The Thought Occurs

Friday 15 April 2011

Compact Vs Dispersed Grammatical Realisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 593):
The grammatical realisation of FIGURATION is ‘compact’, being confined to the TRANSITIVITY system of the clause. In contrast, the grammatical realisation of EXPANSION is ‘dispersed’, ranging over more than one grammatical unit. (… compactly realised systems such as configuration [sic] may become dispersed in their realisation through the process of grammatical metaphor.)