1 TABLE OF CONTENTS General Introduction 1 Rationale Aims of the study Scopes of the study Methods of the study Design of the study chapter I general conceptualization 1.1.Introduction 1.2.A brief history of grammatical study 1.3 Traditional grammar 1.4.Systemic Functional grammar 1.5 Some differences between SFG and TG 10 Chapter II 13 The simple sentence in traditional grammar 13 2.1 Introduction 13 2.2 Structural criteria .14 2.2.1 Principal parts of the sentence – subject and predicate 15 2.2.2 Sentence elements syntactically defined 16 2.2.3 Basic clause patterns .18 2.3 Logico-semantic criteria 19 2.4 Communicative criteria 21 2.5 Phonological and orthographic criteria 23 2.6 Summary 24 Chapter III 25 The clause in systemic functional grammar .25 3.1 Introduction 25 3.2 Clause- the crucial unit in systemic functional grammar 25 3.3 Three ways of interpreting clause 26 3.3.1 Clause as representation: experiential metafunction .26 3.3.1.1 Transitivity 26 (Source: D Q Ban, 2004: 37) 27 3.3.1.2 Types of process 28 3.3.1.3 Circumstances 32 3.3.2 Clause as exchange: interpersonal metafunction 33 3.3.2.1 Characterization of Mood 33 3.3.2.2 Overall interpersonal organization of the clause 34 3.3.2.3 Structure of the Mood element 35 3.3.2.4 Residue 36 3.3.2.5 Modality .37 3.3.2.6 Mood system in English and Vietnamese: a brief comparison 38 3.3.3 Clause as message : textual metafunction .40 3.3.3.1 Thematic structure .40 3.3.3.2 Boundary of theme .41 3.3.3.3 Types of theme .42 Hãy 44 vào .44 uống nước 44 Interpersonal Theme 44 Topical Theme 44 Rheme 44 Theme 44 3.3.3.4 Markness 45 3.3.3.5 Implications of Theme for level of textual structure 46 3.4 Simultaneous metafunctions in the clause 47 3.5 Summary 48 Chapter IV: comparison 49 4.1 The similarities between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG 49 4.2 The differences between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG 50 CONCLUSION 56 General Introduction Rationale The history of linguistics has seen the endless development of different approaches, each of which defines its own tasks, scopes and objectives Of the grammatical approaches, traditional grammar (TG) considers sentence as the largest unit in the grammatical system of a language, and the study of grammar is primarily concentrated around the study of sentence Because of its earlier foundation, traditional grammar has largely influenced on linguistics in general and on language teaching in particular in several parts of the world, including Vietnam For a long time, sentence has been the main content of grammar teaching at schools As a result, the concept of sentence has become very familiar to many people Until recently, there has witnessed the flourish of systemic functional grammar (SFG) during the late 20 th century and its great influence on language research and teaching Among the units recognized for study in functional grammar, clause represents as a crucial one Clause description has been found not only in English but also in Vietnamese although the studies on Vietnamese clause are found in a small number Since functional grammar is still new in Vietnam, the term clause has often been confused and misunderstood, even some linguists argue that the term sentence should be used instead of the clause Therefore, the questions to ask would be “What does the clause really mean?”, “Is it completely the same as the sentence in traditional grammar?” The thesis aims at exploring the notion of sentence in traditional grammar and clause in functional grammar, at the same time making comparison between them to see in what ways they are similar and different Aims of the study Within the framework of an MA thesis the study aims to: - investigate how the sentence in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and described in traditional grammar - investigate how the clause in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and described in functional grammar - compare and comment on similarities and differences between the two approaches in conceptual and descriptive terms Scopes of the study This study deals with comparison between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG, with concentration on the investigation of the simple sentence in TG and its counterpart in SFG - the clause simplex Methods of the study To fulfill the aims of the study, the main methods used for study are generalized, descriptive and comparative Firstly, a generalization will be made to provide an overlook on TG and SFG The descriptive and comparative are primarily concerned with the description and the comparison of the sentence and the clause The description will be illustrated with the two languages: English and Vietnamese Examples are selected from different sources, but primarily from short stories in English and Vietnamese Examples from grammar books written by famous grammarians are also taken as the source for illustration Although both English and Vietnamese are taken as source languages, English is adopted to be the main reference source The reason for this adoption is that English is the language which has been most extensively and comprehensively described in many parts of the world under the framework of both traditional and systemic functional approaches The description of the sentence in the second chapter is based on the categories and definitions in various traditional studies, but mainly in Quirk et al (1985), Leech & Svartvik (1975), Cobuild (1991), Delahunty & Garvey (1994) The description of clause is mostly based on the model given in Halliday (1994) Works by some other systemic functional linguists are also consulted, including Downing and Locke (1992), Morley (2000), Bloor (1994), Eggins (1994), etc The invaluable reference sources in Vietnamese include the following publications: TrÇn Träng Kim (1941), Trơng Văn Chình & Nguyễn Hiến Lê (1963), Nguyễn Kim Thản (1964), Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980), Lê Cận et al (1983), Diệp Quang Ban (1986), Cao Xuân Hạo (1991), Hoàng Văn Vân (2002), Diệp Quang Ban (2004) Apart from those publications named above, other studies are also consulted when necessary Design of the study The study is organized around three parts: introduction, main content and conclusion Introduction – presents the rationale of the study, the aims of the study, scopes of the study and methods of the study Chapter One – General Conceptualization – is concerned with the theoretical preliminaries: the framework of TG and SFG for describing the sentence and the clause Chapter Two - The Simple Sentence in Traditional Grammar – investigates how the sentence is conceptualized and described in TG Chapter Three – The Clause Simplex in Systemic Functional Grammar – investigates how the clause is conceptualized and described in SFG Chapter Four - Comparison – draws out the similarities and differences between the sentence and the clause Conclusion - summarizes the main points discussed in the thesis and offers implications of the study and some suggestions for further research chapter I general conceptualization 1.1 Introduction This chapter is concerned with the theoretical preliminaries for the study The first attempt is made to sketch out a brief history of grammatical study After that, we shall generalize the most fundamental issues concerned with traditional grammar and systemic functional grammar The last part of the chapter is devoted to the comparison to explore the distinguishing features of these two grammar schools 1.2 A brief history of grammatical study The study of grammar was initiated by the ancient Greeks, who engaged in philosophical speculation about languages and described language structure This grammatical tradition was passed on to the Romans, who adopted the terminology and categories in Greek grammar to describe Latin This type of grammar was then received and continued in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by the European society, and lasted until the rise of modern linguistics in the twentieth century This study of grammar is known as traditional grammar In addition, by the Middle Ages, European scholars generally knew, in addition to their own languages and Latin, the languages of their nearest neighbours This access to several languages sets scholars to discovering that languages can be compared with one another This discovery was the origin of later comparative philosophy In the 18th century, the scholars developed systemic analyses to compare Sanskrit with German, Greek, Latin, etc This writing of grammar is known as Indo-European grammar – a method of comparing and relating the forms of speech in numerous languages Not until the early 20th did grammarians begin to describe languages on their own terms Noteworthy in this regard were Boas’ and Jesperson’s works Jesperson’s A Modern English Grammar (1909) was the precursor of such current approaches to linguistic theory as transformational generative grammar Boas’s Handbook of American languages formed the basis of various types of American descriptive grammar Given impetus by the fresh perspective of Boas, which saw grammar as description of how human speech in a language is organized, the approach to grammar known as descriptive linguistics became dominant in the U.S during the first half of the 20th century At the same time, there was another approach to grammar in which descriptive linguistics developed precise and rigorous methods to describe the formal structural units in the spoken aspect of any language The grammar that developed with this view is known as structural grammar A structuralist grammar describes what relationships underlie all instances of speech in a particular language (what Saussure referred to as langue and parole) By the mid-20th century, Noam Chomsky developed the generative grammar A generative grammar is a formal grammar that can in some sense “generate” the wellformed expressions of a natural language His universal theories are related to the ideas of those 18th and early 19th century grammarians who urged that grammar be considered a part of logic – a key to analyzing thought In the history of grammatical study, there have always existed two opposite variables in the way grammars are written: functional and formal Although there are many crosscurrents with insights borrowed from one to the other, they are ideologically fairly different Functional grammar is the name given to any of a range of functionally– based approaches to the scientific study of language such as the grammar model of the Prague school, The Copenhagen school, or the grammar model developed by Simon Dik A modern approach to combining accurate descriptions of the grammatical patterns of language with their function in context is that of systemic functional grammar, an approach originally developed by Michael A.K Halliday in the 1960s and now pursued in all continents Systemic functional grammar is related to the older functional traditions of European schools of linguistics as British Contextualism and the Prague schools 1.3 Traditional grammar By traditional, grammar is usually used to refer to the grammar written by classical Greek scholars, the Roman grammars largely derived from the Greek tradition, the speculative work of the medieval and the prescriptive approach in the 18 th century The label is also applied to the grammars largely presented in school textbooks for both native and foreign language teaching that take the terminology from this tradition Because of its pedagogical implication, traditional grammar is also labeled as “school grammar” or “pedagogical grammar” Traditional grammar is criticized by a great many of modern linguists, especially the linguists of structural approach for certain reasons The term is often used with clear unsupportive connotations reflecting the overtly prescriptive orientation of the school textbooks The grammar is also criticized for its lack of a scientific approach for language study; i.e it based largely on intuition about grammatical meaning rather than an overall theory or model of grammar Also, the grammar is criticized for being atomistic and limited in scope Although there has been much of criticism on traditional grammar, it should not be forgotten that traditional grammar represents the fruits of more than two thousand years of serious grammatical investigation, resulting in a great deal of grammatical terminology, many concepts and categories which are still widely used in the current theories of grammar, in textbooks and other resources on language Dinneen (1967) pointed out that one of the possible virtues of traditional grammar is the fact that it is the most wide-spread, influential, and the best understood method of discussing IndoEuropean languages in the Western world Indeed, a great many of traditional grammarians have provided invaluable source material and descriptive insights into the grammar of English Noteworthy in the regard are Curme (1931-1935), Sweet (189198), Zandvolt (1972), and so on Even certain contemporary approaches, such as that presented in Quirk et al (1985), can also be characterized as traditional in their outlook, even though they are considerably more linguistically sophisticated than earlier descriptions (Trask, 1999) With regard to the background of Vietnamese grammatical study, it is not exaggerated to say that, in the early period (1850- 1935), most of Vietnamese grammarians profoundly adopted the model of grammar given by their conquered French scholars (H V V©n, 2002) Since 1930 on, the study of grammar has extensively influenced by English grammar, French grammar and Russian grammar Until recently, a great many of grammarians have still taken traditional grammar as the basic model for their study Through out of the country, a mass of grammatical textbooks written under traditional perspective is used in schools for all levels, from primary to university education The sentence is taken as a crucial grammatical unit Study of syntax, which means study of sentence, is primarily concerned with definition of sentence, classification of sentence types and identification of sentence elements In the twentieth century, language teaching continues to be formed on the word as the minimal unit and the sentence as the maximal A typical work on grammar is traditionally divided into two parts, the first of which deals with parts of speech and the rest is often devoted to describing the sentence Apart from the concepts related to parts of speech, traditional grammar developed a great deal of grammatical terminologies, including the terminology that refers to grammatical units (words, phrases, clauses, sentences), the terminology that refers to clause elements (subject, predicate, object, direct object, indirect object, complement, adverbial, transitivity, intransitivity, intensive, etc.), and the one that refers to categories such as gender, number, person, tense, mood, case, inflection, aspect, voice, relative, subordinate, dependent, independent and so on These sets of terminology are familiar in current linguistic theories In summary, traditional grammar is a label applied loosely to the range of attitudes and methods found in the period of grammatical study before the advent of linguistic science The term “traditional grammar” is generally pejoratively used by modern 43 Concerned with the system of simple and multiple Theme, it is necessary to distinguish Topical Theme, Interpersonal Theme, and Textual Theme Topical (Ideational) Theme can be recognized as the first element in the clause that expresses some kinds of “representational” meaning More technically, it is a function from the transitivity structure of the clause: a participant, a circumstance or process, which are illustrated with examples respectively (the Topical Theme is in bold print) The King looked at the Queen Nhà xây từ thời Pháp thuộc In the middle of the forest there lived an old switch Sớm tinh mơ Tí dậy dắt trâu đồng Lock the door carefully Thức lâu biết đêm dài Every clause must contain one and only one Topical Theme in a clause Once we have identified a Topical Theme in a clause, we can consign all the remaining constituents to the Rheme role It is this principle which allows to determine the Theme/ Rheme boundary The Interpersonal Theme includes all elements coming before the topical Theme that express interpersonal meaning The interpersonal part of the Theme in English clause, if present, includes one or more of the following: + The Finite, typically realized by an auxiliary verb: Should they be doing that? + The Mood Adjunct: Perhaps I must eat something + The Vocative: Mr Hatch, please take off your hat! 44 The above examples show the interpersonal Theme in English clause Like English clause, the clause in Vietnamese also has the Thematic elements functioning as interpersonal Theme, which are realized by the vocative and modal adjuncts Hãy vào uống nước Đừng có giây vào ổ kiến lửa Cứ ăn uống tự nhiên Lạ mà vắng Quân, Quân cậu đâu mà vội Chết thật không nhận Interpersonal Theme Topical Theme Theme Rheme Figure 3-16: Interpersonal Theme in Vietnamese clauses The third clause constituent that can occur in Thematic position is the category of textual elements These elements not express any interpersonal or experiential meaning but they important cohesive work in relating the clause to its context The two main types of textual elements which can get to be Theme are (i) continuative Adjunct and (ii) conjunctive Adjuncts A continuative Adjunct as Theme is one of the small set of discourse signalers (yes, no, now, well, oh, etc.) It indicates that the speaker’s contribution is somehow related to what a previous speaker has said in an earlier turn A conjunctive Adjunct as Theme is the element which serves to link clauses or sentences together It is described as textual Theme when it occurs before the first topical Theme in a clause Well, I won’t go there again Ừ, anh nói có lý thật Her sister was reading, but Alice had nothing to Tôi đề cử anh anh không ứng cử 45 In summary, all three metafunctions may contribute to the Theme of a clause If we analyze a clause for Theme, the most central question is where the boundary between Theme and Rheme can be drawn i.e how far the Theme extends from the beginning of the clause to the right It shows that the Theme extends from the beginning of the clause to include any textual and interpersonal elements that may be present and also the first experiential element that is a circumstance, process or participant 3.3.3.4 Markness When the topical Theme is conflated with the Subject of the clause, it is unmarked Theme The term “unmarked”, according to Eggins (1996:296), simply means “most typical/usual” while “marked” means “unusual” When unmarked choice is made, it gives the Theme no special prominence In contrast, when a marked choice is made, the speaker signals that something in the context requires a prominent meaning to be made The most unusual form of marked Theme is an adverbial group or a prepositional phrase which functions as Adjunct in the clause Theme markness has to with the relationship between the Mood and the Theme structure of the clause: how the functional roles assign to constituents in a Theme analysis conflate with those in Mood structure The King The windows What I want Humpty Dumpty Who Unmarked Theme ran wildly up and down were always clouded with salt by the end of the day is to sleep fell off the wall killed Cock Robin? Rheme Figure 3-17 (a): Unmarked Theme in English clauses Hoa ban nở tr¾ng rừng Ngơi chùa xây dựng c¸ch 300 năm Ai nói chuyện phịng khách nhỉ? Unmarked Theme Rheme Figure 3-17 (b): Unmarked Theme in Vietnamese clauses 46 Marked choice is made when Theme conflates with any other constituent from Subject in the Mood system One common way of creating a marked Theme is to move a circumstantial element to Thematic position From the three sides of the house For a while Merrily A bag- pudding Marked Theme we could see the sea the Caterpillar smoke its pipe we roll a long the King did make Rheme Figure 3-18 (a): Marked Theme in English clauses Hai bên sườn núi hoa ban mọc trắng Lom khom núi tiều vài Đắng cay khổ cực nếm đủ Giàu giàu Nhà ông Hoàng Đi chợ, chợ Marked Theme mua cho lợn quay? Rheme Figure 3-18 (b): Marked Theme in Vietnamese clauses 3.3.3.5 Implications of Theme for level of textual structure In summary, Thematic choice is the most striking contribution to the internal cohesion of the text: a skillful use of Thematic selection results in a text which appears to hang neatly together and make sense Through the system of Thematic choice, the clauses link together, and express their relation with the context surrounding them, resulting in the cohesion for the text which they belong to However, Thematic patterning can be identified as operating in the text at a number of different levels Firstly, Theme/ Rheme structure can be seen as a micro level realization of textual organization Then, a dependent clause can act as Theme to a complete sentence Similarly, a topic sentence acts as Theme to a paragraph; an introduction paragraph acts as Theme to entire text The essential contribution made by textual meaning is to actualize a range of different textual structures which operate at all levels of the text Without structures 47 as Theme, there could be no text That is the reason why Halliday calls the textual the “enabling” metafunction 3.4 Simultaneous metafunctions in the clause Although each of the metafunction we have discussed is treated as separate component which has its own system of choice, they all contribute to the whole meaning and structure of a clause Indeed, the three strands of meaning simultaneously run through the clause, so, when we analyze the clause, they must be brought all together Each clause constituent often plays three different functional roles It realizes three types of meaning: a meaning about the reality (an experiential meaning), a meaning about the interaction (an interpersonal meaning) and a meaning about message (a textual meaning) It is this recognition of semantic complexity that the structure of the clause has to be described three times over the structure of the clause as representation of experience, the structure of the clause as an exchange and the structure of the clause as a message These metafunctions of the semantic stratum are related with the variables of register in the stratum of context by the way that dimensions of fields impact on choices from the experiential metafunction, dimensions of tenor impact on choices from the interpersonal metafunction, and dimensions of mode impact on choices from the textual metafunction In correlation with the stratum of lexicogrammar, three types of meaning are realized through three major systems of choices in wording: the experiential metafunction is realized through Transitivity choices, the interpersonal metafunction through Mood choices, and the textual metafunction through Theme choices The examples below show the structural simultaneity in the English and Vietnamese clause Metafunctio n Ideational System Interpersonal MOOD Then Conjunctive ran quickly after the rabbit Actor TRANSIVITY Alice Process Subject Finite/ Circumstance: manner Adjunct Circumstance: accompaniment Adjunct 48 Predicator Mood Textual THEME Residue Conjunctive Topical Theme Rheme Figure 3- 19 (a): The simultaneous metafunctions in the structure of the English clause Metalfunction System (siêu chức Có phải anh mua áo siêu thị Marko không? (hệ thèng) năng) Actor Ideational (tư tưởng) Negotiation Goal Location (quá trình) (đích thể) (chu cảnh định thể) Subject (CHUYỂN TÁC) Process (hành TRANSITIVITY Predicator Complement vị) Adjunct Negotiation (vị tố) (bổ ngữ) (phụ ngữ) (thành phần Interpersonal MOOD (thành phần trao (chủ (liên nhân) (THỨC) đổi) Mo - ngữ) Residue (phần dư) (th - ) Textual Textual THEME (văn bản) Topical (văn bản) trao đổi) - od (- ức) (chủ (ĐỀ) Rheme (thuyết) đề) Theme (đề) Figure 3- 19 (b): The simultaneous metafunctions in the structure of the Vietnamese clause 3.5 Summary To sum up, this chapter has explored how the clause is described in systemic functional grammar both in English and in Vietnamese In our investigation, we have tried to concentrate on the most fundamental issues related to the clause Firstly, the important status of clause in grammar is briefly discussed, then three lines of meaning and three structures in the clause are in turn described In each part of the chapter, we once again choose the typical aspects of Transitivity, Mood and Theme for our description All the issues discussed in the chapter will be the ground for our next discussion, the comparison of the clause and the sentence 49 Chapter IV: comparison We have investigated how the sentence is conceptualized and described in TG and how the clause is conceptualized and described in SFG We may now arrive at some conclusions on the similarities and differences between them 4.1 The similarities between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG + Firstly, both sentence and clause are the syntagms of language or ‘stretch of language’ (Downing & Lock, 1992) which are patterned by structural units hierarchically arranged The term structure refers to the relationships that exist between the smaller units making up a larger unit In syntactically structural rank, sentence is the highest unit made up of word classes below it; clause is the highest unit on the rank scale clause, word groups/phrases, words, morphemes Therefore, they can be analyzed into constituent parts in syntagmatic axis Halliday (1994) claims that FG carries the analysis of constituent structure as far as it is taken in ‘folk linguistic theory’ in traditional grammar school And so, the classroom image of grammar structure can be roughly described as followings: language is made up of sentences, which consist of phrases, which consist of words, which consist of morphemes “There is no need to reject it; we can build on it and enrich it” (Halliday, 1994: 23) As a constituency-based account, the main strategy is to adopt the framework of sentence, clause, group, word and morpheme as a hierarchy of constituents 50 + As mentioned in the previous chapters, two criteria which we base on to conceptualize the simple sentence and the clause simplex are definition and recognition From these criteria, sentence and clause are looked at from different aspects of language, both semantics and form As far as the semantic criterion is concerned, sentence and clause can be defined as a stretch of language expressing ‘a state of affairs’ With regard to communicative criterion, the sentence and the clause are similar by the way that they are the language unit for communication – exchanging information Sentence can be classified according to the purpose of speaking and clause can be typed by the recognition of the Mood element + Also, there is much overlap in terminology between the two grammars Taking the familiar terminology in TG, SFG makes use of the class labels like noun, verb, or adjective and other terms like transitivity, subject, complement, etc 4.2 The differences between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG 4.2.1 The clause is more semantically described than the sentence The first difference is that, in TG, language is interpreted as a set/list of structures; study of language means studying the rules to form structures Therefore, language is studied in a static state and its scope stops at the rank of sentence Since sentence is treated as the nucleus and maximal unit of language, it is studied in isolation from the text Therefore, formal dimension of the sentence is emphasized while its meaning in context is nearly neglected, which results in the impoverishment in analyzing sentence In contrast, SFG interprets language as a network of systems or interrelated sets of available options for making meanings, and structure comes in as the means whereby they are put into effect, or “realized” Each linguistic element is seen not in isolation but in relation to others, since it has potential to realize different functions Structural patterns are seen as configurations of functions, whether of participants and 51 processes, or of modifiers and qualifiers of a Head, or of Subject, verb and Complements, among others Users are free, within the resources a particular language displays, to choose those patterns which best carry out their communicative purposes in specific contexts Because SFG takes the text (discourse) as the basic unit of language organized according to the rhetorical context, the clause is studied in its discourse environment This results in the fact that clause can be looked at from different dimensions: syntactic dimension, semantic dimension and pragmatic dimension It is the third dimension that makes clause significantly different from sentence Although there is much overlap in terminology between the two grammars; SFG makes extensive use of other functional labels We find out the functional labels in SFG like Actor, Process, Goal, Theme, Classifier, Given, Numerative and so on Halliday distinguishes between bracketing and labeling elements The bracketing indicates that the elements form a structure but it says nothing about either the nature or the functions of the elements themselves The labeling indicates what configuration of functions that structure consists of He also distinguishes two ways of labeling a linguistic unit One is to assign it to a class; and the other is to assign a function to it Terms such as verb, noun, adjective, adverb, prepositional phrase, noun clause, are names of class, which have become familiar in TG Terms such as Subject, Finite, Object, Complement, Modifier, Auxiliary, are the names of functions, which are written beginning with a capital letter The functional labels are there to make the grammatical analysis semantically revealing to show how the clauses, groups and phrases of a text map its meaning Without the functional labels, the grammar would be too shallow to be of much use in the text interpretation Summarized from all these analysis, the first comparison can be made is that the clause in SFG is much more semantically described than the sentence in TG 52 4.2.2 The clause is more broadly and coherently described than the sentence Another difference between the clause and the sentence is the multifunctionality in the clause In chapter III, we mentioned three metafunctions and we also emphasized that they are simultaneous in the clause Because the clause is studied in the context, there is metafunctional resonance between three strata of the language: lexicogrammar (where the clause is located), semantics and context The clause is related to the whole language system, with the components strata above it Therefore, we have the tripartite relation: Transitivity – Experiential Metafunction – Field; Mood – Interpersonal Metafunction – Tenor; Theme – Textual Metafunction – Mode There always exist three “fibres of meaning” running through the clause The criteria of semantics and lexicogrammar for identification of the clause are strictly related In TG, on the other hand, ‘there seems to be no relation between grammar and semantics’ (H V Van 2004) When sentence is analyzed, there is often only one structure recognized by the syntactically related elements (subject, verb, adverbial, ect.) The clause is multidimensional in the sense that various types of functions are mapped together on the same syntagm These differences lead to a conclusion that the clause in SFG is more broadly and more coherently described 2.3 The clause is more comprehensively described than the sentence We have discussed the three lines of meaning and three types of structure in the clause We have also mentioned that they are not separated from each other but simultaneous The view from different perspectives helps to illuminate different but equally important aspect of the meaning construction, and, when combined, each perspective throws light on the others Take an example of subject, which is one of the basic concepts to traditional grammar It is difficult to find a definitive account of what the role of subject means Traditionally, the definition 53 of subject is ‘what the sentence is about’ or ‘the topic of the sentence’ Delahunty & Garvey (1994) point out two problems with the traditional definition: (1) it does not hold true in all circumstances and (2) it distracts us from grammar into discourse The traditional definition does not hold true because in many sentences, the subject cannot qualify as the topic For example, it, no one, there, I in the sentences below are obviously not ‘what the sentence is about’ It is nice to talk to you No one understands me There will be more rain tomorrow For Elma, I don’t know who’s dating him these days Subject, in Halliday’s grammar, is a part of Mood Halliday divides the clause into two parts: the Mood and the Residue In a clause, there is one part which carries the syntactic burden of the exchange - the Mood element The rest of the clause remains unchanged, and therefore be called the Residue In SFG, the criterion to define the subject is obviously consistent The mood structures are characterized by the presence or absence of a subject element and by the relative positions of the Subject and the Finite Halliday (1994) distinguishes three kinds of Subject: psychological subject, grammatical subject and logical subject, and he labels them as Theme, Subject, and Actor respectively They are related in a systemic way In the clause, an element often carries more than one function In addition, an important principle of analysis is the “exhaustive” principle; i.e there is not “spare floating” element without function in the clause This principle recovers the limitation of the traditional analysis, the case of “there”, for example In SFG, “there” functions as subject, and together with Finite, forms the Mood of the clause Another example aspect which can be taken into comparison is Mood Mood, in TG, is understood with narrow meaning The classification of the sentence into statement, question, and imperative is often based on institutive and subjective 54 criteria In Halliday’s grammar, English Mood, which includes the elements of Subject and Finite, is the component to define Mood of the clause Halliday has often argued forcefully against looking at language only in terms of “constituents” – that is, breaking clauses into groups and then groups into words, and assigning each “bit” an identifiable meaning As a rule, interpersonal meanings are not inherently tied to specific constituents but spread over the whole clause; and they may be reinforced by being expressed at the several points in the clause For all above reasons, we can say that the clause in SFG is more comprehensively described than the sentence in TG 4.2.4 The clause is more deeply described than the sentence As mentioned earlier, TG takes the principle component (subject + predicate) as the basic criterion to classify and analyze the sentence At more delicate level, the sentence is analyzed into the elements: subject, verb, object, complement, and adverbial Therefore, in Chapter 2, all English simple sentences fall in one of seven basic patterns (SV, SVO, SVC, SVOC, etc) to analysis If we apply these patterns to analyze and describe the sentence, it is impossible to avoid the impoverishment and ambiguity in analyzing sentence Take an example of the sentence She made him a good friend Traditionally, the sentence is analyzed as a pattern of SVOC But if it is analyzed under the modal of Transitivity, we will have three congruations: She made him a good friend (i) Attributor Process Carrier Attribute (ii) Carrier Process Beneficiary Attribute (iii) Actor Process Beneficiary Goal And three meanings can be interpreted as follows: (i) means “she caused him to be a good friend” (ii) means “she was a good friend to him” 55 (iii) means “she made (produced) a good friend for him” In another case, different sentences are realized by the same pattern in TG: (i) Mary loves Tom (SVO) (ii) Mary doesn’t love Tom (SVO) (iii) Mary hit Tom (SVO) If we look at the pattern SVO, we cannot see the different meanings which these sentences express But when we base on SF framework to analyze the sentences, we will see how they are much more insightfully expressed because they are analyzed from three dimensions: Transitivity, Mood and Theme For example, from Transitivity, Mary in (i) is Senser while in (iii) is Actor; or (i) and (ii) are the same in mental process but different in Mood, ect So, what can be concluded is that the clause is more deeply described than the sentence 4.3 Clarification Traditionally, the sentence tends to be the pure pattern taken out from written text for study; i.e., it is an idealization of the written language which is often difficult to impose on spoken language The boundary between sentences is marked by the capital initial letter and punctuation at the end With SFG’s priority on spoken text, in which grammatical patterns can be more richly revealed, clause is the grammatical unit that does not depend on graphical spelling punctuation, despite being taken from either written or spoken text The term sentence is therefore best reserved to label stretches of written text bounded by full stops or the equivalents A more theoretical reason for not including sentence as the separate rank is the fact that two clauses may be combination into a complex unit, but the choices available in the second clause are basically the same as the first In general, in SFG, clause is a relatively consistent concept to refer to a grammatical unit; sentence is used as a concept to define the boundary between 56 clauses in graphical form In many non-systemic functional grammars, there is also the distinction between the two concepts, in which clause is treated as part(s) of sentence Clause also tends to be referred to as a syntactic unit The concept clause , when translated into Vietnamese, is variously interpreted For the name of this unit in Vietnamese, I will not go to further discussion since there have, in fact, still existed many arguments by different linguists Our main purpose is to explore how this unit is approached in the two grammars CONCLUSION So far, the aims of the thesis have been basically achieved The superiority of the clause described in SFG and the partiality of the sentence described in TG have been proved through the comparison between them We want to reiterate that although there have been different models of description of language, the systemic functional model is considered to be one of the most comprehensive and satisfactory, since it is able to bring out the functional uses of language and can be used to describe any languages in the world However, our purpose is not to deny or criticize the simple sentence in TG In fact, the analysis of sentence based on subject-predicate structure has popularly applied in language learning and teaching of all levels, from primary to university education Traditional sentence, regarded from educational perspective, may bring many advantages, but in research it reveals certain limitations Clause - a multidimensionally regarded unit - helps to compensate the gaps of sentence in traditional grammar, and therefore enhancing more comprehensive and meaningful grammar study The thesis has not only contributed to enlightening a perspective on a scientific issue but also helped in educational implication FG can help to decide what language to 57 teach: it can provide the basic for educational decisions about what the university student needs to know about successful communication in their field This applies equally to students as of the mother tongue and of a foreign language The overall view of language from the SFG perspective has fuelled the communicative language teaching movement, and, in many cases, insights on specific areas such as cohesion, modality and Theme choice, have in fact been adapted for practical use in the classroom in many English-speaking countries, especially in Australia With regard to the situation in Vietnam, where the sentence is still a dominant content of grammar teaching, inclusion of clause in grammar curriculum is likely to bring much improvement in language teaching and learning, in both mother tongue and foreign languages This thesis has been concerned with the comparison between the simple sentence in TG and the clause simplex in SFG Our investigation to compare the two units has just been at the most generating extent Because of the limitation of space and time, there still have some problems that need to be more thoroughly investigated Besides, the issues below, beyond and above the clause and sentence have not been touched We hope there will be study of comparison between sentence and clause in these aspects, especially in Vietnamese so that the picture of sentence and clause will become clearer ... elements ((complement (bổ ngữ) , theme (đề ngữ) , adjunct (phụ ngữ) , conjunctive (liên ngữ) and explanative (giải ngữ) ) Quan, người ta sợ uy quyền 18 Đề ngữ Chủ ngữ Vị ngữ (theme) (subject) (predicate)... grammarians are also taken as the source for illustration Although both English and Vietnamese are taken as source languages, English is adopted to be the main reference source The reason for this... the predicate is classified into: relational predicate (vị ngữ quan hệ) , resultive predicate (vị ngữ hệ quả), active predicate (vị ngữ hoạt động), etc Người thợ mộc Quả bóng xẹp xuống Con vịt