An Introduction to the Grammar of Old English; A Systemic Functional Approach; Michael Cummings

Michael Cummings [+–]

York University, Toronto.

Michael Cummings is Professor emeritus and Senior Scholar in the English Department of York University, Toronto. His research interests include Systemic Functional linguistic approaches to discourse and lexico-grammar in Old English and modern English.

This book applies the techniques of systemic functional grammar to the description of the Old English historical dialect, 650-1150 CE. Systemic functional grammar is an approach to the description of language which distinguishes three separate functions in communication: language as representation, language as attitude, and language as the construction of text. Most applications of systemic functional theory have concentrated on modern English. This book is the first comprehensive description of the Old English dialect on systemic functional principles. The book begins with an outline of systemic functional grammatical theory. It then describes the Old English clause with a separate grammar for each of the three general functions it serves, the representational, the attitudinal, and the text-formative. Other areas covered include structures and functions within nominal, verbal and adverbial groups; relationships among clauses; embedding; and cohesion. The book is thus designed to suit the needs of systemic functional grammarians who are interested in the historical development of the English language. It is also designed for students of Old English who are looking for ways of explaining the grammatical system of Old English on terms other than those of traditional grammar.

Series: Functional Linguistics

Prelims

List of Abbreviations [+–] xii – xiv

Introduction

Introduction [+–] 1 – 4

Synopsis of systemic functional grammar [+–] 5 – 33

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a synopsis of the systemic functional grammar particularly as it has been applied to the task of describing modern English. With that in place, the rest of the chapters in this book will describe Old English in much the same order as the elements of the synopsis. The account given here is essentially that of Halliday and Matthiessen (2004), supplemented in places by Thompson (2004), with specific references to their treatment where appropriate. Since this will be just a synopsis of the theory, the later chapters will both repeat and expand the description of the model to the degree needed for each topic.

The Old English clause from the interpersonal perspective [+–] 34 – 60

The clause is seen to have three overriding functions: one related to the representation of reality, one related to the combination of utterances into text and one related to the interaction between parties to the communication. This chapter goes on to look at the clause from the interpersonal perspective.

The Old English clause from the experiential perspective [+–] 61 – 81

This chapter will concern itself with the experiential part (the other is the logical) of the ideational metafunction. This experiential perspective undertakes the Old English clause as mirroring the real world so to speak, that is, as a representation of an extra-linguistic reality.

The Old English clause from the textual perspective [+–] 82 – 104

This chapter takes up the perspective afforded by the third metafunction, the textual. The textual metafunction accounts for the way in which discrete sentence utterances come together to form an organized text.

Old English groups and phrases [+–] 105 – 123

From top to bottom, the rank scale is a hierarchy of increasingly less-inclusive grammatical units, stretching from the clause, down through groups and phrases, through words, to morpheme units. Groups and phrases are therefore the immediate constituents of clauses, and have word units as their own immediate constituents. This chapter considers these.

Complexes of clauses, groups and words [+–] 124 – 143

This chapter gives an account of the structuring of complexes at clause, group and word ranks, which is part of the logical approach to language description.

Beyond the clause: cohesion and metaphor [+–] 144 – 160

In this concluding chapter we go beyond the clause in two different ways. First, it is in texts that clauses or complexes of clauses are realized as sentences. Text has structural properties that are rooted in the clause, but stretch across clauses and clause complexes These properties are summed up under the category of cohesion. Second, the lexico-grammar of the clause and of its constituents has been seen to involve an alignment of semantic categories and realizatory lexico-grammatical categories.

Index

Index [+–] 161 – 161

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An Introduction to the Grammar of Old English

A Systemic Functional Approach

Michael Cummings [+–]

York University, Toronto.

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