1. Rationale

The history of linguistics has seen the endless development of different approaches, each of which defines its own tasks, scopes and objectives. Of the grammatical approaches, traditional grammar (TG) considers sentence as the largest unit in the grammatical system of a language, and the study of grammar is primarily concentrated around the study of sentence. Because of its earlier foundation, traditional grammar has largely influenced on linguistics in general and on language teaching in particular in several parts of the world, including Vietnam. For a long time, sentence has been the main content of grammar teaching at schools. As a result, the concept of sentence has become very familiar to many people. Until recently, there has witnessed the flourish of systemic functional grammar (SFG) during the late 20th century and its great influence on language research and teaching. Among the units recognized for study in functional grammar, clause represents as a crucial one.

Clause description has been found not only in English but also in Vietnamese although the studies on Vietnamese clause are found in a small number. Since functional grammar is still new in Vietnam, the term clause has often been confused and misunderstood, even some linguists argue that the term sentence should be used instead of the clause. Therefore, the questions to ask would be “What does the clause really mean?”, “Is it completely the same as the sentence in traditional grammar?”

The thesis aims at exploring the notion of sentence in traditional grammar and clause in functional grammar, at the same time making comparison between them to see in what ways they are similar and different.
2. Aims of the study

Within the framework of an MA thesis the study aims to:
– investigate how the sentence in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and described in traditional grammar.
– investigate how the clause in English and Vietnamese is conceptualized and described in functional grammar.
– compare and comment on similarities and differences between the two approaches in conceptual and descriptive terms.
3. Scopes of the study

This study deals with comparison between the sentence in TG and the clause in SFG, with concentration on the investigation of the simple sentence in TG and its counterpart in SFG – the clause simplex.