In place of Halliday's ‘verbal group’

Abstract

This paper argues for the abolition of one of the central grammatical units in Halliday's framework for describing English: the ‘verbal group’. The proposed changes affect many of the central aspects of the syntax and semantics of the clause, so that the effects of these proposals are potentially far-reaching. The ‘verbal group’ was present in Halliday's earliest writings, but in 1967 he promoted one of its elements—the ‘Finite’—to function as a direct element of the clause—while at the same time retaining it as an element of the ‘verbal group’. This, however, has led to many problems. This paper shows that these can be solved by carrying Halliday's promotion of the Finite through to its logical conclusion, i.e. by similarly promoting all the remaining elements of the ‘verbal group’. Part 1 therefore presents several types of syntactic evidence for dispensing with the ‘verbal group’, and introduces the new description of the relevant parts of the clause by which it is replaced here. Part 2 (Fawcett forthcoming c) presents three further important types of evidence for abolishing the ‘verbal group’, and then goes on to consider the implications of the proposed changes for both the theory and its application in various fields. The suggestion is that the changes proposed here strengthen the overall theory of systemic functional grammar, by resolving the many anomalies in Halliday (1994) and by bringing advantages of their own—both for analysis and for generation.