The founder of SYSTEMIC FUNCTIONAL THEORY, M.A.K. Halliday,
characterizes its origins as follows in his entry on
"systemic theory" in the Encyclopedia of Language &
Linguistics (Pergamon Press):
Systemic, or Systemic-Functional, theory has its origins in the
main intellectual tradition of European linguistics that
developed following the work of Saussure. Like other such
theories, both those from the mid-20th century (e.g. Prague
school, French functionalism) and more recent work in the same
tradition (e.g. that of Hagège), it is functional and semantic
rather than formal and syntactic in orientation, takes the text
rather than the sentence as its object, and defines its scope by
reference to usage rather than grammaticality. Its primary source
was the work of J.R. Firth and his colleagues in London; as well
as other schools of thought in Europe such as glossematics it
also draws on American anthropological linguistics, and on
traditional and modern linguistics as developed in China.
Its immediate source is as a development of scale-&-category
grammar. The name "systemic" derives from the term
SYSTEM, in its technical sense as defined by Firth (1957); system
is the theoretical representation of paradigmatic relations,
contrasted with STRUCTURE for syntagmatic relations. In Firth's
system-structure theory, neither of these is given priority; and
in scale-&-category grammar this perspective was maintained.
In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract
representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. Syntagmatic
organization is interpreted as the REALIZATION of paradigmatic
features.
This step was taken by Halliday in the early 1960s (1963, 1965),
so that grammatical and phonological representations could be
freed from constraints of structure. Once such representations
were no longer localized, they could function
"prosodically" wherever appropriate. The shift to a
paradigmatic orientation added a dimension of depth in time, so
making it easier to relate language 'in use' to language being
learnt; and it enabled the theory to develop both in reflection
and in action -- as a resource both for understanding and for
intervening in linguistic processes. This potential was exploited
in the work done during the 1960s on children's language
development from birth through their various stages of schooling.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, the following information sources
maintained by the Systemic Modelling Group at Macquarie can be
consulted: