The contents of this volume are a selection from the papers given at the Sixth International Conference on Functional Grammar (ICFG), which was held in York, at the University College of Ripon and York St John, from 18 to 22 August, 1994. Functional Grammar as understood in the ICFGs and in this volume is the linguistic model as proposed by Simon Dik, and to date most extensively described and discussed in Dik (1989). The indebtedness of the FG-community to Simon Dik, who died six months after the conference was held, is great indeed. The editors hope that this volume is a fitting tribute to his work.

This is the first comprehensive presentation of Functional Discourse Grammar. The authors set out its nature and origins and show how it relates to contemporary linguistic theory. They demonstrate and test its explanatory power and descriptive utility against linguistic facts from over 150 languages across a full range of linguistic families.

The ten volumes of "Handbook of Pragmatics Highlights" focus on the most salient topics in the field of pragmatics, thus dividing its wide interdisciplinary spectrum in a transparent and manageable way. While other volumes select philosophical, cognitive, cultural, social, variational, interactional, or discursive points of view, this fifth volume looks at the field of linguistic pragmatics from a primarily grammatical angle. That is, it asks in which particular sense a variety of older and more recent functional (rather than generative) models of grammar relate to the study of language in use: how this affects their general outlook on language structure, whether issues of language use inform the very makeup of these models or are merely included as possible research themes, and how far the actual integration of pragmatics ultimately goes (is it a module/layer or is the model truly usage-based ?). Each of the authors presenting these models has taken systematic care to highlight the relevant problems and focus on the implications of considering pragmatic phenomena from the point of view of grammar. Furthermore, a limited number of chapters deal with traditional topics in the grammatical literature, and specifically those which are called pragmatic because they either are not strictly concerned with truth (semantics), or receive their (truth) value only from an interaction with context. In the introduction, these theories and topics are set up against the historical background of a gradually changing attitude, on the part of grammarians, towards questions of linguistic knowledge and behavior, and the role of learning in their relationship."

Volume one of a two volume set outlining and comparing three approaches to the study of language labelled 'structural-functionalist': functional grammar (FG); role and reference grammar (RRG); and systemic functional grammar (SFG).

Morphological and syntactic issues have received relatively little attention in Functional Grammar, due to the fact that this grammatical model, given its functional orientation, was primarily concerned with developing its pragmatic and semantic components. Now that these have been solidly developed, this book turns to the further development of the syntactic and morphological components of the model. Two recent developments receive pride of place: Bakker's Dynamic Expression Model and Hengeveld and Mackenzie's Functional Discourse Grammar. The first model aims at accounting for the complex interactions that one finds in many languages between the sets of expression rules that have to account for form on the one hand and those that establish order on the other. The second model takes a further step by considering morphosyntactic and phonological representations to be part of the underlying structure of the grammar rather than as the output of that grammar, contrary to the original assumptions in FG. The book accordingly contains synopses of these two proposals as well as applications of these to a variety of linguistic phenomena. Further articles provide detailed analyses of a range of semantic and pragmatic categories and their morphosyntactic expression in a wide variety of languages. The articles in this book contain data on some 60 different languages, including focused articles on phenomena in Arabic, Danish, English, Lengua de Señas Española, Mapudungun, Plains Cree, and Tanggu. In all, the contributions to this volume show that the issue of morphosyntactic expression in Functional Grammar is very much alive and moving into promising new directions, while at the same time contributing to a better understanding of a large number of morphosyntactic phenomena in a wide variety of languages.

Like its companion volume, this book offers a detailed description and comparison of three major structural-functional theories: Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar and Systemic Functional Grammar, illustrated throughout with corpus-derived examples from English and other languages. Whereas Part 1 confines itself largely to the simplex clause, Part 2 moves from the clause towards the discourse and its context. The first three chapters deal with the areas of illocution, information structuring (topic and focus, theme and rheme, given and new information, etc.), and clause combining within complex sentences. Chapter 4 examines approaches to discourse, text and context across the three theories. The fifth chapter deals with the learning of language by both native and non-native speakers, and applications of the theories in stylistics, computational linguistics, translation and contrastive studies, and language pathology. The final chapter assesses the extent to which each theory attains the goals it sets for itself, and then outlines a programme for the development of an integrated approach responding to a range of criteria of descriptive and explanatory adequacy.

Crucial Readings in Functional Grammar is an invaluable resource to anyone working in Functional Grammar, student and scholar alike. It contains important articles that have led to new avenues of research in the theory beyond Dik's two-volume Functional Grammar (1997), each concluded with a short paragraph with suggestions for further research. The book also contains an introduction to current Functional Grammar theory by the editors. Crucial Readings is unique in bringing together in one volume the various ideas that complement Dik's canonical presentation of the theory. The editorial contributions provide a comprehensive review of Functional Grammar publications.