Take home test in Formal/Functional approaches to English Grammar
(due date and length to be discussed in class)
Part I: Using the course material and general reference works (see below for
suggestions), discuss, compare and contrast the following theoretical frameworks:
● Generative Grammar (aka the Chomskyan approach; P & P)
● System Functional Grammar (SFG) (aka Systemic Functional Linguistics or SFL)
● Construction Grammar (CxG)
In your brief ‘sketch’ of these theories, make sure to include the following points:
● Give some background to the theories – when were they first developed? In what
context? Who are the main proponents?
● What are the basic theoretical assumptions and goals (e.g., how do they view concepts
like innateness, universal grammar, the ‘psychological reality’ of the model, etc.)?
● What, if any, are the main methodological differences? (e.g., how do they view
informant testing, grammaticality judgements, corpus data, etc.?)
● What are the main conceptual units and what are their formalist conventions?
● In what ways, if any, do they differ from Chomskyan style generative grammar?
● If possible, present some of the main criticisms of these models.
Part II: A closer look at a particular grammar phenomenon:
Choose one of the following constructions/grammatical phenomena and discuss how it is (or
would be) treated in all three of the theoretical paradigms mentioned above.
● Wh-movement
● Passives
● Subject-Auxiliary inversion (basically, yes/no interrogatives)
You need to actively research these topics, but here are a few possible resources that you can
use as a starting point:
Aarts, B. (2008) English syntax and argumentation (3rd ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave M
acmillan.
Ackema, P., & Neeleman, A. (1998) Conflict resolution in passive formation. Lingua,
104, 13-29.
Bloor, T., & Bloor, M. (2004). The Functional Analysis of English: A Hallidayan Approach.
Arnold.
Borsley. R. (1991) Syntactic Theory: A Unified Approach. Edward Arnold,London
Carnie, A. (2007) Syntax: a generative introduction (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publ
ishing.
Dixon, R. M. W. (2005). A semantic approach to English grammar (Rev. and enlarged 2. ed).
Oxford Univ. Press.
Downing, A., Locke, P., & Downing, A. (2006). English grammar: A university course.
Routledge.
Goldberg, Adele. (1995) Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument
Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Goldberg, Adele (2006). Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Language.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goldberg, A. and Jackendoff, J. (2004) The English resultative construction. Language
80:532-568.
Halliday, M.A.K., & Christian Matthiessen. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar.
Great Britain: Arnold.
Halliday, M.A.K., & Ruqaiya Hasan. (1985). Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of
Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective. Deakin: Deakin University Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. (1985). Spoken and Written Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Halliday, M.A.K. (2003). On Language and Linguistics. New York: Continuum International
Pub. Group.
Harlow, S.J. (1994) Transformational Grammar: Evolution. in (xxx, eds.) Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistics,.4650-4664. Oxford: Pergamon Press
Horrocks, G. (1987) Generative grammar. Harlow: Longman. Neidle, C. (1996).
Radford, A. (1988) Transformational Grammar. A first course. Cambridge: CUP.
Sells, P. (1985) Lectures on Contemporary Syntactic Theories. Stanford: CSLI.
Taylor, J.R. (1998) Syntactic constructions as prototype categories. In M. Tomasello (ed.),
The New Psychology of Language, Vol. I 177-202. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.
General reference texts:
Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (second edition ed.). Oxford: Elsevier.
The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Concise encyclopedia of syntactic theories. Oxford: Elsevier Science.