Outline of a functional grammar of Chinese for teaching purposes

Abstract

This article presents an outline functional grammar of Chinese based on the framework presented in M.A.K. Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar. The description is divided into five areas for teaching purposes (only the first three of which are treated here), covering basic clause structure, additional elements, clause marking, clause complexing and group and word structure. Particular adaptations for Chinese include: • recognition of only two layers of clause structure: Experience (transitivity) and Message (theme/information) ; • organisation of the message structure around two points: starting point or Topic (Theme) and centre of attention (New)—the first of these may be “absolute” i.e. have only thematic function; • recognition of three main process types: action, state and relation, and three circumstance types; • recognition of a complex verb+postverb structure to allow for the quasi-compound nature of many verbal groups in Chinese; • separation of clause systems into basic, and marked, to account for the optional presence in the clause of such grammatical features as aspect, phase etc. This description is put forward as an initial functional reinterpretation of the grammar of Chinese, and also as a test-case for the application of systemic-functional theory to a language other than English.