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In this chapter Halliday distinguishes three grammatically relevant'language functions', and illustrates them from English:(i) the'ideational',(ii) the'interpersonal'and (iii) the'textual'. The first refers to what is commonly called the'cognitive meaning', or'propositional content', of sentences; the second to distinctions such as those of'mood', or'modality'(eg the differences between statements, questions and commands); and the third to the way in which the grammatical and intonational structure of sentences relates them to one another in continuous texts and to the situations in which they are used. It is in terms of the'textual function'that Halliday describes certain kinds of so-called'stylistic'variation (eg the use of an active or passive sentence to express the same'cognitive meaning').

As I pointed out in the previous chapter (p. 129) and as Halliday himself mentions below, his account of the'ideational'component of grammatical structure in terms of'transitivity functions' has much in common with Anderson's (1968a) or Fillmore's (1968) treatment in terms of'deep cases'. According to Halliday the distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs is becoming more and more'marginal'in English:'action clauses be organized on an ergative basis'(p. 157).... seem to