FG from its inception 27formational component of generative grammar can make to general
linguistic theory” (Dik 1966: 410).
Secondly, the only published evidence of Dik’s familiarity with Prague
School linguistics is in a book review wherein he first mentions “function-
alism” (Dik 1967a). Dik approves of Jakobson’s view of the ‘means-ends
model’ of language, writing “[t]his means that each fact of language is
evaluated not only with respect to the system as a whole, but also with re-
spect to the ultimate function it fulfils in the larger setting of extra-
linguistic reality” (Dik 1967a: 87). These two basic meanings of ‘func-
tional’ appear in all of Dik’s writings.
Of more interest is Dik’s criticism of the Prague School’s theme-rheme
analysis. He argues that their analysis is “arrived at impressionistically”
and lacks scientific rigour. “In the first place”, he writes, “it is rather mis-
leading to subsume it under syntax and treat it as a part of grammar.
Rather, it should be regarded as a phenomenon depending on the interpre-
tation of the utterance in context and situation and thus already
presupposing the grammatical (and the semantic) structure of the utterance.
In the second place, if the distinction is really to be workable, there should
be some principled basis for finding theme and rheme in any given sen-
tence” (Dik 1967a: 86). This is the view now widely advocated in
Functional Grammar (cf. Bolkestein 1998).
3.2. The theory
Dik presents (proto-)Functional Grammar (FG 0 ) as a chapter in his 1968
dissertation on coordination. He was motivated to provide an explanation
of coordination that could overcome the problems in the approach advo-
cated by generative grammar. Moreover, Dik thinks that the problems are
not just with how generative grammar explains coordination but with the
theory itself. Although Dik provides nine points of divergence of FG 0 from
“any version of ‘restricted’ constituent structure grammar” (1968: 199),
two are central and will come to characterize all FG models. These are the
“independent introduction of grammatical functions” and a “different no-
tion of ‘derivation’”.
Dik’s justification of grammatical functions as being basic to linguistic
description consistently starts from the observation that formally equivalent
constituents do not have equivalent linguistic properties. Therefore, con-
stituents must have additional functional properties. Dik does not claim
that this insight is original and is happy to assume Longacre’s (1965: 65)
definition: “By function is meant the particular office or role of one distin-