Syntactic discontinuity in a dynamic model of expression rules

This journal article addresses the question of the implementation of a dynamic model of expression rules in Functional Grammar (Dik 1997a, b) by considering sintactic discontinuity in Old English, a topic which has far-reaching methodological and theoretical implications and bears on the current debate in the FG community, namely the top-down orientation of a discursive model of grammar. To begin with, this journal article provides a reflection on the role of syntax in FG and revises some aspects of previous approaches to expression rules that are relevant for the discussion of discontinuity. Discontinuous constituency, which is characterized in terms of three functional principles, is considered in the more general setting of the dynamic model of expression rules. The conclusion is reached that the functional features of any tree containing discontinuous constituents must specify the target, the degree of implementation and the degree of overlapping of discontinuous constituency. To round off, this journal article focuses on the implications of these conclusions for Functional Discourse Grammar by discussing parallel processing in the grammatical and the conceptual components.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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