This is the first volume in a series entitled The collected works of M. A. K. Halliday. Halliday professes to be a “generalist” (p. 7), and this is clearly reflected in the range of titles in the series: The language of early childhood, Computational and quantitative studies, and Language and society, to name just three of the ten. Halliday's introduction in this volume (1–14) serves as an introduction to the whole series. In it, Halliday revisits many of the debates he has had in the past: among others, with followers of Chomsky; with psychologists; with corpus linguists who claim that corpus linguistics is just a tool for analysis; with sociologists such as Pierre Bourdieu who, Halliday claims, sidesteps the need for any linguistic analysis at all. Halliday likes “weak boundaries” (1), and this is reflected in some of the papers reproduced in this volume. Although they are all centered on his evolving notions of “grammar,” anyone familiar with Halliday's work will know that “grammar” for Halliday is not restricted to a traditional or generative conception of syntax, but rather includes phonological, lexical, and other linguistic levels. For anyone not very familiar with Halliday's work, On grammar should not be confused with an overview of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Rather, it is a collection of snapshots, allowing readers to trace the scholarly development of Halliday's ideas over time.

On grammar is divided into three sections, each prefaced by an Editor's Introduction by Jonathan J. Webster, which puts the included chapters into context and provides some helpful background information. The first section, “Early papers on basic concepts,” comprises five papers published between 1957 and 1966. These papers are interesting not least because they show the foundations of Halliday's later, better-known contributions to linguistics. The section also includes a comprehensive description of English written in 1964 for teaching purposes, which, in its time, must have represented a complete paradigm shift. The second section is called “Word-clause-text” and covers publications from 1966 to 1985. As the title suggests, these papers cover issues of lexis, clause structure, and textual structure. Halliday's famous “ideational,” “interpersonal,” and “textual” functions make their first appearance in “Language structure and language function” (chap. 7). The growing importance of context in Halliday's work becomes increasingly apparent in this period. “Construing and enacting” is the third section, which spans 1984 to 1996. These chapters deal principally with Halliday's growing interest in the issues raised by unconscious use of language versus conscious, self-aware thinking about language. For example, he distinguishes between perceptions of spoken (“spontaneous and unselfconscious,” 323) and written language. In chapter15, Halliday makes a distinction between “grammar,” which is what we (often) unconsciously use, and “grammatics,” which is the conscious study of grammar.

On the whole, then, this book will be useful or even fascinating to anyone wishing to get an idea of how Halliday's ideas on grammar evolved over a half-century.