ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the French verbal group from the perspective of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory and, more specifically, Hallidayan linguistics (Halliday 1976, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004). What, among other things, distinguishes SFL from other functional theories of language is its systemic orientation and its stratification of content into semantics and lexicogrammar (Berry, this volume), thus allowing for an interpretation of grammar as a meaning-making system, for example the interpretation of the semantics of time as realised by the grammatical system of tense, one of the verbal group systems that will be discussed in this chapter. Another aspect of SFL is that it prioritises functional categories over grammatical classes. As pointed out by Caffarel and colleagues (2004: 13):
[A]ny particular descriptive categories such as the system of . . . tense, the structural functions of . . . Predicator and the grammatical classes of [verbal] group, verb . . . are realizations of categories defined by the theory – system, structural function, and class.
