Verbal Periphrases In A Functional Grammar Of Spanish

This book offers a systemic-functional account of Spanish, and analyses how Spanish grammatical forms compare and contrast with those of English. The authors analyse Spanish according to the three main 'metafunctions': ideational, interpersonal, and textual. The result is a comprehensive examination of Spanish grammar from the clause upwards. Presupposing little or no knowledge of Spanish, this book will be of interest to researchers in Spanish language, systemic functional linguistics or contrastive linguistics.

Functional Grammar (FG) as set out by Simon Dik is the ambitious combination of a functionalist approach to the study of language with a consistent formalization of the underlying structures which it recognizes as relevant. The present volume represents the attempts made within the FG framework to expand the theory so as to cover a wider empirical domain than is usual for highly formalized linguistic theories, namely that of written and spoken discourse, while retaining its methodological precision. The book covers an array of phenomena, both from monologue and from dialogue material, relating to discourse structure, speaker aims and goals, action theory, the flow of information, illocutionary force, modality, etc. The central question underlying most of the contributions concerns the relation between, and the division of labour between the existing grammatical module of FG on the one hand, and a discourse or pragmatic module capable of handling such discourse phenomena on the other. What emerges are new proposals for the formal treatment of for instance illocutionary force and the informational status of constituents. Many of the data discussed are from 'real' language rather than being invented, and samples from various languages other than English (Spanish, Polish, Latin, French) are examined and used as illustrations of the theoretical problem to be solved. Readership: theoretical linguists and discourse and conversation analysts

Functional Grammar (FG) as set out by Simon Dik is the ambitious combination of a functionalist approach to the study of language with a consistent formalization of the underlying structures which it recognizes as relevant. The present volume represents the attempts made within the FG framework to expand the theory so as to cover a wider empirical domain than is usual for highly formalized linguistic theories, namely that of written and spoken discourse, while retaining its methodological precision. The book covers an array of phenomena, both from monologue and from dialogue material, relating to discourse structure, speaker aims and goals, action theory, the flow of information, illocutionary force, modality, etc. The central question underlying most of the contributions concerns the relation between, and the division of labour between the existing grammatical module of FG on the one hand, and a discourse or pragmatic module capable of handling such discourse phenomena on the other. What emerges are new proposals for the formal treatment of for instance illocutionary force and the informational status of constituents. Many of the data discussed are from ‘real’ language rather than being invented, and samples from various languages other than English (Spanish, Polish, Latin, French) are examined and used as illustrations of the theoretical problem to be solved. Readership: theoretical linguists and discourse and conversation analysts

Crucial Readings in Functional Grammar is an invaluable resource to anyone working in Functional Grammar, student and scholar alike. It contains important articles that have led to new avenues of research in the theory beyond Dik's two-volume Functional Grammar (1997), each concluded with a short paragraph with suggestions for further research. The book also contains an introduction to current Functional Grammar theory by the editors. Crucial Readings is unique in bringing together in one volume the various ideas that complement Dik's canonical presentation of the theory. The editorial contributions provide a comprehensive review of Functional Grammar publications.

This volume, which can be considered as a follow-up publication to Pusch & Wesch (2003), contains ten studies on verbal periphrases in a wide array of Romance languages, both in a synchronic and in a historic perspective. Thus, this collective volume addresses the Romance verbal periphrastic system as a whole. The aim of the contributions is twofold: on the one hand, the authors intend to enrich the knowledge about the inventory of verbal periphrases of Romance languages, both in descriptive and analytical terms. On the other hand, the volume seeks to provide new insights for the study of the grammatical, pragmatic, and cognitive foundations of verbal periphrases, in order to enlarge our comprehension of their genesis, their evolution and their usage. Languages treated in the contributions include Catalan, (European) French, Friulian, (European) Portuguese, Romanian, (European) Spanish, and Catalan Sign Language (LSC).

The present monograph deals with lexical representation and linking within the framework of Functional Grammar. The notion of predicate frame as originally proposed in 1978 and subsequent refinements of the theory are challenged in that a new format of representing argument taking properties is formulated. This new format opens new lines of research towards the design of a new linking algorithm in Functional Grammar.

The monograph focuses on the typological differences between the four most widely spoken Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian) and Czech. Utilizing data from InterCorp, the parallel corpus project of the Czech National Corpus, the book analyses various categories (expression of potential non-volitional participation, iterativity, causation, beginning of an action and adverbial subordination) to discover differences and similarities between Czech and the Romance languages. Due to the massive amount of data mined, as well as the high number of languages examined, the monograph presents general and individual typological features of the four Romance languages and Czech that often exceed what has previously been accepted in the field of comparative linguistics.