Layering in functional grammars - Introduction
Christopher S. Butler, Miriam Taverniers · Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University) · 2008
This thematic issue focusses on two types of differentiations in linguistic modelling, which play a central role in functional approaches -especially in frameworks that we define as 'structural-functional', following Van Valin (1993) and Butler (2003) -and for which we use the term 'layering'.The first differentiation is that between speakerrelated vs. content-related material in language, i.e. the distinction between interpersonal vs. representational or ideational aspects of linguistic structuring.In the broadest sense, the representational dimension refers to the representation of 'reality', while the interpersonal dimension pertains to the encoding of the speaker's attitude towards this represented reality, and the functioning of the linguistic expression in the speech interaction (i.e. the speaker's communicative intentions).At the level of the clausal syntagm, the distinction can be seen most clearly in the distinction between the domains of argument structure (representational) vs. modality