In Syntax and Functional Grammar, David Morley provides a freamwork for the analysis of syntactic structure from the perspective of sytemic functional grammar. In part, the book goes back to the grammar's 'scale and category' roots, but it does so in order to present a descriptive framework which reveals how the analysis of the syntactic structure can reflect the meaning structure. There are four sections. Section One, The Linguistic Framework, gives a brief overview of systemic grammar, incuding the linguistic system, context of situation and language functions. Section Two, Class, considers formal units and their classes. The principal focus is in Section Three, Structure, which covers the role of units as elements of structure. The argument also examines approaches by other grammarians. Section Four, Complexity and Complementation, discusses areas of structural complexity and concludes with several refinements to the analysis format. The text is well illustrated with examples and the fuller analytic frameworks are also shown in summary chapters. Syntax in Functional Grammar has two purposes.First, although several introductions to systemic grammar oriented towards the semantic functional dimension are available, lecturers who wish to teach the syntactic framework first now have an appropriate text.
Second, for any course in syntactic structure, there is a need for alternatives to the many introductions written largely from a tranformational generative perspective. The book is designed principally for students of language, linguistics and applied linguistics. It will also be of interest to students of language education and of English. The first three sections are suitable for both intermediate undergraduate and graduate courses; the fourth section deals with more advanced topics. G. David Morley is Lecturer in Modern Languages at the University Strathclyde, Scotland.