ABSTRACT
In the present chapter I want to turn to some more concrete preliminaries: the ways in which we can divide the sentence into parts, so that we can later go on to look at the particular functions which each part serves. As well as reviewing the different kinds of elements that make up sentences, one of the main purposes of the chapter is to go rapidly over the basic terminology that I will be using. Technical terms that are specific to Hallidayan functional grammar, or that are used in a special sense, will be defined and explained as they are introduced in the book. However, there are other terms which I will be assuming are familiar to you – but which I will look at briefly in this chapter, just so that we can confirm that we are on common ground. If you have done grammatical analysis before, you will probably find that most of this chapter tells you nothing new, and you can safely skim through it rapidly (but check Section 2.2 on ranks, which organizes the familiar topics in a possibly unfamiliar way). If you are not familiar with grammatical analysis, you may find some of this chapter hard going – but it is a necessary foundation for what follows.
