Journal of Language and Culture

The current study aims at describing and anlysing two different Verbal Groups seen from the metafunctional perspectives:interpersonal and ideational functions under an SFL approach proposed by Halliday (1994). The relevant bibliographic references such as An Introduction to Functional Grammar by Halliday (1994) and his followers including Bloor T (1995), Martin, Mathiessen, Painter and Lock (1996) and Indonesian Verbal Goup with reference to Alwi, et al (1993) in Tata Bahasa Baku Bahasa Indonesia and Darjowidjojo (1978) in Sentence Patterns of Indonesia. English and Indonesian Verbal Group are explored from the interpersonal and ideational function or the mood and the transitivity structure. Both verbal group share the function as verbal operator or modal operator + Predicator and Process. The way of English verbal group logically structured is different from Indonesian in which the former is marked by obligatory primary tenses as Finite either Present or Past or Future and becomes Head (?) to Verbal Group leaving the rest as Modifiers shown as ? beyond including Event. However Indonesian Verbal Group finite-like features are realized optionally by the verbal operators both by temporal and modal operators as Modifiers to Verbal Group and leaves Event as Head(?). The permutations between the same group of auxiliary verbs occurs commonly in Indonesian with subtle different meaning. whereas English lacks these instances. Key words: interpersonal, ideational, event, predicator