J. Lachlan Mackenzie

This book is a lively and up‐to‐date introduction to the study of pragmatics, an essential part of our contemporary understanding of how we communicate. Pragmatics is part and parcel of the modern study of language but it is much broader than the traditional disciplines of linguistics. It reveals the strategies that link language to our cognition,...

See a preview here: http://uitgeverij-coutinho.cld.bz/Principles-Pitfalls-of-English-Grammar Nederlandstalige sprekers van het Engels maken geregeld fouten in de Engelse grammatica. Principles and Pitfalls of English Grammar gaat uit van het idee dat als je de overeenkomsten en verschillen tussen het Nederlands en het Engels beter kent, je de val...

The notion of Functional Linguistics is associated in many linguists’ minds with a dichotomy between formal and functional approaches. In recent years the old antagonism has yielded to a more peaceful co-existence, with functional linguistics being generally recognized as having validity in its own right. What characterizes functionalism is the con...

The purpose of this squib is to review the status of *in case* as a complex preposition/subordinator of potential circumstance and its occurrence in certain contexts as a conditional marker. After a short history of *in case*, the squib offers an FDG interpretation of Declerck & Reed’s (2001) corpus-based classification of the main meanings of *in...

O artigo apresenta uma análise, no quadro da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional, de uma piada e do seu ambiente textual, mostrando como esta revela os papéis da ambiguidade, da eficiência e das estratégias gramaticais na interação humana.

La Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GFD) es una teoría del acto discursivo que aplica el término “sintaxis” a la ordenación de las unidades dentro de la expresión de dichos actos y no a los complejos discursivos en los que se producen estos actos; desde la perspectiva de la GFD, no existe una sintaxis del discurso. No obstante, las relaciones entre...

FDG’s approach to parts-of-speech (PoS) originates in Dik’s (1989: 162) functional definitions of Nominal, Verbal and Adjectival predicates. Hengeveld’s (1992) development and refinement of those ideas has been formalized within FDG's lexicon and Interpersonal and Representational Levels as a theory of four functionally differentiated LEXEME CLASSE...

For more than a decade, linguistics has moved increasingly away from evaluating language as an autonomous phenomenon, towards analysing it 'in use', and showing how its function within its social and interactional context plays an important role in shaping in its form. Bringing together state-of-the-art research from some of the most influential sc...

Este artigo objetiva apresentar minha perspectiva acerca da teoria da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GDF), uma teoria estrutural-funcional, situada a meio caminho entre as teorias radicalmente formais e as radicalmente funcionais. Argumento, neste artigo, em favor da ideia de que GDF é ferramenta cognitiva por meio da qual o falante pode, estrateg...

This book offers practical advice and guidance to German-speaking undergraduates and academics who aspire to write in English. It also provides valuable assistance to editors, examiners and teachers who conduct English courses for intermediate or advanced students. It consists of four modules and is rounded off with a subject index and a glossary....

Published in Open Access Coordination has commonly been treated as a grammatical process of connecting clauses, in which an equipollence relation may occur between the units involved. The purpose of this paper is to show how a discourse-functional theory understands coordination, relating it to the levels and layers proposed in the model of Functi...

These reflections, composed during a period of self-isolation in Lisbon, begin by sketching how Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) finds its origins in Simon Dik’s Functional Grammar and then briefly set out some of the major principles of FDG. The article focuses on an interpretation of FDG that, like Dik's model of verbal interaction, gives a pro...

Emotion permeates all genres, from everyday conversation to scientific articles (see Mackenzie & Alba-Juez 2019 for examples of recent work). Emotion is a prior condition for reasoning (Damasio 1999) but is also capable of distorting our thinking (Cockcroft et al. 2014: 85). Writers of ‘fake news’, whatever they are dealing with (from high politics...

This Special Issue (Dossiê Temático) of the Brazilian journal Revista da Abralin contains eight articles under the header "Descrição funcional das línguas naturais" (Functional description of natural languages), and contains original articles in Portuguese and in English by Adriana Pagano, Natalia Levshina, Sterre Leufkens, Marianne Mithun, Edair M...

this article begins by tracing the debate within Functional Grammar (FG), to which José Gómez Soliño was a contributor, on the role of discourse in that model. that debate ultimately gave rise to Functional discourse Grammar (FdG) as a grammar of the discourse act. discourse acts group into Moves, but attempts to circumscribe the Move grammatically...

Emotion is part and parcel of all kinds of human experience and as such plays an important role in all discourse types, including professional discourse. In the 21st century more than ever, the proper channeling and expression of our emotions at the workplace has come to be considered a sign of emotional intelligence, powerful leadership, and (harm...

All functional approaches share the conviction that the structure of languages and their historical development are strongly impacted by the cognitive properties of language users, the social relations between them, and the spatio-temporal and socio-cultural contexts in which they operate. This chapter describes how functionalism has impinged on th...

Book: Alba-Juez, Laura & J. Lachlan Mackenzie (2016). Pragmatics: Cognition, Context and Culture. Madrid: McGraw Hill. This is the introductory chapter to the book, where we describe the origins and scope of pragmatics and define concepts such as context, language underdeterminacy, conventionalization and grammaticalization. We also discuss the ma...

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is a theory of the organization of Linguistic Expressions as encoding Discourse Acts. It takes a “form-oriented function-to-form” approach, distinguishing between formulation (yielding the Interpersonal and Representational Levels) and encoding (yielding the Morphosyntactic and Phonological Levels). It seeks to ac...

https://benjamins.com/catalog/pbns.302 Interest in human emotion no longer equates to unscientific speculation. 21st-century humanities scholars are paying serious attention to our capacity to express emotions and giving rigorous explanations of affect in language. We are unquestionably witnessing an ‘emotional turn’ not only in linguistics, but a...

Various linguists have identified linguistic phenomena that express emotions rather than purely ideational or discursive meanings. From the viewpoint of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) adopted here, emotion is visible above all as an overlay on structures that communicate interpersonal and representational meanings. This is particularly apparent...

In the financial world, the words sentiment and confidence are frequently employed to invoke the feelings of an individual investor or of investors in general about the future movement of a share or of the stock market in general. The article focuses on the use of the two words in financial journalism by examining all instances of sentiment and con...

The purpose of this chapter is to show that the model of Functional Discourse Grammar can be used to provide a detailed classification of expressions of negation by taking its hierarchical, layered structure as the point of departure. The chapter thus follows up on ideas first launched in Dik (1997) concerning the various layers of Functional Gramm...

This edited volume showcases new work on discourse analysis by big names in the field and promising early-career researchers. Arising from the latest in the series of IWoDA workshops in Santiago de Compostela, it provides novel insights into both the explicit and the implicit characteristics of discourse as used in verbal interaction. Discourse mar...

This edited volume showcases new work on discourse analysis by big names in the field and promising early-career researchers. Arising from the latest in the series of IWoDA workshops in Santiago de Compostela, it provides novel insights into both the explicit and the implicit characteristics of discourse as used in verbal interaction. Discourse mar...

Timothy Osborne has surveyed a very large number of published introductions to grammatical analysis, all of which share the assumption that syntactic argumentation is to be conducted without reference to the meanings, uses and contexts of the example sentences. The purpose of Osborne's article is to examine how well syntactic tests identify subphra...

This article takes an analogy-based approach to the analysis of morphological derivation in the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), giving an account of English verbs with the prefix self-. Such self-prefixed verbs call on different lexical frames, namely one-place, two-place and two- and three-place reflexive frames. Their use stands...

Van veel Nederlandstalige academici en hbo'ers wordt verwacht dat zij correct, aantrekkelijk en doeltreffend Engels schrijven. Effective writing in English: A sourcebook is een betrouwbare leidraad bij het Engelstalige schrijfproces. Het geeft praktische adviezen hoe een overtuigende Engelse tekst geschreven moet worden, met aandacht voor het struc...

Em “Objetividade, subjetividade e intersubjetividade na perspectiva da Gramática Discursivo-Funcional”, Lachlan Mackenzie faz um percurso histórico e uma reflexão teórica de como essa vertente funcionalista de origem holandesa, iniciada por Simon Dik nos anos 70 do século XX, ainda como Gramática Funcional (GF), foi, progressivamente, incorporando...

This article contains a series of reflections on the nature of the lexicon in FDG inspired in large measure by the preceding articles. We start by considering how the lexicon relates to the Conceptual Component, arguing that lexemes do not label units of conceptualization but rather are associated with experientially based beliefs about their appro...

The history is told of Functional Grammar (FG), as developed by Simon C. Dik (1940–1995) of the University of Amsterdam and his co-workers. The presentation covers the genesis of the theory, its international recognition, the early death of its originator and main protagonist as well as Dik’s Nachleben in current linguistics, including the emergenc...

The article surveys how Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG; Hengeveld & Mackenzie 2008) has responded to Simon Dik’s call for a functional grammar to have ‘psychological adequacy’ and draws parallels to similar initiatives from other approaches. After a brief history of what has later come to be known as cognitive adequacy, the impact of psycholingu...

This handbook aims at offering an authoritative and state-of-the art survey of current approaches to the analysis of human languages, serving as a source of reference for scholars and graduate students. The main objective of the handbook is to provide the reader with a convenient means of comparing and evaluating the main approaches that exist in c...

This article presents a proposal for the organization of the Contextual Component in Functional Discourse Grammar. A guiding principle in this proposal is that, given the fact that Functional Discourse Grammar is a theory of grammar, the Contextual Component should provide the information that is necessary for a proper functioning of the grammar ra...

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) has to date been explicitly oriented to modelling the grammar of the individual speaker, with the Contextual Component being seen as supportive. If FDG is re-interpreted as dialogic, the Contextual Component emerges as being shared by all interactants in the dialogue and as playing a central role in interaction. A...

After a general introduction to Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), the chapter focuses on the Morphosyntactic Level and the notion of transparency. Absolute and relative positions are distinguished at the Clause, Phrase, and Word layers. Two phenomena that are distinctive to the Morphosyntactic Level, dummies and agreement., are presented before a...

Over the last forty years, the functionalist approach to linguistic description and explanation has given rise to several major schools of thought that share two crucial assumptions: (i) form is not independent of meaning/function or language use; and (ii) linguistic description and explanation need to take into account the communicative function o...

Pragmatics 24:2 (June 2014) <http://ipra.ua.ac.be/main.aspx?c=*HOME&n=1480> SPECIAL ISSUE: The interaction between context and grammar in Functional Discourse Grammar . Edited by Núria Alturo, Evelien Keizer, and Lluís Payrató Núria ALTURO, Evelien KEIZER, and Lluís PAYRATÓ The interaction between context and grammar in Functional Discourse Gram...

This chapter presents an FDG analysis of spatial adpositions, showing that they divide into two classes, lexical and grammatical. Lexical adpositions are primitives that feed into formulation, whereas grammatical adpositions are primitives at encoding, realizing semantic functions from the Representational Level. Not only complex adpositions but al...

This book provides ten case studies in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), a typologically-oriented theory of the organization of natural languages that has risen to prominence in recent years. The authors, all committed practitioners of FDG, include Kees Hengeveld, the intellectual father of the theory, who shows how it offers a radically new appr...

Some recent publications have advocated a flatter syntactic structure than is proposed in many theories in which syntax occupies a central position. Against the background of these publications, Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) is presented as a theory of the Discourse Act in which the representations of pragmatic and semantic structure are stron...

This handbook compares the main analytic frameworks and methods of contemporary linguistics It offers an overview of linguistic theory, revealing the common concerns of competing approaches. By showing their current and potential applications, the book provides the means by which linguists and others can judge what are the most useful models for th...

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), as a theory of the organization of natural languages, seeks to attain pragmatic, typological and cognitive adequacy. The attempt to achieve cognitive adequacy has been fraught with problems stemming from the vagueness of the concept and the difficulty of adapting to trends in psycholinguistics. Specifically, whil...

This epilogue addresses the most important topics and challenges for the Morphosyntactic Level in Functional Discourse Grammar that have been raised in the articles in this Special Issue. We begin by exploring the differences between the Morphosyntactic Level in FDG and the treatment of morphosyntactic phenomena in other linguistic frameworks. We t...

The article explores some implications of recent changes in the English language for the evaluation of student performance. Which changes should the teacher of English as an L2 accept and which she should resist? The article suggests some elements of an answer to these questions. No matter how strongly linguists believe in descriptivism, as langua...

No one can really learn a foreign language without grappling with its grammar. This book, written in English, is designed for native speakers of Spanish who want to perfect their knowledge of English grammar for study, for travel or for international business. Based on decades of experience, it not only provides a thorough introduction to the lingu...

A Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GDF) é uma teoria estrutural-funcional da linguagem, tipologicamente baseada, que apresenta uma organização descendente (top-down) para alcançar adequação psicológica e que toma o Ato Discursivo como unidade básica de análise para alcançar adequação pragmática. Embora seja estritamente um modelo de gramática, a GDF...

Available in English but also in Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Dutch, Estonian, French, Frisian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh.

This book offers practical advice and guidance to German-speaking undergraduates and academics who aspire to write in English. It also provides valuable assistance to editors, examiners and teachers who conduct English courses for intermediate or advanced students. It consists of four modules and is rounded off with a subject index and a glossary....

Numa época em que os adeptos da Gramática Gerativa consideravam que as estruturas sintáticas teriam ‘realidade psicológica’, DIK (1978) formulou, em sua primeira apresentação da Gramática Funcional (GF), a noção de ‘adequação psicológica’, noção que não desempenharia um papel importante na prática desse modelo. Na Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GD...

Functional Discourse Grammar is a typologically-based theory of language structure. It adopts a top-down organization with a view to maximizing psychological adequacy and considers the Discourse Act as the basic unit of analysis. Although FDG is a strictly grammatical model, it interacts with Conceptual, Contextual and Output Components in order to...

La Gramática Discursivo-Funcional (GDF) es una teoría funcional del lenguaje de inspiración tipológica que presenta una organización descendente (top-down) con el objeto de alcanzar la adecuación psicológica y que toma el Acto Discursivo como unidad básica de análisis para lograr la adecuación pragmática. Aunque en términos estrictos se trata de un...

Six categories of content interrogatives (roughly, wh-forms) are distinguished in a representative sample of 50 languages, namely those eliciting individuals (x), locations (l), times (t), manners (m), quantities (q) and reasons (r), using categories recognized in Functional Discourse Grammar. The hypothesis is examined that, on the assumption that...

Any description of Scottish Gaelic must make continual reference to interpersonal factors, since the occupancy of the first position in the clause (P(1)) is codetermined by the illocutionary status of the discourse act being carried out through the formulation of that clause. Gaelic is a language in which syntactic functions play no part, but which...

The verb fail, preceding to + infinitive, has two senses. One presupposes active attempt; the other lacks this presupposition and approximates in meaning to simple negation. Examining all relevant occurrences in the British National Corpus, the paper considers the second sense of fail to in the framework of FDG. An initial analysis of the second se...

Within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), alignment concerns the relations between the Interpersonal, Representational and Morphosyntactic Levels of grammar. This article proposes a typology of languages based upon what we find to be encoded in their morphosyntactic organization: pragmatic distinctions (as in Tagalog), semantic di...

This article appeared in Portuguese.

This book examines the contribution of various recent developments in linguistics to contrastive analysis. The articles range across a broad gamut of languages, with most attention going to the languages of Europe. They show how advances in theory and computer technology are together impacting the field of contrastive linguistics. Part I focuses, f...

This book presents Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG). Chapter 1 gives an overall picture of the model and places it in the context of contemporary linguistics. Chapter 2 presents the interpersonal level of the grammar, at which the Discourse Act, the central object of FDG, is analysed. Chapter 3 is a systematic account of the representational leve...

This volume explores various hitherto under-researched relationships between languages and their discourse-cultural settings. The first two sections analyze the complex interplay between lexico-grammatical organization and communicative contexts. Part I focuses on structural options in syntax, deepening the analysis of information-packaging strateg...

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 incre...

The article presents an analysis of the over 12,000 occurrences of fail and failure followed by to in the 100m-word British National Corpus. In its lexical use, fail is a negative-implicative verb of the type identified in the seventies by Karttunen and Givón (Susan tried and failed to seduce her teacher). In its grammaticalized use, however, it fu...

British and American Studies 13. 233-243.

Double-possessive nominalizations such as Iraq's invasion of Kuwait have played a prominent role in the history of linguistics. However, this construction is not only cross-linguistically rare but also the least used form of nominalization in English texts. The question is therefore addressed of the circumstances under which double-possessive nomin...

Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG) combines typological neutrality with formal rigor and takes pragmatic and psychological adequacy very seriously. FDG is the grammatical component of a wider theory of verbal interaction, and is concerned with the formulation and encoding of discourse acts. Four formally parallel levels are posited, interpersonal a...

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...

The article investigates the notion that the grammatical characteristics of spoken utterances vary with the time pressure under which they are produced. Within the framework of my Incremental Functional Grammar, which takes acts of utterance to consist of one or more sequentially produced subacts (i.e. actions of predication or of reference), the h...

This article reports on corpus research into the occurrence of from + anaphor. Developing distinctions derived from the typology of entities and qualities in Functional Grammar as well as the notion of metaphoricality found in the work of Lakoff, we find that in the syntactic context chosen for analysis the anaphor there is applied when the languag...

Various proposals have been put forward to explain the typological skewing produced by the universal preference for suffixing as opposed to prefixing. These proposals have focused either on processing or on diachronic explanations (or a combination of both). In the present paper it is argued that a developmental approach is more comprehensive than...