In English, we have two different types of grammar, functional and traditional. Functional grammar looks at how words work and are used in a sentence. Traditional grammar talks about the rules. We need to know about both to be effective (good) English users.
(Note: If you're really confident, scroll to the bottom to see some more difficult information and activities!)
Functional Grammar: Beginner
Example sentence: Tam runs quickly.
In our functional grammar, our first step is to identify the process. Processes are coloured green.
Functional grammar: Processes Traditional grammar: Verbs, verbal groups
We can identify these by: 1) Recognising process/verb types: Doing, speaking, thinking, sensing, being words ("Runs" is an action word) 2) Changing the tense (time) (Yesterday, Tam ran quickly. Tomorrow Tam will run quickly. Runs > ran or will run.) 3) Changing the subject (doer) (They run quickly. Runs > run)
Now we know the process is "runs".
Tam runs quickly.
After we have identified our process, we need to identify our participants. Participants are coloured red.
Functional Grammar: Participants Traditional Grammar: Nouns & nominal groups, adjectives and adjectival groups, subjects and objects
We can ask "Who or what is doing the action?" Key words: Who, what Examples: "Michelle and I", "The red car", "it", "you", "the most important issue"
For our sentence "Tam runs quickly", we can ask: "Who is running?" (Tam is. Tam is the participant.)
Tam runs quickly.
When we know our process and our participants, we can identify our circumstances. Circumstances are coloured blue.
Note: The formatting for this website automatically turns links into a blue/teal colour that is quite similar! Unfortunately, there is no clear dark blue colour to make circumstances clearly different to the links!
Functional Grammar: Circumstances Traditional Grammar: Adverbs and adverbial groups, prepositions and prepositional phrases
This is our extra information. Key words: How? When? Why? Where? Who with? Examples: "Slowly", "carefully", "now", "for several minutes", "with great care", "because of her"
For our sentence "Tam runs quickly." we know 'runs' is the process and 'Tam' is the participant. "Quickly" is the circumstance. It describes "how" Tam is running.
Tam runs quickly.
Traditional versus Functional Grammar
Functional: Participant Process Circumstance (how) Our sentence: Tam runs quickly. Traditional: Noun verb adverb
Take a break here before you go into the more difficult explanation!
Word Groups You might notice some pretty difficult words above, like "nominal group" and "Adverbial group". This means a group of words around the noun (nominal), verb (verbal) or adverb (adverbial).
Sometimes we might have one participant, or one process, but many words! Look:
Nominal groups: - the big, black, furry cat - My cousin Anna - His new phone
Even though the nominal groups are big, I can replace them with one word: Thebig black furry cat was meowing loudly. It wouldn't shut up all night. My cousin Anna lives in Murray Bridge. She works as a lawyer. His new phone rang quietly. It looked very expensive.
Verbal groups: - is walking - had begun talking - can see - must listen
Prepositional phrases: (groups of words which begin with a preposition) - at the beach - on the table - for several minutes
We have one process, participant or circumstance, but many words. My cousin Anna was living in Murray Bridge.
Can we have two participants?
Short answer: Yes!
Example: Anna met her friends at the beach. Process: Met (Tense check: Met, meets, will meet) Participant 1: Anna (Who met? Anna did.) Participant 2: Her friends (Who did Anna meet? Her friends.) Circumstance: at the beach (Where did they meet? At the beach)
Anna met her friends at the beach.
Example: She took her book with her. Process: took Participant 1: she (who) Participant 2: her book (what) Circumstance: with her (with who)
She took her book with her.
Other examples: Tomorrow, you can meet Ezra on the bus. I bought a pair of shoes to wear next week. Amadou and Pieng went to Adelaide with Ali and Mahdi.
WARNING: Here is where we can see a difference between traditional grammar "subjects" and functional grammar "participants".
Try these exercises: Exercises - intermediate Take a break here before you go into the more difficult explanation!
What about different sentence types and text types? Different sentence types have a different word order. For example, a procedure (recipes, science experiment instructions) uses a lot of imperative sentences (commands). As you can see, the word order is different - the processes (verbs) usually come before the participants (nouns).
Turn on the oven. Slowly add the butter. Pour the milk carefully.