approaches to syntax (Moravcsik 1980), and I found it rather unhelpful. It largely duplicated comments made earlier in the book and was hard to read through as continuous prose because it followed Moravcsik's structure too closely.

In the list of descriptions of English based on SG (p. 191) he could haveincluded Huddleston et al. (1968) and Huddleston (1971), which is based on this; and of course he could also have mentioned the work of Quirk and his colleagues (such as Quirk et al. 1972), which was heavilyinfluenced by Halliday.

In his account of my own work I found only one point where he got my

814 R. Hudson

present position wrong (though I can't blame him for that, as I have written things which lend support to his interpretation). On p. 128 he implies that I see 'lexis' as a separate kind of linguistic patterning from syntax, in contrast with another view prevalent in sa which is that lexis is just 'most delicate' syntax. In fact it is the second view which is nearer to my current position - that is, I believe that individual lexical items are at the bottom of the same hierarchy which contains the general syntactic categories like 'noun' and 'auxiliary verb' (Hudson 1984: 24).

These complaints are clearly very minor indeed. In short, I thoroughly recommend Butler's book. I recommend it to outsiders who want a clear and fair presentation of sa theory. And I recommend it (particularly) to insiders, who will find in it an excellent account of the theoretical issues and problems which confront them. The problems are clear and can hardly be ~gnored; it is up to the insiders to solve them.

Received 26 March 1986 University College London

Note

* I should like to thank Chris Butler for comments on an earlier version of this review. Correspondence address: Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, England.

References

Berry, M. (1980). 'They're all out of step except our Johnny': a discussion of motivation (orthe lack of it) in systemic linguistics. Unpublished mimeo. Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on

Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris. Davey, A. (1978). Discourse Production: A Computer Model of Some Aspects of a Speaker.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Dik, S. C. (1978). Functional Grammar. Amsterdam: North Holland. Fawcett, R. P. (1980). Cognitive Linguistics and Social Interaction: Towards an Integrated

Model of a Systemic Functional Grammar and the Other Components of a CommunicatingMind. Heidelberg: Groos.

Gazdar, G., Klein, E., Pullum, G., and Sag, I. (1985). Generalized Phrase StructureGrammar. Oxford: Blackwell. Halliday, M. A. K. (1961). Categories of the theory of

grammar. Word 17, 241-292.---(1964). Syntax and the consumer. In C. I. J. M. Stuart (ed.), Monograph Series on

Languages and Linguistics 17, 11-24. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. ---(1967a). Notes on transitivity and theme in English, part 1. Journal of Linguistics 3,37-82. ---

(1967b). Notes on transitivity and theme in English, part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3,199-244.

---(1968). Notes on transitivity and theme in English, part 3. Journal of Linguistics 4,179-216.

Systemic grammar 815

-, and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.Huddleston, R. D. (1971). The Sentence in Written English: A Syntactic Study Based on an

Analysis of Scientific Texts. London: Cambridge University Press.-(1984). An Introduction to the Grammar of English. London: Cambridge University Press. -, Hudson, R. A., Winter, O. E., and Henrici, A. (1968). Sentence and clause in scientific

English. Unpublished mimeo.Hudson, R. A. (1967). Constituency in a systemic description of the English clause. Lingua

18,225-250.-(1971). English Complex Sentences: An Introduction to Systemic Grammar. Amsterdam:

North Holland.-(1973). An 'item-and-paradigm' approach to Beja syntax and morphology. Foundations of

Language 9, 504-548.-(1974). Systemic generative grammar. Linguistics 139, 5-42.-(1984). Word Grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.-(1985a). The limits of subcategorisation. Linguistic Analysis.-(1985b). A psychologically and socially plausible theory of language structure. In D.

Schiffrin (ed.), Meaning, Form and Use in Context: Linguistic Applications, 150-159.Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

-(1986). Frame semantics, frame linguistics, frame. ... Quaderni di Semantica 7, 95-111. McCord, M. C. (1975). On the form of a systemic grammar. Journal of Linguistics 11,

195-212.Mann, W. C. (1982). An Introduction to the Nigel Text Generation Grammar Computer

Program. Information Sciences Institute, Technical Report. University of SouthernCalifornia.

Moravcsik, E. A. (1980). Introduction: on syntactic approaches. In E. A. Moravcsik andJ. R. Wirth (eds.), Syntax and Semantics 13: Current Approaches to Syntax, 1-18. NewYork: Academic Press.

-, and Wirth, J. R. (eds.) (1980). Syntax and Semantics 13: Current Approaches to Syntax.New York: Academic Press.

Pike, K. L. (1982). Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics. Lincoln and London:University of Nebraska Press.

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., and Svartvik, J. (1972). A Grammar of ContemporaryEnglish. London: Longman.

Stockwell, R. P., Schachter, P., and Partee, B. H. (1973). The Major Syntactic Structures ofEnglish. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Winograd, T. (1972). Understanding Natural

Language. New York: Academic Press. -(1983). Language as a Cognitive Process I: Syntax. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.