The Complementary Relation between Systemic Functional Grammar and Pragmatics

Abstract

The theoretical category of a selected system enables everyone to use the comparative principle in describing different languages .In this respect , Aiken (1933)(cited in Pooley;1957:59) presents a system of English grammar which analyses grammar into unit and function ,or as Lyons (1968:54) gives the term “expression”(form)for unit and the term “content”(meaning for function). In the view of Katz and Fodor (1963:39),the scope of a language description covers the knowledge of a fluent speaker about the structure of his language that enables him to use and understand its sentences .According to his view, Katz and Fodor make use of the pragmatic aspect in addition to the semantic and syntactic aspects which exclude from the description any ability to use and understand sentences that depend on the “setting” of the sentence.1.1 Preliminaries of Systemic Functional Grammar and Pragmatics Linguistics in the twentieth century has undergone two stages:In the first half the approach of description was adopted by the structuralists:in the second half the approach of explanation came into being when linguists found that mere description of languages is insufficient for their purposes of accounting for language faculty in human beings. Chomsky’s Transformational Generative (TG)grammar starting from the 1950s and Halliday’s Systemic –Functional Grammar(SFG) starting from the 1970s are both explanatory , with the only difference that the former (TG)is psychologically oriented and the later (SFG) is sociologically oriented(HuZhuanglin,2002:33).Thus , formal linguistics and functional linguistics have become two main streams in modern linguistics.