formal/functional

[Gerald van Koeverden]

Is "functionality" descriptive of the interaction between "form" and
"content"??

In philosphy, there has always been a debate over form vs. content.

You can easily separate out between them in 'comprehension,' in
thought.

The problem is you can't 'apprehend' one without the other.  In order
to apprehend anything, you have to experience it as a whole, through a
union of form and content.

Arguing that one is real and the other isn't, is analogous to arguing
thatlight is wave-like not photon-like, or vice versa, as physicists did
previous to Einsteinian physics and Compton's proof of the dual nature
of
light...

Where does "functionality" fit?  I suggest it is how "form" and
"content" interact in apprehension, and how we try to explicitly define
the nature of that interaction in our comprehension of our
apprehensions!

gerald van koeverden

Greg Thomson wrote:

> Dick Hudson suggests
> >'formal' = involving relations within language
> >'functional' = involving relations between language and its use
> ...
> >'functional grammar' = (study of) grammar where some formal patterns are
> >explained in terms of functional patterns.
>
> Does anyone really believe in functionless form? As long as a particular
> aspect of form is doing work in comprehension or production, it is
> functional. Take agreement. Agreement probably helps to unite parts of
> utterances which need to be united in comprehension (among other
> functions). That seems to be quite a useful function, in that agreement
> keeps cropping up all over the world. So agreement will not fly as an
> example of functionless form. Agreement may cease to function in a
> particular agrammatic individual language user. But if some aspect of form
> were to cease to have any function for an entire speech community, would it
> not thereby cease to be an aspect of form (in any linguistically relevant
> sense)?
>
> Greg Thomson