Exploration of Discontinuity in Verbal Group from a Systemic Functional Approach

Traditional grammar, the Sydney Grammar and the Cardiff Grammar have described and explained discontinuity in "verbal group" from different perspectives.Based on the previous study in the framework of the Functional Linguistics, this paper reconfirms the notion of "verbal group" and makes distinction with the "verb phrase" in traditional grammar and "verbal group" in the Sydney Grammar.This paper concludes that the "verbal group" is composed of main verb and main verb extension and main verb Extension in this sense is filled by adverb, preposition or adverb + preposition;discontinuity of "verbal group" in the present study shares similarities with discontinuity of other groups and all of them can be realized in the tree diagram.Besides, this type of discontinuity is mainly attributed to three factors: postponement of semantic weight, distribution of information unit and register.