122226 SE Linguistics Seminar / MA historical & descriptive linguistics (2015W)

In the generative approaches to language developed during the 1960s and 1970s, syntax was seen as the core component of the human language faculty, operating independently from semantics (meaning) and pragmatics (context). During the 1980s alternative approaches to language were proposed, which regarded language first and foremost as a form of social interaction in which all the various grammatical components (morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) were taken to interact in the production and interpretation of utterances. One of the exponents of this functional-communicative paradigm is Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008), which has the following distinctive features:

-It has a top-down organization, which means that it starts with a speaker's communicative intentions (e.g. to obtain information in a polite manner) and then explains how, step by step, speakers choose a particular linguistic form to express these intentions (e.g. the actual utterance, such as Could you tell me the time, sir?).

-In doing so, the theory takes into account pragmatic, semantic, morphosyntactic and phonological factors, whereby the functional factors (e.g. politeness) are regarded as determining the form of the utterance (Use of the could and sir).

-Another distinctive function of the theory is that it can deal not only with complete sentences, but also with sentence fragments (e.g. When? or Wow!) and units larger than the sentences (e.g. sequences of sentences).

-Finally, the theory allows for contextual factors to play a role (e.g. social status of the speech participants).

During the course, the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar will be applied to English with the aim of providing new analyses of such important linguistic phenomena as illocution, politeness, modification and modality, pragmatic functions, word order phenomena, morphology, the position of the lexicon and the lexical-grammatical distinction.