Traditional Grammar and Functional Grammar

A syntactic exploration and comparison

The great organizing principle for Traditional Grammar (TG) is the distinction
between CATEGORIES and FUNCTIONS, each concept with multiple subdivisions
and classification types. Functional Grammar (FG) also follows this distinction,
though in different ways.
The category is the basic “nature” of a word or a group of words, what kind of
thing it represents. Categories are invariable, no matter how the word or group
of words is used, their category remains the same. The function, on the other
hand, is how that word or group of words is being used in a specific grammatical
context and how they relate to the rest of the words or groups of words in a
given sentence. Functions are variable, and so the same word or group of words
(with always the same category) can fulfill different functions in different contexts.

A simple example before moving on:

“John”, in terms of category, is a noun and always a noun. It represents a thing in

the world (real or imaginary, concrete or abstract) and no matter how we use it in
a sentence it will always be a noun. Its function (in brackets, first for TG and then
for FG), however, can change according to multiple grammatical contexts:

“John broke the window” (Subject / Actor )

“John is weird” (Subject / Carrier )
“John was bullied constantly” (Subject / Theme )
“Mary kissed John” (Direct Object / Theme )
“Mary gave John a kiss” (Indirect Object / Receiver)
“I have John in my team” (Complement / Possessed)
“The problem is John” (Complement / Value )
“Her hopes were destroyed by John” (Prepositional Complement / Idem)
“There’s a cat behind John” (Prepositional Complement / Idem)
“John, what on earth are you doing?” (Vocative / idem)

If a word has variable categories, then we think of them as different words and
they get different entries in the dictionary:

“I bought a hammer yesterday” (noun; entity)

“I used a rolling pin to hammer the steak” (verb; action)

Hammer (noun): A hand tool consisting of a solid head set crosswise on a handle
and used for pounding.
Hammer (verb): To force (something) into a particular place or shape by hitting it
with a hammer.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1) Categories
a. Single Word Categories
i. Nouns
ii. Verbs
iii. Adjectives
iv. Adverbs
v. Prepositions
vi. Articles and Determiners
vii. Auxiliaries and Modal verbs
viii. Conjunctions
b. Groups and phrases
i. Noun groups
ii. Verb groups
iii. Adjectival groups
iv. Prepositional phrases
c. Clauses
i. By Tense
ii. By Function
2) Functions
a. Within the phrase/group
i. Heads
ii. Modifiers
iii. Complements
b. Within the clause
i. Subject and Predicate
ii. Direct and Indirect Objects
iii. Complements
iv. Adjuncts
c. Functions and Categories
1) Categories
a) Single Word Categories

Both TG and FG use the same broad types of categories in their grammatical
analysis of language.

i) Noun. Nouns represent entities, “things” in the world which can be very real
and concrete (like “hammer”, “chair”, “apple”, “baseball”), concrete but not real
(“unicorn”, “minotaur”, “kryptonite”), real but not concrete (“love”, “peace”,
“justice”). And then all kinds of in-between, sort of real but not quite, sort of
concrete but not quite entities (“doctor”, “dollar”, “home run”, “Spanish”,
“France”, etc. etc.).

Nouns are the only category in Language than can represent the real world on
its own. The word “apple” doesn’t need anything else to represent the concept of
“apple”, whereas, as we’ll see later on, all other grammatical categories need
others to express their meaning.

Pronouns. These are specialized nouns with little semantic information. They refer
to other nouns inside or outside the text. Notice that they are only pronouns if they
can stand on their own (e.g. “Mine” vs “My”). Many specialized adjectives can be
used as pronouns by omission of the noun that would typically follow them:

 Personal Pronouns: “I, you, we, he, her, she, him, us…”, they refer to a
human or human-like entity in the real world. In English they still show
case, meaning that you pronounce them differently according to their
function (subject –he- or object –him-).
 Other pure pronouns: “It” is also considered a personal pronoun, though it
doesn’t refer to a human-like entity. “What” and “Who/Whom” also refer
directly to entities (though indeterminately). Lastly, the reflexive pronouns
(myself, yourself, themselves, etc.) also refer purely to entities, though
originally they come from an adjective (my) and a noun (self). The rest of
the pronouns are derived from specialized adjectives (articles, specifiers,
determiners, quantifiers or however you might feel like calling them) which
are used in the absence of an understood noun:
 Possessive Pronouns: “Mine, yours, hers, his, ours”. Not to be confused with
possessive adjectives, which always need to go together with a noun (my
car, your car, his car, her car, etc.).
 Demonstrative: “This, those, that, these, such”. These aren’t really nouns or
pronouns, but adjectives that can stand alone if the noun is readily
 understood. “I hate these” can only be understood in context as “I hate
these drawings”, for instance.
 Indefinite Pronouns: “All, some, many, none, nothing, etc”. The same here
applies as for demonstrative pronouns.
 Other Interrogative Pronouns: “What” and “Who/whom” refer directly to
entities, but “which” is a specialized adjective that can be used in the
absence of a noun (“Which do you like?”, meaning “Which movies do you
like?”), just as “whose” is a possessive adjective (“Whose car is that?”).
“Where”, “why”, “how” and “when” are all adverbs and they don’t refer to
entities, except for some grey intermediate cases (“the place where…”, “the
reason why…”, “the time when…”).

ii) Verbs. They represent processes, which in turn need participants to represent
events. Verbs cannot represent reality on their own, they need participants
(typically nouns or noun-like groups) to express their meaning. “Die”, for instance,
cannot mean without someone suffering the process of dying. In other words,
verbs can’t exist without nouns: for us to be able to think about “dying” we need
to be able to think first about “someone” who was alive and now is dead. “To
die” is for a living entity to transition from living to dead.

Here TG and FG diverge greatly in their classification of verbs and their types. FG
classifies verbs as processes, according both to their meaning (the type of event
they represent) and to their semantic requirements (the amount and types of
participants the process needs).

TG, on the other hand, classifies verbs in terms of their syntactic requirements
(which other kinds of grammatical elements the verb needs). The keys for TG are
transitivity and predication.

 Transitivity. Verbs are transitive if they need a direct object (see below) and
intransitive if they CANNOT take a direct object. So “kill” is transitive (“I
killed the fly” vs *“I killed”) and “die” is intransitive (“The fly died” vs *”I
died the fly”). Verbs can be ditransitive if they need two objects (“I gave
the keys to Mary”)

 Predication. Verbs can have either complete or incomplete predication,

depending on whether they need additional elements to express their
meaning.
o Intransitive verbs, which can’t take a direct object, can be of
complete predication when they don’t need additional elements to
express their meaning (represent the event). “Die” is an intransitive
verb of complete predication (IVCP) because it only needs the
subject (see below): “The fly died”. So whereas TG defines “die” as
an IVCP, FG looks at it from a completely different perspective,
 saying it’s a material process which only needs a THEME, in
essence explaining the same syntactic behavior but also adding a
layer of semantic analysis.
o Intransitive verbs are of incomplete predication (IVIP) when they
need a second syntactic element (other than a direct object) to
express their meaning. “Be” is the classic example, in that you
cannot say “John is”, because it’s incomplete, so you need an
additional element: “John is handsome”.
o Transitive verbs, which take objects, are typically of complete
predication (TVCP) because they almost never need anything else
beyond the objects (both direct and indirect). But in some cases,
transitive verbs need additional, non-object elements to express their
meaning, and so they are transitive verbs of incomplete predication
(TVIP). “Put” is a classic example, where you cannot say “John put
the book” because it needs an additional, non-object element: “John
put the book on the table”.

So a quick rundown and contrast between TG and FG:

Sentence TG FG
John killed the fly TVCP Material process with an actor and
a theme
John experienced shame TVCP Mental process with an experiencer
and a theme
John asked Mary a question diTVCP Verbal process with an actor, a
theme and a receiver
John put the book on the table TVIP Material process with an actor, a
theme and a location
The fly died IVCP Material process with a theme
John suffered IVCP Mental process with an experiencer
John is handsome IVIP Relational process with a carrier
and an attribute
John has a cold IVIP Relational process with a possessor
and a possessed

So while TG concentrates on the syntactic composition of the clause, FG

concentrates mainly on its semantic composition, together with the requirements of
the process (just not specifying which kinds of syntactic units the participants can
be). FG doesn’t discriminate between participants needing to be “objects” or
not, which is a purely syntactic distinction (see below).
iii) Adjectives. They represent qualities, characteristics that an entity might have,
and so by their very nature, they cannot exist without nouns. One cannot think of
a quality without an entity to “have it”, so wherever there’s an adjective, there has
to be an entity (even if it’s omitted or understood).

Adjectives can modify nouns directly (“blue chips”, “wonderful weather”) or they
can be participants, “complements” in TG, (“The chips are blue”, “The weather
seems fine”).

iv) Adverbs. They typically represent aspects of an event (qualities of a verb, so

like adjectives, but for verbs instead of nouns): time (when an event occurs), place
(where it occurs), reason (why it occurs), purpose (what for), etc. Adverbs,
however, can also qualify most other categories (“amazingly beautiful”; “very in
love”, “really quickly”), BUT never nouns (* “He’s a very teacher”).

v) Prepositions. They represent spatial relationships between a thing and a type

of place, either concretely or metaphorically. “In” relates a thing to a container,
“on” relates a thing to a surface, “under” and “over” relate a thing and a layer,
though in opposite ways (just like “in” and “out”), etc.

IN OUT OF ON UNDER

These relationships can be literal (as in “The gift is in the box”, “The vase is on the
table”), but more regularly metaphorical, where the containers/surfaces/layers/etc
are not really places but can be thought of as places (“I’m in trouble”, “That’s was
taken out of context”, “I’m feeling under the weather”).

Prepositions semantically need both the thing and the place to be able to
express their relationships (“in the box” doesn’t mean anything unless that is
being said of something), but both TG and FG consider the place to be the real
syntactic requirement of prepositions, and it’s called the prepositional
complement. So prepositions need a noun or noun-like element to follow them in
most cases, except when that noun can be easily recovered and so omitted (“The
doctor is in”, meaning “in the room”, “let’s go out”, etc.).
So in “I’ve been thinking about you”, “you” is the prepositional complement of
“about”, and in “I’ve been thinking about going to the shrink”, the clause “going
to the shrink” is the complement to the preposition (a metaphorical place).

vi) Articles and Determiners. These are specialized adjectives with little semantic
weight and more referential meaning (just like pronouns are specialized nouns
with referential meaning). “The” and “a” respectively mean “specific reference”
and “generic reference”, which are specialized qualities that only nouns or noun-
like elements can have. This means that determiners and articles, just like
adjectives, need nouns to express their meanings.
Some of these specialized adjectives also show distance (“this”, “that”, “those”) or
quantity (“many”, “much”, “some”, “most”, “one”). So for instance “those” means
“specific reference”, “long distance” and “more than one”, whereas “many”
means “generic reference” and “great amount”, and so on.

vii) Auxiliaries and Modal Verbs. Both TG and FG analyze the internal
composition of the verb group (see below) in detail, recognizing the following
main elements: tense, aspect, voice and modality. When tense, voice and aspect
are pronounced together with the verb (as in “John likes pizza”, with present tense,
active voice and simple aspect), TG doesn’t produce a separate analysis of the
elements, but FG does recognize them as distinct units. These units can be
phonetically separated and expressed through auxiliaries, which both FG and TG
recognize:

“Did you see that?”  auxiliary for tense (past in this case)
“She is sleeping.”  auxiliary for aspect (continuous)
“He has lied too many times”  auxiliary for aspect (perfective)
“The play was cancelled”  auxiliary for voice (passive)

Or combinations:

“He has been drinking again” (both perfective and progressive aspects)
“He was being kissed by Mary” (passive voice and progressive aspect)

Tense expresses the time at which the event occurs. In English only past and
present can be grammatically expressed, but future can also be expressed
lexically (through the use of other content words like modal verbs, adverbs or time
expressions): “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow” (adverb), “I will go to the doctor”
(modal verb), “See you next Monday” (noun groups, time expressions).

Aspect expresses the way in which the event occurs in time. It doesn’t place the
event in the temporal line, but describes how the event developed in the timeline
(if it began or ended, if it was continuous or punctual, if it was repeated, etc.). In
English only the perfective (the event ended) and the progressive (the event
extended over time) aspects can be expressed grammatically, and simple aspect
is the lack of aspectual specification (as in “John likes pizza”, with no indication of
beginnings, repetitions, endings or durations). Just as with tense, aspect can be
lexically expressed through the use of verbs, adverbs and time expressions: “He
started crying” (the event begun), “They stopped working at once” (the event
stopped), “They watched the same movie repeatedly” (the event was iterated),
“They danced all night” (the event extended over time), “I already read that book”
(the event has finished).

Voice, grammatically, can be either active or passive, with active voice being
expressed “by default” and passive through the use of “be” and the past
participle. Voice applies only to material, verbal and mental processes, that is
processes where there’s some participant directly affected by the process (you do
something, you think something, you say something to someone). The active voice
includes the actor that affects the participant, while the passive voice discards the
actor and concentrates only on the affected participant (or one of the affected
participants, if there are two):

“He hanged the sign”  “The sign was hung”

“She gave him a box”  “A box was given to him”  “He was given a box”
“They felt a terrible fear in the room”  “A terrible fear was felt in the room”
“He told her the bad news”  “The bad news were told to her”  “She was told
the bad news”

Modal Verbs are the grammatical expression of modality, which expresses the
direct attitude of the speaker towards the content of the clause. Modality can be
classified in different ways, but the categories that are typically recognized are:
 Volition. The speaker expresses desire or lack of desire towards the content
o “I will make it up to you”
o “Mary would do it, but she doesn’t have the time”
o “They are going to ruin us”
 Obligation. The speaker expresses some degree of necessity or obligation
about the content.
o “You must come early”
o “You have to take care of yourself”
o “She should quit smoking”
o “They ought to be quiet”
 Probability. The speaker expresses some degree of probability about the
content.
o “We might bump into them”
o “John may recognize her”
 Ability. The speaker expresses some the ability or lack of ability about the
content.
o “He can be very mean sometimes”
 o “They could help you out”

viii) Conjunctions. This is a very broad and mixed category that loosely describes
a list of words with very little semantic content and with the specific function of
introducing or coordinating clauses.

Coordinating conjunctions establish a relationship of equality between two

clauses (either two independent clauses or two dependent clauses), in less words,
they coordinate clauses. While doing so, the conjunctions can add slight shades
of meaning such as addition (“He’s tall and she likes that”), opposition (“He’s tall
but she doesn’t mind it”), result (“He’s tall so she naturally likes him”) or
alternative (“He’s tall or he’s rich”).

Subordinating conjunctions introduce dependent clauses inside of independent

clauses, meaning they establish a relationship of hierarchy between two clauses
(one clause is inside the other, and so “less important” in purely syntactic terms).
Here the list is quite heterogeneous and different traditions classify these
conjunctions differently. Broadly speaking, the first functional word of a
dependent clause tends to be analyzed as the conjunction that introduces it:

 “I know that he’s lying”

 “I don’t know if he’s lying”
 “I hate him because he’s lying”
 “I love him although he’s lying”
 “I hate the politicians who are always lying”
 “I hate the politicians, who are always lying”
 “When he’s lying, I stop listening to him”
 “I just don’t want for him to lie”
Etc.

b) Groups and Phrases

Single words can be expanded into groups/phrases and then ultimately into
clauses and clause complexes, which is the ultimate unit of analysis for TG and the
most significative unit for FG in terms of syntactic analysis (though FG expands its
analysis into the full text).

Groups and phrases are similar concepts, used alternatively in different theoretical
perspectives. They both represent the expansion of one single word into a bigger
unit, still organized around that initial word and representing the same type of
thing. In some TG traditions all groups and phrases are called “phrases”, and in
some FG approaches all expansions are called groups except for “prepositional
phrases”. Terminology aside:
i) Noun Groups. A noun can be semantically expanded by adding to it adjectives,
articles, determiners and whole clauses, but a noun group will always be
replaceable by a single noun, since it sill represents a single entity:

Horses are fast

Those horses are fast
Those brown horses are fast
Those first three brown horses are fast
Those first three brown horses which you were talking about are fast.

Nouns can be modified by different kinds of clauses:

The man who is wearing the red hat …(defining relative clause)
The man, who is wearing the red hat, … (non-defining relative clause)
The man wearing the red hat… (present participle clause)
The man to be careful about is… (full infinitival clause)

ii) Verb Groups. As mentioned before, both TG and FG analyze verb expansions
in detail. Verb groups can include verbs, tense, aspect, voice, modal verbs and
polarity.

I bought that (past tense, simple aspect, active voice)

I didn’t buy that (past tense, negative polarity, simple aspect, active voice)
I did buy that (past tense, positive polarity, simple aspect, active voice)
I might buy that (past tense, modal of probability, simple aspect, active voice)
I was buying that (past tense, progressive aspect, active voice)
I have bought that (present tense, perfective aspect, active voice)
I have been buying that (present tense, perfective and progressive aspect, active voice)
I will be buying that (present tense, modal of volition, progressive aspect, active voice)
That was being bought (past tense, progressive aspect, passive voice)
That had been bought (past tense, perfective aspect, passive voice)
Etc.

iii) Adjectival Groups. Adjectives can be premodified (typically adverbs) or

postmodified (typically clauses or prepositional phrases).

I’m really afraid (adverb + adjective)

I’m afraid of the dark (adjective + prepositional phrase)
I’m afraid to talk (adjective + full infinitival clause)
I’m tired of walking (adjective + prepositional phrase with a gerundial clause inside)
She’s somewhat sad to admit it (adverb + adjective + full infinitival clause)
iv) Prepositional Phrases. As mentioned above, all prepositional have the
syntactic need of being complemented by a noun-like element, which is called
the “prepositional complement”. Sometimes, though, the noun can be easily
understood and so omitted, in which case the preposition can also be thought of
as an adverb, depending on how you argue about it. Prepositions can also be
premodified by adverbs.

I’m in hospital (preposition + noun)

I’m in the room (preposition + noun group)
I lied about passing the test (preposition + gerundial clause)
I met him just outside the coffee shop (adverb + preposition + noun group)
We disagree on what needs to be done (preposition + wh-noun clause)
You’re wrong in that there’s problem (preposition + that-noun clause)

c) Clauses
Both TG and FG devote considerable efforts to classifying and analyzing clauses
from different perspectives. Both traditions agree on the basic distinction between
independent and dependent clauses, where the former can stand on its own
(i.e. is grammatically correct pronounced on its own) and the latter can’t (i.e. is
grammatically incorrect pronounced on its own):

I love him (independent clause)

I love him because he’s mad (independent clause with a dependent clause inside)
*Because he’s mad (dependent clause, it can’t stand on its own)

The main categories of classification for dependent clauses, then, are tense and
function, which are completely separate but many times complementary concepts.

i) Tense. Clauses can be finite (if their process has finite tense, that is either
present or past tense) or non-finite (if their process has non-finite tense, that is
full infinitive, bare infinitive, present participle, past participle or gerund).

Finite clauses don’t really have subcategories in terms of tense. If a dependent

clause has present or past tense then it’s automatically a finite clause. Main
clauses almost always have finite tense, with the exception of the imperative
mood, which is a non-finite independent clause (“Read this!” can stand on its
own, so it’s an independent clause, but has a bare-infinitival tense).
However, TG (and sometimes FG too) subclassifies finite clauses according to the
type of conjunction. So you can have “That clauses”, “Wh clauses” and “If
clauses” as a subclassification.
Non-finite clauses, on the other hand, come in different varieties:

I want to climb the Everest (full infinitival clause)

Please help me climb the Everest (bare infinitival clause)
I’d love climbing the Everest (gerundial clause)
The man climbing the Everest is in grave danger (present participle clause)
The mountain climbed by this man is the Everest (past participle clause)

Gerunds and Present Participles both have the “ing” ending, and they can be told
apart because gerunds have a nominal function (they can be replaced by nouns,
as in “I’d love it”) whereas present participle clauses are reductions of the
progressive aspect and can never be replaced by nouns (as in “The man who is
climbing the Everest is in grave danger”).
Similarly to the present participle, past participle clauses are reductions of the
passive voice and also can’t be replaced by nouns (as in “The mountain which
was climbed by this man is the Everest”).

ii) Function. The other important variable is considering the function a

dependent clause plays within an independent clause. Basically, clauses can be
acting as nouns (noun clauses), adverbs (adverbial clauses) or adjectives (defining
and non-defining relative clauses), and can be thus classified.

Within finite clauses:

I know that he will come (that noun clause)

I know what he will bring (wh noun clause)
I know where he put the keys (wh noun clause)
I don’t know if he will come (if noun clause)
The car you saw is green (defining relative clause)
The car which you saw is green (defining relative clause)
The car that you saw is green (defining relative clause)
The car, which is green, doesn’t quite work (non-defining relative clause)
Nobody knows the place where he put the keys (defining relative clause)
I saw a grease spot where he put the keys (wh adverbial clause)
I know it because I saw it (adverbial clause)

Notice that the same string of words, basically the same clause, will be classified
differently according to the function it plays in a given independent clause. “Where
he put the keys” is always a “wh finite clause”, but the function varies with the
context.

In “I know where he put the keys”, it’s the thing that is known (“I know it”); in
“Nobody knows the place where he put the keys” it’s additional information about
the noun “place” (and so cannot be replaced by a noun: *”Nobody knows the
place it”); in “I saw a grease spot where he put the keys” it’s the place where the
process of “seeing” happens, and so it’s additional information about the process
(a circumstance, so basically an adverb, and it cannot be replaced by a noun
again: *”I saw a grease spot it”, but it can be replaced by an adverb: “I saw a
grease spot there”).

Within non-finite clauses:

I want to climb the Everest (full infinitival noun clause)

I bought that to climb the Everest (full infinitival adverbial clause)
The best season to climb the Everest is spring (full infinitival relative clause)
I love climbing the Everest (gerundial noun clause)
Climbing the Everest is risky (gerundial noun clause)
I’ll show you by climbing the Everest (gerundial noun clause)
The man climbing the Everest is crazy (present participle relative clause)
He died climbing the Everest (present participle adverbial clause)
The mountain climbed by John is the Everest (past participle relative clause)

The same happens for non-finite clauses, where the same full infinitival clause
can work as a noun, an adverb or an adjective. Gerunds, though, can only
function as nouns (either as participants or as complements to prepositions) and
participles, conversely, can never function as nouns (only as adjectives and
adverbs).

2) Functions

Classifying words or groups of words by their categories implies analyzing their

essence, what they are and what they represent. Classifying words or groups of
words by their function, on the other hand, implies analyzing their relationship
with the rest of the words and groups of a given linguistic context. A word or
group of words might have X category, but what is it functioning as?

Here, TG and FG diverge much more than on the analysis of categories, which is
mostly shared. TG produces a mainly syntactic analysis of function, recognizing
only structural relationships between grammatical units, many of which are based
on the analysis of grammatical case. FG produces a mainly semantic analysis of
function, largely disregarding grammatical case and focusing on the meaning
potential of each grammatical unit.
A first approach towards the topic of functional classification is to divide it into
functions within the group and functions within the clause:

a) Functions within the group/phrase

As previously stated, a group or phrase is an expansion of a single word into a
bigger unit, which is still structured around that initial word. Here TG takes the
lead, but FG doesn’t diverge or disagree too much with the proposed categories.

i) Head. The head is the word around which the group/phrase is built, the original
word that expanded. The head gives the category to the group, and an X group
still basically represents X. For instance, “The large dog” is a noun group, with
dog as the head, and it represents the same thing a single noun would
represent (i.e. an entity). Groups of the category X can be replaced by a single
word of the category X, so “I saw the large dog” can be replaced by “I saw it”.
Some examples:

The first tropical storm I saw that year was devastating (noun group, storm as head)
I’m quite ashamed to admit it (adjectival group, ashamed as head)
I have been sleeping too much (verb group, sleeping as head)
I won’t go in that scary cave (prepositional phrase, in as head)
You ate that really quickly (adverbial group, quickly as head)

ii) Modifiers. After the recognition of the head (the central element of the group), both TG
and FG surrender to the linearity of language, recognizing all other words and groups
inside the original group as either premodifiers or postmodifiers of the head. Basically,
everything that comes before the head is a premodifier and everything that comes after is
a postmodifier.

Within each kind of group, there’re different distribution of grammatical unit types for pre
and postmodifiers. In a noun group, premodifiers are almost always articles, determiners,
adjectives and other nouns, whereas postmodifiers are almost always prepositional
phrases and clauses:

The first tropical storm I saw that year

Art Det Adjective Noun wh finite clause

So “article”, “determiner”, “adjective” and “wh finite clause” are the categories of these
units, and “premodifier” and “postmodifier” are the functions the units have relative to
the head of the group. “The”, “first”, “tropical” and “(which) I saw that year” all give
additional information about the head “storm”.

In the verb group the head (the actual verb, the one that defines the type of process)
always comes at the end, so that all other elements can be thought as premodifiers to the
verb, since they produce additional information about the process (when it happened in
time, how it happened in time, the attitude of the speaker, etc.).

must have been sleeping

Modal V. Aux. Perf. Aux. Progressive Verb

Again, “modal verb”, “auxiliary for the perfective aspect”, “auxiliary for the
progressive aspect” and “verb” are the categories of these words. Their
functions, within the verb group, are either “premodifier” (the first three) or
“head” (the actual verb).

Really quickly
Adverb Adverb

Here an adverb is the premodifier of another adverb, which is the head.

iii) Complements. Beyond heads and modifiers, TG recognizes one last function
within the group: the complement. The difference between modifier and
complement is that complements are required whereas modifiers are optional.
This distinction is hard to sustain consistently, but it works well for prepositions:

In “I’m thinking about you”, “about you” is a prepositional phrase, with “about” as
the head of the phrase. “You” is the prepositional complement in the sense that
it cannot be removed. The preposition needs a noun-like element for the
sentence to be “grammatically correct”, as is shown by the ungrammaticality of:

* “I’m thinking about”

The notion of complement can also be used for other cases in which what comes
after the head isn’t just optional additional information but fundamental part of
the meaning of the head:

In “I’m happy to sing in public”, happy is the adjective head of the adjectival
group, but the full infinitival clause “to sing in public” isn’t just additional
information about the adjective, but the actual content of it (the thing that makes
me happy). As such, “to sing in public” can be thought as the complement of the
head “happy”.

b) Functions within the clause

Here is where TG and FG diverge the most, with FG discarding or retooling most
of the traditional categories. Whereas FG recognizes three levels of semantic
functionality (representing the world –experiential function–, interacting –
interpersonal function–, organizing the message –textual function–), TG recognizes
a single level of syntactic functionality, organized mainly around the verb. The
main categories for TG are subject, predicate, direct object, indirect object,
subjective complement, predicative complement and adjunct.

i) Subject and Predicate. The “Subject”, as a category, is one of the more

contentious concepts because of its semantic heterogeneity. The classic definition
of the subject as “the doer of the action” quickly goes out the window with simple
cases like:

“He feels sad” (no doer)

“She was promoted” (doer missing)
“Roses are red” (no action for a doer to exist)

It also isn’t the first noun-like element in a clause, for others can come first:

“What was he doing?” (“object” before “subject”)

“John, I hate” (“object” as theme before “subject”)
“Here comes the bride” (“complement” before “subject”)
“It’s silly to say that” (“complement” before “real subject”)

The only way to formally define the function of subject is by referring to the
notions of grammatical case and agreement. “Grammatical Case” is a property
of nouns, and it changes according to which grammatical element it agrees with.
Case in English has been gradually lost in terms of morphology, but it remains in
the personal pronoun system (mainly I / me; You / You; He / him; She / her; It /
It; We / us; They /).

The distinction here is between nominative case and objective case, and a
pronoun is pronounced with nominative case (I, you, he, she, we, they) if it agrees
with the finite tense or with objective case (me, you, him, her, us, them) if it
agrees with a “transitive” verb or with a preposition. The overall notion is that
all nouns have case, even if the case is not overtly pronounced, and they get case
either by agreeing with tense (nominative), or by agreeing with a transitive verb or
a preposition (objective). Other cases exist in other languages and can also be
postulated for English (possessive, dative, oblique, etc.), but these two will do for
now.

With that framework in mind, the subject can be formally defined as the
nominal element that agrees with the finite tense of the clause. It’s “What was
HE doing?” and not “What was HIM doing?” because the pronoun agrees with the
finite past tense “was”. If the pronoun changed, tense would also change:
“What WERE THEY doing?”, and that is the basic meaning of agreement, a
system that morphologically is much richer in Spanish (yo como, vos comés, él
come, nosotros comemos, etc.) than English.

This definition helps recognize some problematic subjects, like with the
“anticipatory there” construction:

“There are three movies in this selection” (where “three movies” is the noun that
agrees with the finite in “are”) Vs
“There is a problem in your selection”

FG, in its analysis of the Interpersonal Metafunction, also recognizes the Subject
as the nominal element which agrees with tense, but it also adds a semantic
layer, proposing that the Subject is the element about which the rest of the
clause is predicated. This means that the subject in a way is the anchoring point
of the clause, that about which the speaker wants to say something. In:

“John kissed Mary”, the speaker wants to say something about John. But in:

“Mary was kissed by John”, the speaker wants to say something about Mary.

This distinction is also in a way recognized by TG with the basic analysis of the
clause as divided into Subject and Predicate, which is really almost everything else
that isn’t the subject. The predicate is that which is said “about the subject”, and
it contains the verb and all the objects, complements and circumstances of the
verb.

The main difference between this perspective and the experiential function of FG
is that in TG the subject is given a much bigger role and it is separated
functionally from the verb, whereas in FG there’s no separation between the
different participants, and there’s no special importance ascribed to the subject
over the other participants (actually there’s no subject in the experiential analysis,
just different types of semantic participants).

“John kissed Mary” “Mary was kissed by John”

Subject Predicate Subject Predicate

Vs

“John kissed Mary” “Mary was kissed by John”

Actor Mat. Proc. Goal Goal Mat. Process Actor
ii) Direct and Indirect Objects. Just as with subject, objects are impossible to
define semantically, since they are most certainly NOT the nominal element that
undergoes the action (just as the subject isn’t the doer of the action).
With the same grammatical case framework in mind, though, objects can be
defined as the nominal elements assigned objective case by transitive verbs.
The definition, however, is circular, because transitive verbs are those which
require or can take an object, whereas intransitive verbs are those which
CANNOT take an object.

The ultimate proof, in any case, that a grammatical unit is actually an object is
that it can be passivized, that is, that it can be transformed into a subject (which
agrees with tense, and has nominative case) by changing the verb from active to
passive voice:

“John kissed her”  “She was kissed” (object passivized, turned subject)
“John gave him the keys”  “He was given the keys”  “The keys were given to him”

Both the direct object (the keys) and the indirect object (him) can be passivized, but
they’re distinguished because the indirect object can also be expressed as a
prepositional phrase (John gave the keys to him) and because there can’t be an
indirect object without a direct object. Verbs that take two objects are called
ditransitive by TG.

If passivization is impossible, then the grammatical unit is not an object:

“John is a teacher”  * “A teacher is been John”

“The book seems long”  * “Long is seemed the book”
“Mary has a little lamb”  * “A little lamb is had by Mary”

Conversely, if verbs cannot take objects they’re intransitive:

* “She died a dog”

* “He is sleeping a dream”

iii) Complements. All the units required by the verb that are not objects (i.e. that
cannot be passivized) are called complements, and whenever a verb needs a
complement it’s called by TG “of incomplete predication” (meaning it needs
something beyond an object to express it’s meaning), whereas verbs that don’t
need complements are called “of complete predication”. Both transitive and
intransitive verbs can take complements, though most commonly intransitive verbs
require them.

“Grammar is difficult” (intransitive verb of incomplete predication)

“I have a problem” (intransitive verb of incomplete predication)
“John died” (intransitive verb of complete predication, it doesn’t need a complement)
“John put the keys on the table” (transitive verb of incomplete predication).

iv) Adjuncts. All the elements that modify the verb (that give additional
information about the process) that are not required by it (i.e. that are not objects
nor complements, nor subjects for that matter) get called adjuncts in TG (and
circumstances in FG). Here both traditions pretty much agree on the perspective,
as adjuncts / circumstances are the elements that could be eliminated without
turning a sentence ungrammatical:

“I saw the keys on the table”  “I saw the keys” (“on the table” is a circumstance)
“I put the keys on the table”  *”I put the keys” (“on the table” is a complement)

c) Functions and Categories

All these functions (both within groups and within clauses) can be fulfilled by
different types of categories, but the correlations between category and function
aren’t completely random or chaotic.

Subjects and Objects have to be entities, and so noun-like units: (nouns, noun
groups, wh finite clauses, that finite clauses, full infinitive clauses, gerundial
clauses).

Complements and Adjuncts are more heterogeneous and can be entities,

qualities or characteristics, so they can be expressed through nouns, noun
groups, adjectives, adjectival groups, adverbs, prepositional phrases, participle
clauses, full infinitival clauses.

Complements of prepositions, like objects, have to be noun-like (nouns, noun

groups, gerundial, full infinitival clauses).

Modifiers have to represent qualities, so they have to be adjective-like (adjectives,

articles, determiners, relative clauses, prepositional phrases).

Heads are heterogeneous, but they always are of the same categories than the
group/phrase they are heading.

The key issue, again, is to have in mind that words and groups have BOTH
category and function, which are SEPARATE but complementary notions.

In:

“The very old teacher has put preparing the exam on hold”
The very old teacher is both the subject (as function) and a noun group (as
category).
Has put is a verb group (as category) and the head of the predicate (which is
structured around the verb)
Preparing the exam is both the direct object (as function) and a gerundial clause
(as category)
On hold is both the complement (as function) and a prepositional phrase (as
category)

Then each unit can be internally analyzed:

“The very old teacher”

The is both a premodifier (function) and an article (category)

Very old is a premodifier (function) and an adjectival group (category)
Within, very is a premodifier (adverb) and old is a head (adjective)
Teacher is the head (function) and a noun (category)

“has put”

Has is a premodifier (function) and an auxiliary for the perfective aspect (category)
Put is the head (function) and a verb (category)

“Preparing the exam”

Preparing is the head of this clause’s predicate (function) and a verb (category)
The exam is the direct object (function) and a noun group (category)
Within, the is a premodifier (article) and exam is the head (noun)

“On hold”
On is the head (preposition)
Hold is the prepositional complement (noun)

There are many ways of graphically showing this constant double analysis
(function and category), but the most typical is through boxes (see attachments).