Pernilla Hallonsten Halling

Functional Grammar

In the works of Hengeveld and others in the Functional Grammar approach to parts of speech (also elaborated as Functional Discourse Grammar), the notion of predication holds a central role (Hengeveld 1992; Hengeveld et al. 2004; Rijkhoff & van Lier 2013). Within this approach, predication is defined as “designat[ing] the application of a predicate to an appropriate number of arguments, where the predicate specifies a relation or a property” (1992: 25). Parts of speech are defined based on their uses as predicates, where “[a]n adverbial predicate is a predicate which, without further measures being taken, can be used as a modifier of a non-nominal head” (1992: 58). ‘Further measures being taken’ here corresponds to additional morphemes used for this specific type of predicate. In the case of adverbial predicates, the part of speech that they correspond to is manner adverbs (1992: 55). Already at the outset of Hengeveld’s discussion, it is noted that adverbs differ from the other parts of speech included in the approach. Whereas verbs, nouns, and adjectives all have predicative uses in English (e.g. John sings, John is president, and John is nice, respectively), manner adverbs are stated not to have such a use, illustrated by the absence of a predicative use of the simple adverb well. The non-predicative use, on the contrary, is exemplified by The nice president sings


well (1992: 57). It is striking for an item that is defined as a predicate not to have a predicative use, but perhaps this oddity arises from different terminological uses of predicate. In contrast to adverbs, verbal predicates are the only predicate type of those that serve as a basis for distinguishing parts of speech that have a predicative use only, “leav[ing] open the possibility of nominal, adjectival, and adverbial predicates being used in predicative function” (1992: 58). Moreover, while it is impossible for verbal predicates to have anything but a predicative use, for other predicates this is argued to vary across languages. The solely non-predicative use of manner adverbs is then a feature of English, among other languages. Whereas the predicative use only lies in the nature of verbs, the non-predicative use only does not appear to lie in the nature of manner adverbs as such. Still, it is interesting that it is the modifiers of verbs (predicative only) that are non-predicative only.

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