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This paper presents a comprehensive review of the functional approach and cognitive approach to the nature of language and its relation to other aspects of human cognition. The paper starts with a brief discussion of the origins and the core tenets of the two approaches in Section 1. Section 2 discusses the similarities and differences between the three full-fledged structural functional grammars subsumed in the functional approach: Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), Dik's Functional Grammar (FG), and Van Valin's Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). Section 3 deals with the major features of the three cognitive frameworks: Langacker's Cognitive Grammar (CG), Goldberg's Cognitive Construction Grammar (CCG), and Croft's Radical Construction Grammar (RCG). Section 4 compares the two approaches and attempts to provide a unified functional-cognitive grammar. In the last section, the author concludes the paper with remarks on the unidirectional shift from functional grammar to cognitive grammar that may indicate a reinterpretation of the traditional relationship between functional and cognitive models of grammar. |