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Linguistic theories can be divided into two varieties: those based on the form of linguis-tic expressions and those based on the function of linguistic expressions. Most present-day theories belong to the former variety. Because of their formal explicitness, the rule systems of these theories can be built into computer applications fairly straight-forwardly, although they provide no indication of the contexts and ways in which they should be applied appropriately. Theories based on linguistic function address matters of appropriate usage but frequently fail to supply enough low-level formal detail to facilitate computer implementation. Halliday's Systemic (Functional) Grammar (Butler 1985) is an example of a functional theory that has served as the basis for some interesting computer systems, especially those concerned with text generation. This is probably less attributable to the functional credentials of Systemic Grammar than to its exceptionally useful descriptive tool, the system network (e.g., Mellish 1988). Connolly and Dik's volume presents the first major survey of NLP work based on another theory on functional principles, Dik's Functional Grammar (FG) (Dik 1978). FG views words as predicates. The lexicon consists of a list of predicate frames