A New Architecture for Functional Grammar (Functional Grammar Series)

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312 Ahmed Moutaouakil


Alternatively, pure semantic properties (semantic and perspectivizing
functions, operators and satellites pertaining to the representational level,
etc.) can be represented in a separate semantic module. In this case, the ex-
pression rules constituting an autonomous grammatical module operate on
the information coded in the two underlying structures represented in the
pragmatic and the semantic modules. These two types of organization are
visualized in Figures (1) and (2) respectively.
Notice that in Hengeveld’s proposal (this volume), the representational
and the interpersonal entities are regarded as hierarchically organized
modules whereas here they are assumed to be, together with the rhetorical
entity, merely layered levels of the same structure which are located in
separate but related modules.



  1. Archetypal Discourse Structure Actualization


Structure (17) can be said to be ‘archetypal’ in the sense that it is postu-
lated as a generic abstract structure whose actualization in stretches of
discourse is regulated, as we will assume, by – at least – a structural and a
typological parameter.


4.1. The structural parameter


As was pointed out above, discourse categories can have two kinds of use,
‘free’ and ‘embedded’. It will be shown here that the actualization of struc-
ture (17) in these discourse categories depends on the way in which they
are used.


4.1.1. ADS actualization in free use


The basic idea which will be developed in what follows is that Arche-
typal Discourse Structure (ADS) is fully actualized in texts, whereas its
explicit actualization in the lower discourse categories is dependent on the
(decreasing) hospitality of these categories.
Examination of the internal structure of the discourse categories distin-
guished so far shows that, in their free (non-embedded) occurrences, they
differ from each other in their capacity to host ADS. As one might expect,
hosting capacity diminishes as we run from the top to the bottom of the
DCH. The text is thus the most hospitable category and the word is the least

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