Embedding or rank sift

All students who are completing this year must submit

their final essays
that this is nominal group is demonstrated, firstly, by
the fact that the phrase is concerned with the noun
students, and secondly ( if you were not confident)by
the fact that the entire can be substituted with pronoun
they.
Embedded clause occur commonly in the post
modifying position in nominal groups, where they
function to specify more information about the head
noun. However, they can also get into the clause
directly, not through dependence on a head noun.
 Embedding vs the clause complex
Many grammatical approaches would treat each of the following
sentences as involving embedded structure :
i) The Department believes that students have rights and responsibility
ii) The Examiner said that the candidate should pass
iii) You will be advised of your results when the examiner’s report has been
received.
In a systemic analysis, sentence i,ii,iii are example of clauses
complexes : they involve two clauses, with each clause having its own
internal constituent structure. In i) and ii), the two clauses stand in a
relationship hallidays calls projection, whereby a process of mental or
verbal action ( believing ,saying, telling…….) is able to have a clause
attrached which either reports indirectly someone speech or thoughts, or
quotes directly someone words or thoughts. In iii) the relationship
between the two clauses is one of enhancement, whereby the second
clauses expand on the meaning of the first by contributing some relevant
circumstantial information.
 Labelling
Example of form/class labels are each rank
1. Clause rank : finite, non-finite, dependent clause,
subordinate clause, relative clause……etc
2. Group rank : prepositional phrase, adverbial phrase,
nominal group,……..etc.
3. Word rank : noun, adjective,article,adverb,…..etc.
Example of function labels at each rank
1. Clause rank : main clause, qualifying clause, projected
clause,….etc.
2. Group rank : subject, finite, object, agent, actor,…..etc.
3. Word rank : deictic, classifier, thing, head,
modifier,….etc
• It is easy to demonstrate the class and
function labels do not always match
up. Items of the same class can
perform different function, and the
same function can be performed by
items of different classes
 However, in order to make this introduction
grammar manageable, two limits on its
comprehensiveness have had to be imposed :
1. Focus on the clause, this because the clause is
generally recognized to be the pivoral unit of
grammatical meaning
2. Priority of functional labeling, this is because
it is this functional perspective that allows us
to make explicit how the clause function
simultaneously to express different meanings
Multifunctionality and constituents
We have seen that the lexico grammar enables us
to mean more than one things at a time. This
semantic complexity is possible because in nearly
all cases the constituents of the clause are playing
more than one functional role at a time.
Three different types of subjects :
1. The psycological subject
2. The grammatical subject
3. The logical subject
Descriptive grammar and the notion of
approriacy
For those people, the study of grammar equates
with the study of how you should talk or write
correctly. Linguistic, however, argue for a clear
distinction between, on the other hand, the
grammatical system of the language that enables
people to use language the way they do, and on the
other hand, the moral and social judgements made by
people about how the grammar of english should be
used
The kind of grammar linguistic write are
descriptive grammar. A descriptive grammar makes
no judgement about the goodness/badness,
rightness/wrongness of language use.