Functional Grammar

This paper investigates various aspects of grammaticalization of Polish and Kashubian periphrastic verb forms with mieć\miec and bëc and participles. The involvement of factors, which are due to language contact or to autonomous development is thoroughly explored and analyzed in the context of basic grammaticalization parameters. At the same time this contribution should prove with valid arguments the thesis of an inhomogeneous, variably realized and partly of others (all above pragmatic) factors dependent grammaticalization der habere-\esse-forms in the Slavia. So this paper refers both to the canonical differences in the realization of single grammaticalization parameters as well as broader developmental tendencies in the Slavia.

The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between the forms of clause combination and their systematic patterns of explicit inter-clausal coherence. The study is conducted within the theoretical framework of the Adaptive Approach to Grammar. The Adaptive Approach conceives of combined clauses as a hierarchy of conventionalized units for discourse coherence management. The grammatical properties of the different combined clauses determine their position on the hierarchy, and these properties are claimed to correlate with whether the construction is more, or less, of a cohesive unit for packaging multiple propositions. The study pursues the hypothesis that clauses higher on the hierarchy, being the more cohesive grammatical constructions, should tend to manage coherence between the propositions they combine (i.e. the clausal constituents) through fewer explicit discourse-pragmatic ties than the clauses considered less cohesive grammatical constructions. An analysis of cohesive ties in 450 combined clauses, representing 9 different English clause types, indicates an inverse relationship exists between the level of grammatical integration and the frequency of inter-clausal cohesive ties. It is argued to be a quantifiable consequence of grammatical hierarchy, reflecting a continuum of coherence management from discourse to grammar.

Este trabalho objetiva demonstrar, em um primeiro momento, aspectos funcionais relacionados às diferentes formas que orações completivas, em posição de argumento interno de verbo transitivo, assumem em português. Para a descrição desses aspectos, utilizamos dados de diferentes variedades do português falado em países que têm o português como língua oficial. A partir dessa descrição, pretendemos, em um segundo momento, demonstrar em que medida motivações funcionais inerentes ao uso das construções completivas são contempladas em atividades pedagógicas propostas por livros didáticos atualmente adotados para o ensino de língua portuguesa em instituições educacionais brasileiras. Com esse último propósito, nosso principal intuito é contribuir para as discussões acerca da necessidade de uma orientação funcionalista para o ensino de gramática do português, tendo em vista o já tão propalado objetivo a ser alcançado com o ensino formal dessa disciplina: aprimorar a competência linguística dos estudantes e, consequentemente, seu desempenho comunicativo em língua materna.

In order to assess the real contribution of prototype theory and its potential as a descriptive procedure in an unbiased way, it appears necessary that we (i) highlight some of its tenets and basic notions, as well as (ii) test its compatibility with various grammatical models. The present paper focuses on the latter task. It is metatheoretically interesting to look for certain elements of protoype theory in various schools of functionally oriented models (e.g. Halliday, Givón, Dik) claiming to be continuing Praguian traditions because there is a strong, though more than often overlooked, intellectual affinity between the Prague functional school and prototype theory. Having outlined some main assumptions of prototype theory, and pointed out a number of features it shares with the Praguian functional approach in the introductory sections, we try in the rest of the first part of the paper to find out whether it is justified to claim that a milder version of prototype theory, in fact, often meets with relative success in the description of certain linguistic phenomena where it can be argued to be a notational variant of the Praguian centre-and-periphery conception, whereas its stronger version often fails due to its non-linguistic aspects. A model's potential for, or even its explicit adoption of some sort of prototype approach, be it only the core principles it shares with its Prague progenitor school or a fully-fledged methodological apparatus, may thus be considered to be, in a broader sense, indicative of a model's faithfulness to or dissent from the principles of the Prague School. In the second part of the paper we look (i) for certain elements that seem to be compatible with prototype theory, and (ii), for some key places making explicit reference to this theory in various schools of functional grammar. The main thrust of the second part is be to check specifically on material from English, German, Croatian and Hungarian whether an adequately constrained version of prototype approach can be successfully applied to an account of syntactic function assignment in a Functional Grammar of Dik's provenance.

This presentation of the Hungarian language is based upon the Functional Discourse Grammar (Hengeveld and Mackenzie 2008) and offers a totally new approach to language teaching and Hungarian language. Special attention is devoted to pragmatics, which plays a very important role in Hungarian syntax. Traditional grammatical terminology is restricted to a few terms.

Driussi, Paolo (2012) . Guida alla lingua ungherese. Milano, Franco Angeli.  ISBN  9788820406332
http://www.francoangeli.it/Ricerca/Scheda_Libro.aspx?ID=20394

Cast in Functional Grammar (FG), this chapter considers the syntactic placement of pronominal clitics in European Portuguese (EP), contrasting these with comparable phenomena in Castilian Spanish (CS). It emerges that EP constituent order results from the interplay of (at least) a single, minimally specified structural pattern, a principle of increasing syntactic weight, and the independently required principles of restrictive apposition and adverbial insertion. The specific difference between EP and CS reduces to the insight that EP allows placement of the verb in clause-initial position, whereas this is excluded in CS; verb position determines the occurrence of proclisis and enclisis, which we analyse as syntactic rather than morphological in EP. The chapter illustrates the applicability of FG to the comparison of languages.

O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar de que maneira determinados usos linguísticos podem ajudar a manter uma hierarquia social de gênero que, de acordo com Eckert e McConnell-Ginet (2003), situa identidades masculinas em posições de maior poder, quando comparadas a identidades femininas. Desse modo, olho para as diferenças entre ocorrências de "puta" e "puto" e busco analisar como contribuem para a manutenção da hierarquia de gênero. Portanto, faz-se necessário depreender os contextos e os significados associados a essas ocorrências mais prototipicamente, visando responder se são diferentes e por quê. Entendo, pois, que o conhecimento emerge da experiência intersubjetiva, isto é, da interação entre diferentes participantes da sociedade. Assumo, desse modo, uma perspectiva não essencialista para as identidades sociais, compreendendo-as construídas na interação (ECKERT; McCONNELL-GINET, 2003; MOITA-LOPES, 2006). Assumo, também, uma perspectiva baseada no uso para o conhecimento linguístico e parto do princípio de que a língua se organiza na mente dos seus usuários como uma complexa rede de construções (ou pareamentos de forma e sentido) gerada e atualizada nas situações de uso linguístico (BYBEE, 2010; TRAUGOTT; TROUSDALE, 2013; PINHEIRO, 2016).

The research paper focuses on the question of the typology of functional semantic fields in the contemporary Bulgarian language. In the analysis comments have been made on A. V. Bondarko and I. Kutsarov’s popular classification models of FSF in the Russian and Bulgarian languages, emphasizing on some problematic parts in the points of view of the two authors.
The new classification of FSF presented in the exposition is based on several main criteria: 1) a sphere of functioning; 2) presence/ absence of a structural centre (nucleus); 3) structure of the field periphery; 4) a degree of the functional autonomy; 5) semantic scope. There are arguments in favour of the belief that FSF build microfields not only around the marked members of the nucleus - the morphological category, but also around the unmarked members (having both general and main meaning).

ON THE ISSUE OF THЕ STRUCTURE
OF THE FUNCTIONAL–SEMANTIC FIELD OF GENDER
IN THE CONTEMPORARY BULGARIAN LANGUAGE

The object of analysis in the present study is the structural characteristics of the functional-semantic field of gender in the contemporary Bulgarian Language, which has not been thoroughly investigated yet. Some of the key opinions on the topic are subjected to critical review, followed by a discussion of the debatable issue of the class membership in the core field. A detailed analysis of the peripheral linguistic means of expressing gender semantics in the contemporary Bulgarian Language (word-formation patterns, lexical, morphological, syntactical) is carried out and the focus is on their main functions. The most important characteristics of the functional-semantic field are commented on in the conclusion.

This paper explores the relationship between grammar and style in composition. These two genres of rhetoric are often expected to be performed well by student writers, yet grammar and style are rarely taught together. In this paper, I argue that Holcomb and Killingsworth's project for advancing stylistics as performance shares Kolln's call for a "rhetorical grammar" in the composition classroom. This paper offers several definitions of grammar, six close reading reviews, and over twenty-five summary reviews.

Functional Grammar (FG) was developed by Michael Halliday in the 1960s as a model of grammar to show how language functions in a text. In this paper, I analyze and compare two texts through the lens of FG. I attempt to show that FG is a useful tool for analyzing literary texts. The texts I use are excerpts from two essays: “Love” by D. H. Lawrence, and “A Short History of Love” by Lawrence Stone. Canonical writers of English like D. H. Lawrence or James Joyce—to give but two examples—often depart from traditional grammatical rules in order to make their language express something that correct grammar is incapable of communicating. FG uncovers fascinating details about how writers construct their texts in keeping with their purpose and audience. While both the texts I analyze talk about the same phenomenon (romantic love) and reach the same conclusions, the means by which they reach these conclusions are very different—Lawrence uses a highly subjective and rhetorical style, whereas Stone, a historian, presents a more objective and scientific argument. My aim is to show that language users have linguistic choices and that these choices are seldom neutral.

The fundamental hypothesis of Functional Grammar is that there is a largely non-arbitrary relation between the instrumentality of language use (hence Functional) and the systematicity of language structure (hence Grammar). The article presents FG as it was understood in the early nineties.

Ever since, grammar has been a real obstacle for the majority of English Language learners at all levels. Traditional grammar taught in schools has restricted students to follow rules rather than giving them free space to produce meaning. Since students' first nightmare in learning English is grammar, the spotlight should be on how they can be encouraged to learn grammar, acquire it, and use it confidently. Functional grammar has provided an opportunity to get into this kind of teaching. The purpose of languages is to produce messages to serve means of communication. Sociolinguistics is becoming one of the main issues of acquiring languages. Meaning-making is what functional grammar aims to. One major problem EFL students in higher education face problems with is meaning-making in writing. Adopting functional grammar in EFL classrooms gets students involved in using grammar from a different perspective. It encourages them to use grammar to communicate in the best possible way in different situations fulfilling their daily lives needs; that is, providing them real time grammar use.

Adopting the Functional Grammar advanced by Halliday (1985a), this paper investigates the nominalisation of two IELTS writing test papers of candidates achieving band 7 and band 5. The study aims to identify the frequency of nominalisation employed in these texts and the distribution of verbal and adjectival nominalisations. The study also looks at the other aspects that contribute to the complexity of writing: lexical density and readability. The result shows that the numbers of nominalisation in the writing test paper at band 7 doubled the amount of the writing test paper at band 5. In the two texts, verbal nominalisation is mainly used while adjectival nominalisation is low. With reference to lexical density and readability, it is revealed that the text with higher marks was denser and more difficult to read whilst the lower‐graded text was less dense and easier to comprehend. Two conclusions are drawn from the findings. Firstly, nominalisation packed the information in a text and made it denser and difficult to read. Secondly, marking tends to reflex the complexity of grammatical features.

, [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23] l. Si intentamos buscar en el campo de las unidades sig'li~ fícativas del lenguaje una situación relativamente paralela (1) a la de la neutralización fonológica, hemos de hacerlo exclusivamente en el plano del contenido. En el plano de la expresión operamos con unidades "a face unique" (2); las unidades en el plano del contenido son también de una sola cara. En el nivel del signo, la situación es distinta, pues se trata de unidades de dos caras. Los tres niveles, como señala L. J. Prieto (3), deben mantenerse separados. En fonología dos fonemas se neutralizan cuando su diferencia de sustancia no se corresponde con diferencias en el.contenido; de igual modo, al estudiar este plano, cuando dos de sus unidades se neutraUcen es que no hay diferencias l. El paralelismo de los dos planos de la expresión y del contenido ha sido señalado repetidamente por L. HJELMSLEV: por ejemplo en "Notes sur les oppositions supprimables", T C L P. 8, págs. 51-57, y en Omkring Sprogteoriens grundlaeggelse, Copenhague, 1943, págs. 44-55. 2. A. MARTINET, La description phonologique, Geneve-París, 1956, págs. 11-12. 3. L. J. PRIETO, "Signe articulé et signe proportionnelle'', B S L P, 50, págs. 134 sigs ..

The present paper reports on language description and typology research on particles in Japanese and Cantonese Chinese from a systemic functional point of view. It represents the early phase of a research project on particles in East and South East Asia, including Bahasa Indonesia, Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Thai. “Particles” is a class of word, which serves to realize grammatical features segmentally (Matthiessen, 2004: 553-561). The importance of particles both in the grammar of Japanese and in the grammar of Cantonese has been emphasized in the literature (e.g. Kuno, 1973; Kwok, 1984; Luke, 1990; Shibatani, 1990); however, traditional grammars seem not to have defined “particles” as clearly as other classes such as nouns, verbs and adjectives. In the present paper, particles are distinguished from other segmental markers such as adpositions and affixes in terms of the rank scale based on Matthiessen’s (2004) descriptive generalization across languages. Interpreting the existing descriptions of the grammar of Japanese and the grammar of Cantonese from a systemic functional perspective, the present paper has attempted to provide a typological overview of particles in Japanese and Cantonese. It suggests that the particles in Cantonese realize features within each metafunction, whereas the manifestation of particles in Japanese are more restricted – the particles in Japanese seem to realize features in the textual, interpersonal, and ideational metafunctions. The grammatical elements in Japanese that are often described as ‘case’ markers in traditional grammars – which realize experiential features – are in fact not particles but adpositions, because they operate not at the clause rank but at the group/phrase rank. The understanding of particles in Japanese and Cantonese from a systemic functional perspective not only lays the groundwork for our ongoing text-based and corpus-based multilingual research project but also casts a new question on the studies on particles in traditional grammars.

EL lenguaje humano ha sido observado y estudiado desde hace muchos siglos según enfoques e intereses varios. Hasta casi el comienzo de nuestra centuria esta larga labor lingüística no se centró en el objeto mismo que pretendía analizar, el lenguaje, pues los viejos gramáticos buscaban fines externos, bien sagrados y religiosos, bien normativos y retóricos. Ahora, por el contrario, parece que todos intentamos estudiar el lenguaje desde un punto de vista inmanente. No obstante, el abanico de métodos es tan amplio y las terminologías empleadas tan dispares, que el neófito de estos estudios se encuentra con una situación tan confusa y tan poco clara como la precedente.

Translating ability requires mastery over two languages. Although this training is not aimed at shaping the participants into professional translators, translation skills are needed for academic excellence. To have these abilities, students should comprehend the language structure in L1 and L2. Therefore, this article elaborates on the use of Grammar Translation Method in teaching translation to students who are not majoring in translation. The sample of this research consists of 62 students from the Department of Economics and Engineering, University of North Sumatra. The research method used is experimental method with pretest and posttest design. The results of the data analysis show that translation teaching by the GMT method can improve the students' ability to render the text from L1 to L2 and vice versa. The students' commentaries implied the willingness to improve their vocabulary in L2.

""How can we teach critical thinking skills to ESL/EFL learners?‟ This paper answers this specific question with a proposed model of critical reading. The paper presents sample materials designed following Wallace‟s (2003) three dimensional model of critical reading with linguistic, conceptual and cultural foci. The paper informs material developers and action researchers on how Wallace‟s three dimensional approach to reading texts may enable readers to develop broader perspectives on various issues, and give critical insight into the texts. The sample material also demonstrates how Wallace‟s three-dimensional approach to reading may help learners become critique of the outer world and allow them decode the texts in the light of their own schematic knowledge.
""

By applying a stylistic analysis within a systemic-functional linguistic framework, this study argues that Luke's construal of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 and its co-thematic passages attempt to persuade Jewish believers of Luke's audience not to separate from multi-ethnic churches, a goal that is accomplished through subverting the value orientations of a prominent Noahic tradition within Second Temple Jewish literature that promotes strict Jewish isolation from Gentiles. As a result, this study breaks fresh methodological ground in the linguistic study on the New Testament and also advances critical scholarship on the book of Acts. Readership This work is written for a scholarly audience whose interests lie in the linguistic analysis of the New Testament as well as the critical study of the book of Acts. For more information see brill.com

An analysis on Henry Normal’s poem “The House Is Not the Same Since You Left” in terms of M.A.K. Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar (1994) and Halliday and Hasan’s Language, Context, and Text: Aspects of Language in a Social-Semiotic Perspective (1989).

Functional discourse grammar (FDG) is a theory with a rich descriptive apparatus, facilitating the modeling of language data that takes into account the several tiers of interdependent information that are present in any utterance, namely, interpersonal, representational, syntactic, and expression. The explanatory component of FDG comes through complementary principles of linguistic cause and effect, be they diachronic, synchronic, areal, typological, neurological, and so forth. It is this comprehensiveness that sets it apart from many other theories that tend to predicate- or syntax-centricity. FDG is used to analyze the Biblical Hebrew so-called qatal verb (QV), which is characterized by a high degree of multifunctionality. An FDG analysis of several of its functions is provided and although this analysis is shown to be descriptively robust it is also theoretically problematic in some respects. These broader problems in the description and explanation of QV according to the theory of FDG are considered.

The study is aimed at describing the dominant grammatical errors made by English Education students at STKIP YDB in writing their thesis proposal. The objectives of the study were formulated as (1) to find out the most common grammatical errors made by the students in writing their thesis proposal and (2) to find out the source of the grammatical errors made by the students in writing thesis proposal. The method of the study was qualitative descriptive. Documentation was used as instrument of the study from which data was collected through 15 thesis proposals of fourth semester English education students in the academic year from August 2016 to February 2017 year. Technique of data analysis that was used as proposed by Ellis (1996) is through collecting samples, identification of errors, classification of errors, explanation of error and evaluation of the errors. The classification of the grammatical errors are based on Linguistic and Surface Taxonomy category , while source of the errors are based on theories of interlingual and intralingual transfer errors. The research findings reveal that the most common errors made by the students in linguistic taxonomy fall into the error use of passive voice, subject-verb agreement, tense verb, part of speech which are comprised 79.38 % of total grammatical error, while in the surface taxonomy falls into the omission and misordering errors which are comprised 71.73 % of total errors. Dealing with the source of the errors, it was found that intralingual transfer such as overgeneralization and incomplete application of rules which comprise 65,64 % of total of errors, are the major source of grammatical errors that the students made in writing their thesis proposal. The research findings come to a conclusion to the need of discussing its impacts on pedagogical implication in teaching and learning grammar in the classroom.

Semantics is rather difficult to define. Linguists and philosophers alike have for decades been trying to define its intricacies, characteristics and properties. Within the realm of language, semantics is a street called meaning, which lies in the suburbs that is linguistics. Semantics with regards to this essay helps us to find meaning out of what is inputted into our brains from spoken language sources. Many linguists have tried to bottle these sources up and put labels on them, some have succeeded and
some have not. Geoffrey Leech (1969) is one such linguist who has come up with seven different kinds of meaning. However, it would be helpful if there was one plain definition for collocative meaning. Though, after reviewing a multitude amount of essays and after reading dozens of books on the topic, making one informed decision on what collocative meaning is tricky. This essay will delve into collocative meaning by looking into its origins, definitions, role in semantics and role within the EFL environment. The author wishes to find out if it is, or is not, a kind of meaning, or perhaps, that it might be something else altogether.

2012 ii © 2012 Università del Salento -Coordinamento SIBA http://siba2.unisalento.it eISBN 978-88-8305-092-3 (electronic version) http://siba-ese.unisalento.it iii CONTENTS 4 Translation and functionally complete units of meaning 59 4.1 Meaning as function in context 59 4.2 Applying the methodology: some examples 61 4.3 Conclusion 69 iv 5 Textual colligation and thematic progression in English 71 5.1 Theme and Rheme in the Systemic-Functional tradition 72 5.1.1 Marked and unmarked themes 74 5.1.2 Other types of marked Theme 76 5.2

Duff, P., Ferreira, A., & Zappa-Hollman, S. (2015). In M. Christison, D. Christian, P. Duff & N. Spada (Eds.), Teaching and learning English grammar: Research findings and future directions (pp.139-158). New York: Routledge.

ABSTRACT
A growing body of curriculum development, instruction, and research focuses on ways of attending to grammar systematically in content-based academic English programs (Coffin, 2010). This work examines the functions of the grammatical structures to be learned to express particular meanings in oral and written texts within and beyond sentences in authentic discourse contexts (Derewianka & Jones, 2012).  Content areas in which explicit grammatical instruction has been integrated successfully include social studies, history, geography, English, and mathematics in K-12 and higher education programs (e.g., Christie, 2004; Mohan, 1986; Schleppegrell, Achugar & Oteíza, 2004).

In this chapter, we first discuss the changing contexts for the teaching of English grammar across educational programs and curriculum worldwide, particularly with relatively advanced learners engaged in English-medium instruction (i.e., content and language integrated learning). Next, we discuss traditional approaches to grammar instruction and research and then review some promising functional approaches being taken up by language educators and content specialists in the US, Australia, and other countries, and at our own institution in Canada. We provide theoretical and research foundations and examples of the implementation and effectiveness of such approaches to the teaching and learning of (discourse) grammar by examining nominalization and grammatical metaphor, for example. We conclude by discussing some implications of developments in this area for teacher education--for language instructors, teacher educators, and content specialists--as well as for program development and future research on grammar instruction.

Syntax is the study of a set of grammatical rules for words or clauses in the formation of sentences. Etymologically, the term "syntax" means stringing words into phrases and phrases into sentences. This is a conception that lets people know how to start a question with a question word. Rules to help readers and writers understand the text It is also an important tool that writers can use to write literature. By studying them, you can understand the complex messages, but the syntax does not guarantee that the sentences are meaningful. The syntax does not guarantee that the statement is meaningful. The syntax is responsible for how sentences are constructed to form more complex words, phrases, and expressions, which can be combined into a sentence. Writers need to understand how to use sentences, which are easy to understand among the four English sentence structures. Simple sentences consist of a single, Compound sentences consist of two or more independent clauses; complex sentences consist of an independent clause and one or more dependent clauses; and compound-complex sentences consist of several independent clauses as well as at least one dependent clause. The syntax is responsible for how sentences are built to form more complex words and phrases that can be combined into sentences. Writers need to understand how to use sentences, which are easy to understand in the four sentence structures in English. For example, in order to form grammatically correct sentences in English without learning the syntax, we as students find it difficult to arrange the words into word combinations into sentences when we study them to improve our writing skills.

The lack of coherence is a major problem in students’ writing as students are not able to link their ideas together in the sentences and paragraphs. According to Halliday (1985), theme is defined as “the point of the departure” for the clause and therefore it is important for text organisation. This quasi-experimental study utilises the framework of Systemic Functional Linguistics and examined the use of themes in improving coherence of writing in students’ narrative essays to see if there was a difference in coherence and the choice of themes between the pre-test and post-test. This study’s sample included secondary school students who study in Form Four in a rural school in Batu Pahat. By analysing coherence in writing and students’ selection of theme choice in writing, and through students’ perception of this approach, this study examined not only how the use of themes improves students’ writing, but more importantly, the implications of current strategies of teaching basic writing essays. The result showed that the participants who were exposed to the use of themes were able to write effectively by putting their sentences in a coherent way.

This study examined the effects of two different kinds of corrective feedback, i.e. reformulation and elicitation on Iranian EFL learners' use of verbs in different present tenses. Thirty-eight intermediate learners took part in this study. They were randomly divided into the reformulation group and the elicitation group. The treatment sessions lasted four weeks with two sessions in each week. Students in the reformulation treatment condition obtained higher significant mean scores than those who received elicitation corrective feedback. Results of this article indicated that feedback in the form of reformulation is more effective than elicitation and it had a potential importance on the outcome of learning English tenses.

El Renacimiento de las Humanidades clásicas iniciado en España durante el siglo XV traspasó pronto las fronteras de la Península Ibérica hasta alcanzar en el siglo XVI las lejanas tierras de ultramar recién conquistadas.
Así, a partir fundamentalmente de la obra de Antonio de Nebrija, que había estudiado latín y griego en Italia, cuna de grandes humanistas como Nicolás Perotti, Angelo Poliziano, Lorenzo Valla o Juan Pico Della Mirandola, las nuevas ideas gramaticales y culturales llegaron también al Nuevo Mundo. Y es que muchos de los frailes venidos a evangelizar América se habían formado en diversas universidades europeas y habían bebido directamente de las fuentes humanistas cuya impronta se dejó sentir no sólo en gramáticas y vocabularios, sino también en catecismos y sermonarios1.
Fray Andrés de Olmos fue uno de estos sacerdotes de tradición humanística. Tras su llegada a la Nueva España en 1528 junto al primer arzobispo electo, fray Juan de Zumárraga, además de enseñar latín a los indígenas en el Imperial Colegio de la Santa Cruz, en Tlatelolco, México, aplicó sus conocimientos de la gramática latina en la redacción del primer tratado de la lengua náhuatl conservado2: el Arte de la lengua mexicana.

Considerazioni sulla prospettiva funzionale e valenziale nell'approccio alla grammatica nella linguistica applicata contemporanea.

Considerations about functional and valential perspectives in contemporary applied linguistics' approach to grammar.

This paper aimed to examine the lexical density and readability of four texts from English textbooks known as Active Skill for Reading (Anderson, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d) at elementary, pre-intermediate, intermediate and upper-intermediate levels. The study applied three methods in determining lexical density and readability as proposed by Halliday (1985), Ure (1971) and Flesch (1948). The analysis revealed that three of the four reading texts were of high lexical density, apart from the text for upper-intermediate level. In terms of readability, the levels of texts corresponded to readability levels. However the highest level did not entail the topmost readability. There was little evidence of an increase of lexical density and readability in accordance with the increase of text levels as well as little indication relating to the connections between text levels, readability and lexical density. With reference to the methods employed, Halliday's measurement of lexical density-based on the clause-had a significant correlation with Ure's measurement, and a medium relation with Flesch's Reading Ease Scale, whereas Ure and Flesch's formulas showed no correlation.

IV Jornadas de metodología y didáctica de la lengua española: sintaxis Cáceres, Universidad de Extremadura, 1997, 21-31. En 1969 escribí el trabajo "Aditamento, adverbio y cuestiones conexas", publicado ese mismo año en el volumen XIX de la revistaArchivum y rt'Cogido más tarde en los EGFE (capítulo XIX). De acuerdo con el litulo, se hacía allí referencia a diversas peculiaridades de la sintaxis del c•spañol, dejándolas más o menos esbozadas y, en todo caso, abiertas a dc•sarrollos ulteriores. Una de las cuestiones allí apuntadas es la de cierlas construcciones de aspecto atributivo (pues su núcleo verbal es una forma del verbo ser) y que llamé «ecuacionales». No recuerdo por qué adopté, a pesar de mi poca afición a los neologismos terminados en -al, c•slt• adjetivo, que naturalmente, como tantos términos de la jerga gramatical, sigue sin figurar en el DRAE.

L’objectif de ce travail est de présenter une description grammaticale aussi complète que possible de la langue mano (près de 400 000 locuteurs en Guinée et au Libéria) tout en la plaçant dans un contexte typologique, en comparant le mano avec d’autres langues mandé, mais aussi en distinguant des particularités typologiques à un niveau plus large. Le texte de la thèse est divisé en six chapitres: Phonologie et phonétique; Morphologie; Groupe nominal; Groupe verbal; Système prédicatif; Syntaxe de l'énoncé. Justifiant l'orientation typologique de la thèse, chaque chapitre se conclut par une section présentant des caractéristiques typologiques. Les thèmes suivants ont été examinés en détail: étude quantitative de phonotactique, étude de la catégorie du nombre, y compris l’expression du nombre et l’accord en nombre; le système des quantificateurs; la structure argumentale; l’étude de corpus de distribution des marqueurs prédicatifs; la syntaxe de l’énoncé, notamment la syntaxe de l’énoncé relatif. Les annexes à la fin de la thèse représentent des compléments d'information importants, notamment les paradigmes verbaux complets. Deux de ces annexes sont des textes glosés.

Compound nouns, which by definition imply a condensation of in - formation, seem to be particularly important at the stage of the Old English period, because the predominant synthetic tendencies of the language  and the comparative  scarcity  of prepositions  may have fostered such formations. Together with this primarily syn- tactic phenomenon, an additional but not less important factor in the development of compounds can also be found. They are cog- nitively or functionally grounded, and their use has to do as well with the evolution of the English language, which progressively tends to reflect more complex ideas and thoughts. All this can be analysed under functional approaches, whose overall framework is the study of language as a means of communication,  as well as under the perspectives opened by relevance theory, based upon the study of the existing relationships between communicative efforts and effects. In this paper, the issue of compound nouns during the Old English period will be developed on the basis of two of Ælfric’s Lives of Saints.