FOURTH EDITION

HALLIDAY'S INTRODUCTION TO

FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR
M.A.K. Halliday
Revised by Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen

"Essential reading ... teeming with insights."

MichaelToolan, University of Birmingham, UK
 HALLIDAY'S
INTRODUCTION
TO FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR

Fully updated and revised, this fourth edition of Halliday's Introductionto Functional
Grammar explains the principles of systemic functional grammar, enabling the reader to
understand and apply them in any context. Halliday's innovative approach of engaging with
grammar through discourse has become a worldwide phenomenon in linguistics.
Updates to the new edition include:

Recent uses of systemic functional linguistics to provide further guidance for

students, scholars and researchers
• More on the ecology of grammar, illustrating how each major system serves to realise
a semantic system
A systematic indexing and classification of examples
More from corpora, thus allowing for easy access to data
• Extended textual and audio examples and an image bank available online at www.
routledge.com/cw/halliday

Halliday's Introductionto FunctionalGrammar, fourth edition is the standard reference

text for systemic functional linguistics and an ideal introduction for students and scholars
interested in the relation between grammar, meaning and discourse.

M.A.K. Halliday is Emeritus Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen is Chair Professor of the Department of English in the Faculty
of Humanities at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
 HALLIDAY'S
INTRODUCTION
TO FUNCTIONAL
GRAMMAR
F o U R TH EDITI o
M.A.K. Halliday
Revised by Christian M.I.M.Matthiessen

Routledge
R Taylor FrancisGroup
LONDON AND NEWYORK
CONTENTS

Conventions ix
Introduction xiii

Partl The Clause 1

I The architecture of language 3
I . I Text and grammar 3
I .2 Phonology and grammar I I
1.3 Basicconcepts for the study of language 2()
I .4 Context, languageand other semiotic systems 31
1.5 The location of grammar in language;the role of the corpus 48
I .6 Theory, description and analysis 54
2 Towards a functional grammar 58
2.1 Towards a grammatical analysis 58
2.2 The lexicogrammar cline 64
2.3 Grammaticalization 67
2.4 Grammar and the corpus 69
2.5 Classes and functions 74
2.6 Subject, Actor, Theme 76
2.7 Three lines of meaning in the clause 82
3 Clause as message 88
3.1 Theme and Rheme 88
3.2 Group/phrase complexes as Theme; thematic equatives 92
3.3 Theme and mood 97
3.4 Textual, interpersonal and topical Themes 105
3.5 The information unit: Given + New 114
3.6 Given + New and Theme + Rheme 119
3.7 Predicated Themes 122
3.8 Theme in bound, minor and elliptical clauses 125
3.9 Thematic interpretation of a text 128
 CONTENTS

4 Clause as exchange 134

4.1 The nature of dialogue 134
4.2 The Mood element 139
4.3 Other elements of Mood structure 151
4.4 Mood as system; further options 160
4.5 POLARITY and MODALASSESSMENT (including modality) 172
4.6 Absence of elements of the modal structure 193
4.7 Clause as Subject 197
4.8 Texts 200

5 Clause as representation 211

5.1 Modelling experience of change 211
5.2 Material clauses: processes of doing-&-happening 224
5.3 Mental clauses: processes of sensing 245
5.4 Relational clauses: processes of being having 259
5.5 Other process types; summary of process types 300
5.6 Circumstantial elements 310
5.7 Transitivity and voice: another interpretation 332
5.8 Text illustrations 356

Part Il Above, Below and Beyond the Clause 359

6 Belowthe clause:groups and phrases 361

6.1 Groups and phrases 361
6.2 Nominalgroup 364
6.3 Verbal group 396
6.4 Adverbial group, conjunction group, preposition group 419
6.5 Prepositionalphrase 424
6.6 Word classes and group functions 426

7 Above the clause: the clause complex 428

7.1 The notion of 'clause complex' 428
7.2 Types of relationship between clauses 438
7.3 Taxis: parataxis and hypotaxis 451
7.4 Elaborating, extending, enhancing: three kinds of expansion 460
7.5 Reports, ideas and facts: three kinds of projection 508
7.6 The clause complex as textual domain 549
7.7 Clause complex and tone 553
7.8 Texts 555

8 Group and phrase complexes 557

8. I Overview of complexing at group/phrase rank 557
8.2 Parataxis: groups and phrases 560
8.3 Hypotaxis: nominal group 564
8.4 Hypotaxis: adverbial group/prepositional phrase 565

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 Contents

8.5 Hypotaxis: verbal group, expansion (l): general 567

8.6 Hypotaxis: verbal group, expansion (2): passives 575
8.7 Hypotaxis: verbal group, expansion (3): causative 578
8.8 Hypotaxis: verbal group, projection 584
8.9 Logical organization: complexes at clause and group/phrase structure, and
groups 588

9 Around the clause: cohesion and discourse 593

9.1 The concept of text; logogenetic patterns 593
9.2 The lexicogrammatical resources of COHESION603
9.3 CONJUNCTION609
9.4 REFERENCE 623
9.5 and SUBSTITUTION
ELLIPSIS 635
9.6 LEXICALCOHESION642
9.7 The creation of texture 650

10 Beyond the clause: metaphorical modes of expression 659

10.1 Lexicogrammar and semantics 659
10.2 Semantic domains 666
10.3 MODALITY686
10.4 Interpersonal metaphor: metaphors of mood 698
10.5 Ideational metaphors 707

References 732

Index 753

vii
INTRODUCTION

The first edition of Halliday's introduction to functional grammar (IFG)

appeared in 1985. It was, among other things, an introduction to the systemic
functional theory of grammar that M.A.K. Halliday initiated through the
publication of his 1961 article 'Categories of the theory of grammar' (although
his publications on the grammar of Chinese go back to 1956). It was at the
same time an introductionto the description of the grammar of English
that he had started in the early 1960s (see e.g. Halliday, 1964). Thus, the
first edition of IFG was an introduction both to a functional theory of the
grammar of human language in general and to a description of the grammar of
a particular language, English, based on this theory. The relationship between
theory and description was a dialogic one: the theory was illustrated through
the description of English, and the description of English was empowered
by the theory. Halliday could have used any other language for this purpose
rather than English —for example, Chinese, since he had worked on Chinese
since the late 1940s.The theory had been developed as a theory of grammar
in general, and by the mid-1980s it had already been deployed and tested in
the description of a number of languages.
Around half a century has passed since Halliday's first work on the general
theory of grammar and his first work on the description of English, and around
a quarter of a century has passed since IFGI appeared: that edition represents
the mid-point between the early work and today's continued theoretical and
descriptive research activities, activities that were enabled by IFGI and are
reflected in IFG4. When IFGI appeared, it was the only introduction of its
kind, a summary of the work by Halliday and others undertaken since the
early 1960s. It was a 'thumbnail sketch'. He had already published accounts
of various areas, accounts that were in many respects more detailed than the
sketches in IFG —e.g. his account of transitivity and theme (Halliday, 1967/8),
his interpretation of modality (Halliday, 1970) and his description of grammar
and intonation (Halliday, 1967a). He had also worked on a manuscript
 INTRODUCTION

presenting a comprehensive account of the grammar of English, The meaning of modem

English; many aspects of this account such as his interpretation of tense in English were only
sketched in IFGI. In addition, researchers had contributed significant text-based studies
of grammar and of intonation based on his framework. These informed the description
of English, but have not been published since text-based accounts were not welcomed by
publishers in the period dominated by formal generative linguistics.
Since IFGI appeared a quarter of a century ago, and IFG2 followed nine years later in
1994, systemic functional linguists have published other complementary volumes drawing
on IFG in different ways, designed to serve different communities of users; these include
Geoff Thompson's Introducingfunctionalgrammar (first edition in 1996; second in 2004
with the third about to appear), Meriel and Thomas Bloor's Functional analysis of English:
a Hallidayan approach (first edition in 1995; second in 2004), my own Lexicogrammatical
cartography: English systems (1995), Graham Lock's Functional English grammar: An
introduction for second language teachers (1996), and the IFG workbook by Clare Painter,
J.R. Martin and myself (first edition: Working with functional grammar, 1998; second
edition: Deployingfunctionalgrammar, 2010). In addition, researchers have contributed
many journal articles and book chapters to thematic volumes dealing with particular aspects
of IFG or reporting on research based on the IFG framework. For a summary of the rich
work in the IFG framework, see Matthiessen (2007b). However, researchers have also
complemented IFG stratally, moving from the account of lexicogrammar presented in [FG
to the stratum of semantics; book-length accounts include Martin's English text (1992) and
Halliday's and my Construing experience (1999, republished in 2006).
By the time Halliday generously invited me to take part in the project of producing [FG3,
the ecological niche in which IFG operates had thus changed considerably —certainly for the
better. It had, in a sense, become more crowded; but this meant that IFG3 could develop in
new ways. Thanks to Geoff Thompson's more introductory Introducing functional grammar
and to other contributionsof this kind, we were able to extend IFG in significantways,
perhaps making the third edition more of a reference work and less of a beginner's book
than the previous two editions had been. We certainly included features of the grammar of
English that had not been covered before, and we provided a more comprehensivesketch
of the overalltheoretical framework in Chapters I and 2. In preparing the third edition,
we worked extensively with corpora of different kinds —resources that had become more
accessible since IFG l, supported by computational tools that had been developed since that
edition; and we included many examples drawn from corpora, and from our own archives
of text. In addition, we included system networks for all the major areas of the grammar.
In my own Lexicogrammaticalcartography:English system (1995), LexCart, I had used
system networks as a cartographic tool, organizing the presentation of the description of
the grammar in terms of the system networks —ranging across metafunctions and down
ranks and taking a number of steps in delicacy.These system networks were derived
from a system network of the clause that Hallidayhad put together for a computational
project initiatedby Nick Colby at UC Irvine and then taken over as the seed of the Nigel
grammar as part of the Penman project directed by Bill Mann at the Information Sciences
Institute, USC, in 1980 (this system network has now been published as part of Halliday's
collected works). As a research linguist working on Mann's project since the beginning, I
expanded this clause network, and added networks for other parts of the grammar —with

xiv
 Introduction

the help of Halliday and other systemic functional linguists (see Matthiessen, 1995a, and cf.
Matthiessen, 2007b). When we added system networks to IFG3, we did not try to organize
the overall presentation in terms of them as I had done in LexCart, since IFG already had
its own logic of presentation, which included more reasoning about the development of the
account than I had included in LexCart.
In preparing IFG4, I have followed the trajectory from IFGI to IFG3, while at the same
time keeping in mind changes in the environment in which this fourth edition will appear.
I have continued working with corpora, benefiting from new resources generously made
availableto the research community such as COCA (see Chapter 2). A great deal of this
work is, quite naturally, 'under the hood': as with IFG3, many fishing expeditions are
reflected by only one or two examples, or by just a brief note in passing, and many other
expeditions are only reflected indirectly. Along the way, there have been various interesting
findingsthat there is no space to report on in IFG4, like changes in the use of 'gush' as
a verb in TimeMagazinesince the 1920s, or more generallyin the use of verbs of saying
over that period. In working with corpora, I was at various points tempted to replace all
examples from older corpora dating back to the 1960s with examples from more recent
ones; but I decided against it for various reasons —an important one being that, like any
other language, English is an assemblage of varieties of different kinds (cf. Chapter 2,
Section 2.4), including temporal dialects: the collective system of a language typically spans
a few generations—never in a state of being, always in a process of becoming. And even
more than a few generations: while Chaucer is almost out of range, Shakespeare is not.
One new feature in IFG4 is the introduction of a scheme for classifyingtexts according
to contextual variables,presented in Chapter l. In Chapter 2 through to Chapter 10, I
have classifiedall the short texts and text extracts according to this scheme. This is a step
in the direction of illuminatingthe grammar at work in different text types —of supporting
the understanding of a languageas an assemblageof registers. We hope that the website
companion to IFG4 (see below) will make it possible to provide many more text examples.
Another feature of IFG4 is the continued expansion of references to theoretical
frameworks and to descriptive work on English in systemic functional linguistics but also in
other frameworks. Here it is, of course, impossible to be comprehensive, or even
to achieve
a balanced representation of references to relevant contributions. In his preface to
Volume
I of his Basic linguistictheory, Dixon refers to 'quotationitis', introducing it as 'a
fashion
in linguistics', and characterizing it as 'attempting to cite every single thing published
on
or around a topic, irrespective of its quality or direct relevance', and then pointing
to
problems with this 'fashion'. At the same time, it is very important that readers
of IFG
should be able to follow up on particular points mentioned in the book and go beyond
the
material presented here; and these days scholars are increasingly subjected by
governments
to ill-conceivedand destructive frameworks designed to measure their output
and impact
in terms of publications, so citations make a difference. At one point, I
thought that the
solution in the area of description might be to cite central passages in the major
reference
grammars of English. However, on the one hand, this would actually be a
significant project
in its own right, and on the other hand, these reference grammars are
not, on the whole,
designed as gateways to the literature. I hope that the website companion to
IFG4 will be
able to provide more bibliographic information. And various online
search facilities are
helping students and researchers find relevant references.