Halliday On The Transformationalist And Behaviourist Models Of Language Learning

Halliday (Interviews with M A K Halliday p 50):

The broader point is that l think that, once you take the protolanguage seriously, the nativist point of view was only tenable in so far as you assume that the whole process begins with the mother tongue. But once you find that there is this protolinguistic stage, which has nothing whatever to do with grammar or any of the formal properties of human language, then the issue becomes rather meaningless. What I am much more concerned about is to say that what is really false — and it's common to the Transformationalist and behaviourist views, which are really variants the same thing in this respect — is that they are both individualist. They are both the products of extreme Western philosophical individualism. That is, the child is treated as an isolate bound by his skin and the rest of the world is out there. And his job is to go and get it. It's readymade. It's a construct. It exists in some sense. And the child has to, in some sense, acquire it. I don't believe this at all. I think that the child is in fact — if you like, you could use the word 'creating', but the word 'creating' has so many overtones in English. Let me use the term 'construing' rather, because it implies mental construction - the child is construing language, that is to say. But the child is not doing it as an individual. He is doing it as an intersubjective process together with the mother. And it is a process that cannot happen in the individual. It can happen only as a social interactive or inter-subjective process. And it's this that constitutes my main philosophical objection to both the Transformationalist and behaviourist models of language learning. And until people like Trevarthen (e.g. 1974) came along I didn't... I am not a psychologist, as you know, but I wasn't aware of psychological theories which seemed to me to be saying what I wanted. It seems to me that that kind of work does. He has the very much same idea, not about language but about the whole of what you call psychological acts. Now, l see that as being a very good model of language learning.

Social Semiotics

A black cat crossing your path signifies that the animal is going somewhere.

 — Groucho Marx

The Incubation Of Economic Units

Fieldwork

How Are The Paradigmatic And Syntagmatic Axes Related?

System is more abstract than structure:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 22):

It will be clear that [system] is a more abstract representation than that of structure, since it does not depend on how the categories are expressed.

so syntagmatic organisation realises paradigmatic organisation:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 24):

Structural operations — inserting elements, ordering elements, and so on — are explained as realising systemic choices. … When we speak of structural features as ‘realising’ systemic choices, this is one manifestation of a general relationship that pervades every quarter of language. Realisation derives from the fact that a language is a stratified system.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 13):

… on the one hand, syntagmatic organisation realises paradigmatic organisation; on the other hand, types in a network of paradigmatic organisation correspond to fragments of syntagmatic specification …

Symposium

Origin

late 16th century (denoting a drinking party): via Latin from Greek sumposion, from sumpotēs ‘fellow drinker’, from sun- ‘together’ + potēs ‘drinker’.

Nominal Groups: The Modifying Relation Is Inherently Ascriptive (Intensive, Possessive Or Circumstantial)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 183):

Experientially, there is a ‘carrier’ — the Thing — and there are ‘attributes’ — Epithets and other modifiers. However, participants are construed not only experientially but also logically, which means that the Thing (typically) serves as a Head that can be modified by successive attributes and that this modifying relation is inherently ascriptive. […] There is the same range of types of ascription as are found in ascriptive figures, and these can be interpreted in terms of the different categories of expansion.

expansion of Thing	Deictic	Epithet	Classifier	Thing	Qualifier
elaboration (intensive)	these	nutritious		swedes
	these		Mexican	mangoes
				kitchens	of distinction
extension (possessive)	my aunt’s			teapot
	the			stems	of the leek
	the		table	leg
enhancement (circumstantial)	these		18th C	vases
	some			mangoes	from Mexico
	a	chicory-like		plant

The Tyranny Of Deixis

Workplace Psychopaths

We all know one.

Read this to learn what to do if you find yourself working with one...

Facts Vs Reports

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 482):

Whereas any clause that is projected by another clause, verbal or mental, is either a quote (paratactic) or a report (hypotactic, or embedded if the process is a noun), any clause that has the status of ‘projected’ but without any projecting process is a fact and is embedded, either as a nominalisation serving as Head or as Postmodifier to a ‘fact’ noun serving as Head.

Frequency Vs Usuality

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 264):

In the temporals there is an additional category of ‘frequency’, how many times?. This is related to the interpersonal category of usuality, but it is not identical to it; usuality is a modal assessment referring to position on a scale between positive and negative (always/never), whereas frequency is the extent of the repetition of the process. The categories of extent and usuality may, however, work together, as in a narrative where habitude is established.

Literally Inflamed

Tenor & Field

Perhaps the difference between a professor and a bus driver is 

that the professor can say stupid things with complete authority 

while the bus driver is not authorised to make brilliant insights.

― Les Back, The Art of Listening

Signifié et Signifiant

ISFC Update

Latest conference news

Word Class

Exacting Through Torture

examine (v.) 

c.1300, from Old French examiner "interrogate, question, torture," from Latin examinare "to test or try; consider, ponder," literally "to weigh," from examen "a means of weighing or testing," probably ultimately from exigere "weigh accurately" (see exact (adj.)). Related: Examined; examining.

The Academic "Selfie"

Academic discourse analysts presenting snapshots of academic discourse…

Doubly Negative

Emotive Sensing As Ascribed Graduated Qualities

Chomsky Confusing Biology With Language

Chomsky (1980: 48):

I have not hesitated to propose a general principle of linguistic structure on the basis of observation of a single language. The inference is legitimate, on the assumption that humans are not specifically adapted to learn one rather than another human language. … Assuming that the genetically determined language faculty is a common human possession, we may conclude that a principle of language is universal if we are led to postulate it as a 'precondition' for the acquisition of a single language.

 Blogger Comments:

[1] Genes are biological entities.  The expressions of genes are biological entities.  Any phenotypic traits whose genes have been selected because they are adaptive are biological entities.  Therefore, when Chomsky speaks of a genetically determined "language faculty", he is speaking about a biological entity.

[2] On the other hand,  linguistic structure and principles of language are properties of language, not biology, and so are not the expression of genes.

If a language faculty was "genetically determined", there would be genetic variation (alleles) for it in the population.  The language faculty of an adopted child would be less like the language faculty of its adoptive parent and more like the language faculty of a biological parent it had never met, such as a sperm donor.

Genes provide the biological capacity for children to learn the language whose expressions are perceivable phenomena in their material environment.  What children learn through a biological capacity and the biological capacity itself are distinct phenomena.

[3] Because the preconditions for the acquisition of language are biological, in contradistinction to principles of language, Chomsky's conclusion that a principle of language is universal because it is a precondition for acquisition is entirely spurious.

∞

The problem Chomsky faces is trying to make 17th Century Cartesian 'innateness' scientifically credible as 'genetic inheritance' in the 21st Century.  Given the huge disjunct between the Cartesian Rationalism (non-Empiricism) of the 17th Century and empirical science of the 21st, he is forced to cherry-pick ideas from biology and present them in a way that disguises the inconsistencies.  In a linguistic community largely ignorant of biology and the history and philosophy of science, and whose institutional status and economic well-being depends on affiliating with his work, Chomsky, who in 1972 said that Natural Selection has 'no substance', remains a credible intellectual force.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

— Galileo Galilei

Circumstance As Process: Identifying Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 243):

… all clauses of this type are metaphorical.

Instantiation

One forgets words as one forgets names. 

One's vocabulary needs constant fertilising or it will die.

— Evelyn Waugh

But There Ain't No Sanity Clause

Prescriptivism

Van Leeuwen's 'Ideal vs Real' Distinction In Visual Semiotics

Leaving aside their interpersonal function of valuation, the meanings 'ideal' and 'real', like the meanings 'idea' and 'thing', are construals of experience, and, as such, are ideational, not textual, with regard to metafunction.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7):

The ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience — it is language as a theory of reality, as a resource for reflecting on the world.

'Real' refers to the material order of experience: things (and other phenomena); whereas 'ideal' refers to the semiotic order: ideas of things (and other phenomena). 

As levels of abstraction, 'ideal' is higher than 'real', and positioning expressions of 'the ideal' above expressions of 'the real' in images is a visual means of representing that ideational relation.

The textual metafunction, on the other hand, is concerned with organising the ideational and interpersonal, as through giving different degrees of textual prominence — e.g. thematic or informational — to ideational and to interpersonal meanings.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7-8):

The textual metafunction is an enabling one; it is concerned with organising ideational and interpersonal meaning as discourse — as meaning that is contextualised and shared. But this does not mean processing some pre-existing body of information; rather it is the ongoing creation of a semiotic realm of reality.

If it is true that the top portion of an image has a textual function in the construction of an image as message, this is quite distinct from the types of ideational meaning that are likely to be given textual prominence by such means.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 85): 

Initial position in the English clause is meaningful in the construction of the clause as message; specifically, it has a thematic function.

How To Use The Other Metafunctions To Identify The Participants In Identifying Processes

Interpersonal: The Token is the Subject if the clause is operative voice.

Textual: The Identifier is the focus of New information (realised by tonic prominence).

Conscious Processes And Linguistic Choice

What does the construal of experience that has evolved in language, as modelled by SFL grammatics, tell us about people using language?

(1) Someone using language is modelled as a projection nexus in which symbolic processing projects the content plane of language into semiotic existence.

(2) The Medium of symbolic processing, the Symboliser, is construed as a symbol source (Sayer) in the case of saying (verbal processes), and as endowed with consciousness (Senser) in the case of sensing (cognitive and desiderative mental processes).

(3) The symbolic processing that projects the content plane of language into semiotic existence can be either self-engendered (middle) or other-engendered (effective).

(4) Symbolic processing projects wording (lexicogrammar) into semiotic existence, in the case of saying (verbal processes), and it projects meaning (semantics) into semiotic existence, in the case of sensing (cognitive and desiderative mental processes).

(5) The linguistic content that is projected into semiotic existence is organised as a system in which options are networked according to relations that are both logical (expansion: elaboration, extension and enhancement) and experiential (symbolic identity: realisation).

(6) The activation of specific options in the network of relations — during logogenesis (the creation of text) — is the process of instantiation.

(7) The question of which options will be instantiated in a given situation type is built into the system of potential as probabilities, varying as registers, established through previous experiences of logogenesis in the context of ontogenesis.

The notion of "free will" is another matter.

Honestly, I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will.  I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all.  I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing?Schopenhauer once said: Der Mensch kann was er will; er kann aber nicht wollen was er will (Man can do what he will but he cannot will what he wills).

― Albert Einstein

Free will is a delusion caused by our inability to analyse our own motives.

— Charles Darwin

The Difference Between Context And Register

Context is realised by language, and so: more abstract than language.

The context-language relation is one of symbolic identity: Value-Token.

Registers are subpotentials of language (that realise subpotentials of context).

The register-language relation is one of class-membership: Carrier-Attribute.

Context Vs Register

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

Context is the ‘semiotic environment’ of language (and other socio-semiotic systems such as image systems); its systems specify what demands may be placed on language and what rôle it may play in responding to those demands.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 563)

… a register is a particular probabilistic setting of the system; and the move from one register to another is a re-setting of these probabilities.

From Behaviour To Saying Behaviourally

(1) He nodded.

he	nodded
Behaver	Process: behavioural

(2) He nodded agreement.

he	nodded	agreement
Sayer	Process: verbal	Verbiage

(3) He nodded that he agreed with her.

he	nodded		that	he	agreed	with her
a		“	b
Sayer	Process: verbal			Senser	Process: mental	Accompaniment