FUNCTIONAL

GRAMMAR
Instructor: Prof. Dr. Hoang Van Van

Group 06 1. Phan Thành Vinh

2. Nguyễn Thị Hồng Ngọc
3. Trần Hoàng Thiệu My

Date: Sunday, May 29th, 2021

METAPHOR
IDEATIONAL
METAPHORS
 3 steps for interpreting the clause in
ideational function
i. Selection of process type: material, mental, relational, with
their various intermediate and secondary types.
ii. Configuration of transitivity functions: Actor, Goal, Senser,
Manner, etc. representing the process, its participants, and any
circumstantial elements.
iii. Sequence of group-phrase classes: verbal group, nominal
group, adverbial group, prepositional phrase, and their various
sub-classes.
OVERVIEW OF IDEATIONAL
METAPHORS
 Knowing ‘typical ways of saying things’ is part of knowing a language.
 ‘Typical’ means the ways you first learn to say something in your mother
tongue, or the way it is most commonly said, or the way it is said in the
absence of any special circumstances
 What speakers recognize as typical patterns of wording are calling
‘congruent’ forms
 A further dimension of metaphor present within language itself.
 Recognizing what is congruent means recognizing where the typical pattern
has not been used and the speaker or writer has chosen to say things
differently.
 METAPHORS OF TRANSITIVITY
Mary saw something wonderful
Fuction Senser Mental process phenomenon

Mary came upon a wonderful sight

Function Actor Material process Goal

A wonderful sight met Mary’s eyes

Function Actor Material process Goal

 METAPHORS OF TRANSITIVITY

They arrived at the summit on the fifth day

Fuction Actor Material process Circumstance Circumstance

The fifth day saw them at the summit

Circumstance
Function Senser Mental process phenomenon
 CONGRUENT AND METAPHORICAL WORDING
 (1) Congruent mode COMPARED
In the evening the guests ate ice cream and then swam gently
Material Cir. :
Circumstance: Participant: Material Participant: Cir. : Time
Function process Manner
Time Actor process Goal

Preposition Nominal Verbal Nominal Adverbial Verbal Adverbial

Class
phrase group group group group group group

 (2) metaphorical mode

the guests’ supper of ice cream was followed by a gentle swim
Relational process
Participant Identified/Token
Fuction Participant Identified/Value (Circumstantial
Time/Identifying)
Class Nominal group Verbal group Nominal group
Modifier/ Modifier/
Function (in Head/
Deictic Qualifier Modifier/Epithet Head/Thing
group) Things
Possessive Appositive
 10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
We can treat metaphorical expressions in two ways:
 Taking them at their face value
 Interpreting them in their congruent form

the fifth day saw them at the summit

Senser Mental process perception Phenomenon Place
Analysis of metaphorical form

they arrived at the summit on the fifth day

Actor Material process Place Time
Analysis of congruent form

 Neither of these 2 is satisfactory

 (a) not an ordinary mental process like: “I saw them” because “day”  not conscious
 (b) not what the speaker or writer said.
 Metaphorical form is more complex than congruent rewording
 10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
on the fifth day   they at the summit arrived
Circumstance   Participant Circumstance Material process
 
the fifth day saw them at the summit  
Participant Mental process Participant Circumstance  
Senser – perception Phenomenon Place

Combined analysis
 Match the elements vertically as close as possible for 3 reasons:
Bring out contrasts in grammatical function
Eg: ‘on the fifth day’ is congruently a circumstance of time
‘the fifth day’ is metaphorically a Senser
Show where the lexical metaphor is
Eg: ‘saw’ may be a lexical metaphor  not appear in congruent form
Suggest reasons for the choice of metaphorical form
Eg: metaphorical mode  ‘the fifth day’ becomes an unmarked theme.
10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
EXAMPLE 1:
 Have a bath
 Do a dance
 Make a mistake
 The verb simply expresses the fact that some progress takes place and carries the
verbal of tense, polarity….
 The process is coded as a nominal group coding as range.
 These expression is incongruent.

EXAMPLE 2:
Congruent: Her eyes are brown.
 Incongruent: She has brown eyes.
Congruent: His wrist is broken.
 Incongruent: He has broken wrist.
10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
Her eyes Are   brown
Carrier Relational process Attribute
She Has Brown Eyes
Carrier Relational process Attribute
Nominal group Verbal group Nominal group
  Modifier/ Epithet Head/ Thing

they   danced in Hungarian style

Behaver   Behavioural Manner: comparison
nominal group verbal group prepositional phrase
they did a Hungarian dance
Actor Material Range
nominal group verbal group nominal group
  Modifier/ Head/ Thing
Classifier

Domesticated transitivity metaphors

10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
 Combined analysis
the guest ate in the ice cream and then gently swam
evening

Actor Material Time Goal   Time Manner material

process
the guests’ supper of ice cream was followed a gentle swim
by

Identified Relational Identifier

process

nominal group verbal group nominal group

Modifier/ Head/ Thing Modifier/     Modifier/ Head/

Deictic Qualifier: Epithet Thing
Possessive Appositive
10.3 Ideational metaphors
10.3.2. The representation of metaphorical forms
Metaphorical Congruent
I haven’t had the benefits of your Unfortunately, I haven’t
experience. experienced as much as you.

He has a comfortable income. His income is large enough for

Advances in technology are
speeding up the writing of
business programs.
him to be able to live
comfortably.
Because technology is getting
better people can write business
programs faster.

The tracks offer a range of walks One can walk along different
of varying length. tracks, some shorter, some
longer.
METAPHOR

a feature which
Lexical belongs to the lexis or
mechanism vocabulary of a
language
2 GUISES OF
METAPHOR a special resource of
Grammatical the grammar of a
phenomenon language
Lexical metaphor
 Grammatical metaphor
 There is a changing in form between the
clause John.. his sister to a noun phrase
 JOHN WROTE A John’s writing of a letter to his sister.
LETTER TO HIS  In this case, grammatical metaphor involves
SISTER. a type of metaphorical movement: from a
process as clause (the default encoding of a
 JOHN’S WRITING OF A process) to a process as noun phrase.
LETTER TO HIS  2 aspects to consider grammatical metaphor
SISTER SURPRISED  The metaphorical movement
ME.  The variation between grammatical forms
Grammatical metaphor
Grammatical metaphor
Grammatical metaphor

Written form
Factor
determining
metaphor
Spoken form
 Grammatical metaphor
 In written form, grammatical metaphor = lexical dense while in
spoken form it means grammatical intricacy
Grammatical metaphor
metaphorical ways of
meaning making
where process is
realized by a noun,
experiential and quality is
realized by an
adjective in lexico
grammar
Ideational
metaphors
metaphorical ways of
realizing the
consequential and
logical temporal relations
inside clauses
(Martin 1992a)
 Grammatical metaphor
 a. Because technology is getting better, people are able to write
business programs faster.
 b. Because technology is advancing, people are (becoming) able
to write business programs faster.
 c. Advances in technology are enabling people to write business
programs faster.
 d. Advances in technology are making the writing of business
programs faster.
 e. Advances in technology are speeding up the writing of
business programs.
 Grammatical metaphor
 Example 1 illustrates how experiential and logical meanings
become more metaphor-ical. The processes in the first sentence,
“getting better” and“writing”, become nouns in the last
sentence. In other words, the experiential meanings are packed
into nominal groups, i.e.“advances in technology” and“the
writing of business programs”; also the logical meaning which
is realized by the conjunction “because” is realized in a verbal
group, e.g.“speeding up”.
 Grammatical metaphor
The main function of nominalization is “objectify” processes and qualities
(Jamshid, 2005), making them amenable to further grammatical operations.
According to Jamshid, a characteristic of nominalization is that of “information
density".