The Notion That Ontogenesis Recapitulates Phylogenesis

In biology, this is known as Biogenetic Law, which Thain & Hickman (1994: 67) describe as:

Notorious view propounded by Ernst Hæckel in about 1860 (a more explicit formulation of his mentor Muller's view) that during an animal's development it passes through ancestral adult stages ('ontogenesis is a brief and rapid recapitulation of phylogenesis').  Much of the evidence for this derived from the work of embryologist Karl von Bær.  It is now accepted that embryos often pass through stages resembling related embryonic, rather than adult, forms.

Applied to language, the notion that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis would mean that during the development of language in the child, it passes through ancestral adult stages, such that, for example, the ontogenesis of English involves passing through Proto-IndoEuropean, Proto-Germanic, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English stages.

Why The Explicit Forms Of Modality Are Metaphorical

	implicit (congruent)	explicit (metaphorical)
subjective	modal operator may	mental clause I think
objective	modal Adjunct probably	relational clause it is probable

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 624):

The explicitly subjective and explicitly objective forms of modality are all strictly speaking metaphorical, since all of them represent the modality as being the substantive proposition. Modality represents the speaker’s angle, either on the validity of the assertion or on the rights and wrongs of the proposal; in its congruent form, it is an adjunct to a proposition rather than a proposition in its own right.

The Second–Order Nature Of The Textual Metafunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 398):

The textual metafunction is second–order in the sense that it is concerned with semiotic reality: that is, reality in the form of meaning. This dimension of reality is itself constructed by [the] other two metafunctions: the ideational, which construes a natural reality, and the interpersonal, which enacts an intersubjective reality. … The function of the textual metafunction is thus an enabling one with respect to the rest; it takes over the semiotic resources brought into being by the other two metafunctions and as it were operationalises them …

It Is The Grammar That Masterminds The Transformation Of Experience Into Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 603-4):

The central meaning–making resource of language — its “content plane” — is stratified into two systems: that of lexicogrammar, and that of semantics. The semantic system is the ‘outer layer’, the interface where experience is transformed into meaning. The ‘inner layer’ is the grammar, which masterminds the way this transformation takes place.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 17):

The view we are adopting is a constructivist one, familiar from European linguistics in the work of Hjelmslev and Firth. According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects. … Meanings do not ‘exist’ before the wordings that realise them.

The Difference Between 'The Meaning Of Words' And 'Lexis As Most Delicate Grammar'

(1) Words realise meanings — it's the stratal relation between lexicogrammar and semantics. That is, the relation is one of identity, across different levels of symbolic abstraction. See also here.

(2) 'Lexis as most delicate grammar' refers to the cline of delicacy on the lexicogrammatical stratum — the stratum of wording, not meaning. It means that, if the grammatical systems were elaborated in more detail, bundles of the most delicate features would specify individual lexical items — just as phonemes are specified by bundles of features such as {voiced, bilabial, stop}.

The Conflation Of Process And Attribute (Qualitative Processes)

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 222):

Within ‘quality’ attribution, there is a further option: a small number of qualities may be construed as a qualitative Process rather than as a qualitative Attribute. Thus, alongside will it be enough? we have will it suffice?. (Alternatively, we can interpret such clauses as having a conflation of Process and Attribute.)

Some examples of qualitative verbs (ibid.):

matter, count ‘be important’ …

suffice ‘be enough’,

abound ‘be plentiful;

figure ‘make sense’;

differ, vary ‘be different, varied’;

hurt, ache ‘be painful’;

dominate ‘be dominant’,

apply ‘be relevant’ …

do ‘be acceptable, enough’ …

remain ‘be + still’,

stink, smell, reek … ‘be smelly’ …

and a number of verbs of negative appraisal, some of them abstract versions of ‘be + smelly’, for example stink, suck …

eg Giving institutional power to ignorant imbeciles really sucks.

Complements That Can Not Be Subjects

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 123):

Any nominal group not functioning as Subject will be a Complement; and this includes nominal groups of one type which could not function as Subject as they stand, namely those with adjective as Head … There is an explanation of this ‘from above’ in terms of function in transitivity: nominal groups with adjective as Head can function in the clause only as Attributes, and the Attribute cannot be mapped onto the interpersonal rôle of Subject. This is because only participants in the clause can take modal responsibility, and the Attribute is only marginally, if at all, a participant.

'Fact' Clauses Vs 'Idea' Clauses

Diagnostic: Clause Constituency

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 206):

Thus while ‘fact’ clauses serve as the Phenomenon of a ‘mental’ clause and can therefore be made Subject and be theme–predicated, ‘idea’ clauses are not part of the ‘mental’ clause but are rather combined with the ‘mental’ clause in a clause nexus of projection.

'Fact' clauses realise the Range of sensing, whereas

'idea' clauses realise the projection of sensing.

Two Complementary Perspectives On The Text

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 3, 5):

… (1) focus on the text as an object in its own right; (2) focus on the text as an instrument for finding out about something else. Focusing on text as an object, a grammarian will be asking questions such as: Why does the text mean what it does (to me, or to anyone else)? Why is it valued as it is? Focusing on the text as instrument, the grammarian will be asking what the text reveals about the system of the language in which it is spoken or written. … But the text has a different status in each case: either viewed as artefact, or else viewed as specimen. … specimen here might mean specimen of a particular functional variety, or register …

A Major Difference Between Halliday's Model And Fawcett's

Halliday's model includes systems and structures on both strata of the content plane, whereas Fawcett's treats systems as semantics and structures as lexicogrammar. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429):

In Fawcett’s model, there is only one system–structure cycle within the content plane: systems are interpreted as the semantics, linked through a “realisational component” to [content] form, which includes items and syntax, the latter being modelled structurally but not systemically; […] in our model there are two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realised in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realised in lexicogrammatical ones.

The motivation for having two system–structure cycles is grammatical metaphor. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429):

… grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures. Since we [unlike Fawcett] allow for a stratification of content systems into semantics and lexicogrammar, we are in a stronger position to construe knowledge in terms of meaning. That is, the semantics can become more powerful and extensive if the lexicogrammar includes systems.

Martin's Register And Genre: Context Or Co-text?

Are Martin's register and genre, modelled as strata, theorised on the notion of context or co-text?

Halliday (2007 [1991]: 271):

Originally, the context meant the accompanying text, the wording that came before and after whatever was under attention. In the nineteenth century it was extended to things other than language, both concrete and abstract: the context of the building, the moral context of the day; but if you were talking about language, then it still referred to the surrounding words, and it was only in modern linguistics that it came to refer to the non-verbal environment in which language was used. When that had happened, it was Catford, I think, who suggested that we now needed another term to refer explicitly to the verbal environment; and he proposed the term “co-text”.

Martin, in describing his model of stratification, writes (1992: 496):

… the size of the circles also reflects the fact that the analysis tends to focus on larger units as one moves from phonology to ideology.  Thus the tendency at the level of phonology to focus on syllables and phonemes, at the level of lexicogrammar to focus on the clause, at the level of discourse semantics to focus on an exchange or "paragraph", at the level of register to focus on a stage in a transaction, at the level of genre to focus on whole texts …

As this quote makes clear, Martin’s ‘context’ refers to levels within language — and so to co-text, not context — since 'a stage in a transaction' and 'whole texts' are units of language.

Context Of Situation

Halliday (2007 [1991]: 277-8):

But “context of situation” is not just equivalent to setting. The context of situation is a theoretical construct for explaining how a text relates to the social processes within which it is located. It has three significant components: the underlying social activity, the persons or “voices” involved in that activity, and the particular functions accorded to the text within it. In informal terms, the situation consists in what’s going on, who is taking part, and where the language comes in.

(Semiotic) Context Of Situation Vs (Material) Setting

Halliday (2007 [1991]: 278):

The setting, on the other hand, is the immediate material environment. This may be a direct manifestation of the context of situation, and so be integrated into it: if the situation is one of, say, medical care, involving a doctor and one or more patients, then the setting of hospital or clinic is a relevant part of the picture. But even there the setting does not constitute the context of situation …

Theme In Polar Interrogative Relational Clauses

The reason why relational processes in polar interrogative clauses such as Are you crazy? do not exhaust the thematic potential of the clause is that the experiential weight of such clauses is in the participants, not the process. That is why Theme extends beyond the Finite/Predicator to include the Subject as well.

Here are the relevant quotes from IFG3.

How To Identify Theme

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 85):

… the Theme of a clause extends from the beginning up to, and including, the first element that has an experiential function — that is either participant, circumstance or process. Everything after that constitutes the Rheme.

Theme In Polar Interrogative Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 75, 76):

In a yes/no interrogative, which is a question about polarity, the element that functions as Theme is the element that embodies the expression of polarity, namely the Finite verbal operator. … but, since that is not an element in the experiential structure of the clause, the Theme extends over the following Subject as well.

The Experiential Weight Of Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 213-4):

… the experiential ‘weight’ is construed in the two participants, and the process is merely a highly generalised link between these two participants … Thus the verbs that occur most frequently as the Process of a ‘relational’ clause are be and have; and they are typically both unaccented and phonologically reduced … This weak phonological presence of the Process represents iconically its highly generalised grammatical nature. The limiting case of weak presence is absence; and the Process is in fact structurally absent in certain ‘non-finite’ ‘relational’ clauses in English … and in many languages there is no structurally present Process in the ‘unmarked’ type of ‘relational’ clause … Here the ‘relational’ clause is simply a configuration of ‘Be-er1’ + ‘Be-er2’.

Why Does SFL Give Priority To The Paradigmatic Axis?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 23):

Systemic theory gets its name from the fact that the grammar of a language is represented in the form of system networks, not as an inventory of structures. … 

structure … is interpreted as the outward form taken by systemic choices, not as the defining characteristic of language. 

1. Because meaning is intrinsically paradigmatic:

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

Meaning can only be construed symbolically, because it is intrinsically paradigmatic, as Saussure understood and built into his own definition of valeur.

2. Because explaining functionality gives priority to the view 'from above':

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 31):

Giving priority to the view ‘from above’ means that the organising principle adopted is one of system: the grammar is seen as a network of interrelated meaningful choices. In other words, the dominant axis is the paradigmatic one: the fundamental components of the grammar are sets of mutually defining contrastive features. Explaining something consists not of stating how it is structured but in showing how it is related to other things: its pattern of systemic relationships, or agnateness (agnation).

3. Because evolved systems cannot be explained simply as the sum of their parts:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 20):

… languages evolve — they are not designed, and evolved systems cannot be explained simply as the sum of their parts. Our traditional compositional thinking about language needs to be, if not replaced by, at least complemented by a ‘systems’ thinking whereby we seek to understand the nature and the dynamic of a semiotic system as a whole.

Why Take A Two-Stratal Approach To Transitivity?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503):

… we treat transitivity both within semantics (the paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation of figures) and within lexicogrammar (the grammar of transitivity): it is a system construed within the content plane of language — both in the ideational component in the lexicogrammar and in the ideation base. This two-stratal approach to transitivity makes it possible to model the resource of grammatical metaphor and is fundamental to work on multilingual systems for generating text.

Metaredundancy

The term 'metaredundant' means redundant on a redundant relation.

So, in a tristratal system, such as that of meaning–wording–sounding, the term metaredundancy refers to meaning being redundant on the redundant relation between wording and sounding.

Note that 'metaredundant' does not refer to the relation between any given pair of strata, such as meaning and wording, or wording and sounding.

Distinguishing Realisation From Instantiation

Realisation and instantiation are clearly defined by being characterised in terms of the two types of relational processes.

(1) realisation is an [intensive] identifying relation:

the lower stratum (Token) realises the higher stratum (Value).

The difference is one of (symbolic) abstraction or signification.

eg coin as Token represents two dollars as Value.

These are two levels of abstraction of the same phenomenon.

(2) instantiation is an [intensive] attributive relation:

a text as Carrier (instance/member/specimen) of English language system as Attribute (class).

eg Tony Abbott as Carrier (instance/member/specimen) of Homo sapiens as Attribute (biological category).

Here’s a way to check usage:

If the relation being described crosses strata, then it is realisation.

Instantiation does not cross strata:

the system of semantics is ‘instantiated’ by the semantics of the text;

the system of lexicogrammar is ‘instantiated’ by the lexicogrammar of the text;

the system of phonology is ‘instantiated’ by the phonology of the text.

And at the level of context:

the system of context of culture is ‘instantiated’ by the context of situation.

Interpersonal Meaning

Multimodality: The Central Integrative Rôle Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

… all of our experience is construed as meaning. Language is the primary semiotic system for transforming experience into meaning; and it is the only semiotic system whose meaning base can serve to transform meanings construed in other systems (including perceptual ones) and thus integrate our experience from all its various sources.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509-10):

Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds: it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system; it is the one semiotic into which all others can be “translated”; and it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order. In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning.

Why Discourse Analysis Needs Grammatics

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 658):

A text is meaningful because it is an actualisation of the potential that constitutes the linguistic system; it is for this reason that the study of discourse (‘text linguistics’) cannot properly be separated from the study of the grammar that lies behind it.

Process Types As "Spectrum"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 516):

In construing experience in this way, the grammar is providing a resource for thinking with. A strict taxonomy of separate process types would impose too much discontinuity, while a bipolar continuum would precisely be too polarised. What the grammar offers is, rather, a flexible semantic space, continuous and elastic, which can be contorted and expanded without losing its topological order. Since it evolved with the human species, it is full of anomalies, contradictions and compromises; precisely the properties which make it possible for a child to learn, because only a system of this kind could accommodate the disorder that is inherent in experience itself.

System Networks Construe A Continuous Semiotic Space

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 173):

Like all system networks, this [PROCESS TYPE] network construes a continuous semiotic space.

Terms In Systems Are Fuzzy Categories

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 174n):

Systemic terms are not Aristotelian categories. Rather they are fuzzy categories; they can be thought of as representing fuzzy sets rather than ‘crisp’ ones …

Grammatical Labels Reflect Core Category Signification

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 199):

… grammatical labels are very rarely appropriate for all instances of a category — they are chosen to reflect its central or ‘core’ signification ( … ‘prototypes’ …). These core areas are the central region for each process type … and the non-core areas lie on the borders between the different process types, shading into one another as the colours of a colour spectrum.

The Principle Of Systemic Indeterminacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 173):

The world of our experience is highly indeterminate; and this is precisely how the grammar construes it in the system of process type. Thus, one and the same text may offer alternative models of what would appear to be the same domain of experience, construing for example the domain of emotion both as a process in a ‘mental’ clause … and as a participant in a ‘relational’ one …

Process Types: Spherical Ordering

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 171-2):

There is no priority of one kind of process over another. But they are ordered; and what is important is that, in our concrete visual metaphor, they form a circle and not a line. (More accurately still … a sphere … .) That is to say, our model of experience, as interpreted through the grammatical system of transitivity, is one of regions within a continuous space; but the continuity is not between two poles, it is round in a loop.

Process Types As Continuous Regions With Core & Peripheral Areas

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 172):

The regions have core areas and these represent prototypical members of the process types; but the regions are continuous, shading into one another, and these border areas represent the fact that the process types are fuzzy categories.

Behavioural, Verbal & Existential Process Types As Categories At Boundaries

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 171):

Material, mental and relational are the main types of process in the English transitivity system. But we also find further categories at the three boundaries; not so clearly set apart, but nevertheless recognisable in the grammar as intermediate between the different pairs — sharing some features of each, and thus acquiring a character of their own.

Behavioural Processes At The Borderline

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 171):

On the borderline between ‘material’ and ‘mental’ are the behavioural processes: those that represent the outer manifestations of inner workings, the acting out of processes of consciousness and physiological states.

Verbal Processes At The Borderline

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 171):

On the borderline between ‘mental’ and ‘relational’ are the verbal processes: symbolic relationships constructed in human consciousness and enacted in the form of language, like saying and meaning …

Existential Processes At The Borderline

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 171):

And on the borderline between the ‘relational’ and the ‘material’ are the processes concerned with existence, the existential, by which phenomena of all kinds are simply recognised to ‘be’ — to exist or to happen …

Saussure, Semiotic Systems And Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

Meaning can be thought of (and was thought of by Saussure) as just a kind of social value; but it is value in a significantly different sense — value that is construed symbolically. Meaning can only be construed symbolically, because it is intrinsically paradigmatic, as Saussure understood and built into his own definition of valeur. Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

Saussure, Hjelmslev And The Problem Of Realisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

… we do not yet fully understand the nature of the relationship that is the semiotic analogue of the "cause : effect" of classical physics: this is the problem of realisation. It is true that Saussure, and even more Hjelmslev, took important strides towards an understanding; but we are still arguing about what Saussure really meant (to us it seems that he had not clearly separated the two concepts of instantiation and realisation), and Hjelmslev has been largely ignored — Sydney Lamb (eg 1966a, b) is almost the only person who has tried to follow through his achievements.

How To Distinguish Complement And Adjunct

(1) WHAT DOES THE TEXTBOOK SAY?

Complement

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 122-3):

A Complement is an element within the Residue that has the potential of being Subject but is not; in other words, it is an element that has the potential for being given the interpersonally elevated status of modal responsibility — something that can be the nub of the argument.

Adjunct

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 123):

An Adjunct is an element that has not got the potential of being Subject; that is, it cannot be elevated to the interpersonal status of modal responsibility.

(2) EXAMPLES

(a) Consider the following clause:

Maureen gave David the book.

Q1. Can ‘David’ be raised to Subject?

A. Yes, as follows: David was given the book by Maureen.

Conclusion: ‘David’ is Complement.

Q2. Can ‘the book’ be raised to Subject?

A. Yes, as follows: The book was given to David by Maureen.

Conclusion: ‘the book’ is Complement.

(b) Consider the following clause:

Maureen gave the book to David.

Q1. Can ‘to David’ be raised to Subject?

A. No. *To David was given the book by Maureen.

Conclusion: ‘to David’ is Adjunct.

(c) Consider the following clause:

The book was given to David by Maureen.

Q1. Can ‘to David’ be raised to Subject?

A. No. *To David was given the book by Maureen.

Conclusion: ‘to David’ is Adjunct.

Q2. Can ‘by Maureen’ be raised to Subject?

A. No. *By Maureen gave the book to David.

Conclusion: ‘by Maureen’ is Adjunct.

Context Vs Language

Halliday (2007 [1991]: 271):

What this means is that language considered as a system — its lexical items and grammatical categories — is to be related to its context of culture; while instances of language in use — specific texts and their component parts — are to be related to their context of situation. Both these contexts are of course outside of language itself.

The Epistemological Position Of SFL Theory

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: xi):

… we stress that the categories and relations of experience are not “given” to us by nature, to be passively reflected in our language, but are actively constructed by language, with the lexicogrammar as the driving force.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

We contend that the conception of ‘knowledge’ as something that exists independently of language, and may then be coded or made manifest in language, is illusory. All knowledge is constituted in semiotic systems, with language as the most central; and all such representations of knowledge are constructed from language in the first place.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

Our contention is that there is no ordering of experience other than the ordering given to it by language. We could in fact define experience in linguistic terms: experience is the reality we construe for ourselves by means of language.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 13):

In paradigmatic construal, we construe a phenomenon as being of some particular type — some selection from a set of potential types. … In syntagmatic construal, we construe a phenomenon as having some particular composition — as consisting of parts in some structural configuration.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 17):

The view we are adopting is a constructivist one, familiar from European linguistics in the work of Hjelmslev and Firth. According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects. As Hjelmslev (1943) said, reality is unknowable; the only things that are known are our construals of it — that is, meanings. Meanings do not ‘exist’ before the wordings that realise them. They are formed out of the impact between our consciousness and its environment.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 68):

Categorisation is often thought of as a process of classifying together phenomena that are inherently alike, the classes being as it were given to us by the nature of the experience itself. But this is not what really happens. Categorising is a creative act: it transforms our experience into meaning, and this means imposing a categorical order rather than putting labels on an order that is already there.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 68):

There would be indefinitely many ways of construing analogies among different elements in the total flux of experience; what our semantic resources enable us to do is to construe those analogies which yield categories resonating with what as a species, and as members of a particular culture, we have found to carry material and symbolic value.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 82):

From a typological point of view, construing experience in terms of categories means locating them somewhere in [a] network of relations.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 97):

To construe experience of concrete phenomena as meaning is thus to construe some signification which lies outside the ideation base as a value which is internal to the ideation base system.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 213):

The key to the construal of experience is the perception of change; the grammar construes a quantum of change as a figure (typically one clause) and sorts out figures in the first instance into those of consciousness (sensing and saying), those of the material world (doing & happening) and those of logical relations (being & having). The central element of a figure is the process; ‘things’ are construed as entities participating in processes, having different rôles, of which one is ‘that participant in which the process is actualised’ … ; hence the grammatical nucleus of the clause is the configuration of Process with Medium.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 353):

… our metatheoretic position is that the construction of meaning is both a discourse–semantic and a lexicogrammatical process.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 423-4):

… reality is not something that is given to us; we have to construct an interpretation of it — or, as we prefer to put it, we have to construe our experience. Interpretation is a semiotic process, and our interpretation takes into account not only the concrete natural world but also the socio-cultural realm that is brought into existence as a semiotic construct …

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

Language is not a second–order code through which meanings created in some higher–order realm of existence are mysteriously made manifest and brought to light. To borrow the conceit that Firth was fond of caricaturing, there are no “naked ideas” lurking in the background waiting to be clothed. It is language that creates meaning, in the sense that meaning has for us as human beings (which is the only sense of it that we can know).

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 603):

… our interpretation of meaning is immanent, so that meaning is inside language, not some separate, higher domain of human experience.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 608-9):

… the human brain has evolved in the construction of a functioning model of “reality”. We prefer to conceptualise “reality construction” in terms of construing experience. This is not so much because it avoids metaphysical issues about the ultimate nature of reality — we are prepared to acknowledge a broadly materialist position …

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… what is being construed by the brain is not the environment as such, but the impact of that environment on the organism and the ongoing material and semiotic exchange between the two.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… we want to emphasise the evolutionary perspective, since this allows us to start from what human beings have in common with other species rather than always insisting on our own uniqueness: when we talk of “construction of reality” it is almost impossible to avoid taking our own construction as the norm, whereas parakeets, pythons, and porpoises have very different experiences to construe — different both from each other’s and from those of people.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

… the concept of experience is, or can be, a collective one: experience is something that is shared by the members of a species — construed as a “collective consciousness”, in Durkheim’s classic formulation.

Cognition: The Mental Map Is A Semiotic Map

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: x):

… cognition “is” (that is, can most profitably be modelled as) not thinking but meaning: the “mental” map is in fact a semiotic map, and “cognition” is just a way of talking about language. … Instead of explaining language by reference to cognitive processes, we will explain cognition by reference to linguistic processes.

Nominal Groups Inside Prepositional Phrases: Indirect Participants

Q1. WHAT ARE THE EXPERIENTIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FACT THAT THE COMPLEMENT OF A PREPOSITION (MINOR PREDICATOR) CAN OFTEN BE RAISED TO SUBJECT?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 296-7):

… the Complement of a preposition can often emerge to function as Subject … This pattern suggests that Complements of prepositions, despite being embedded in an element that has a circumstantial function, are still felt to be participating, even if at a distance, in the process expressed by the clause.

Q2. HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH THESE TWO TYPES OF PARTICIPATION?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 261):

We can make a contrast, then, between direct and indirect participants, using ‘indirect participant’ to refer to the status of a nominal group that is inside a prepositional phrase …

Q3. HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH INDIRECT PARTICIPANTS FROM CIRCUMSTANCES?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 278):

Wherever there is systematic alternation between a prepositional phrase and a nominal group, as in all the instances in Participant functions realised by prepositional phrases, the element in question is interpreted as a participant.

Q4. WHAT IS THE FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIRECT AND INDIRECT PARTICIPANTS?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 295-6):

… the choice of ‘plus or minus preposition’ with Agent, Beneficiary and Range … serves a textual function. … The principle is as follows. If a participant other than the Medium is in a place of prominence in the message, it tends to take a preposition (ie to be construed as ‘indirect’ participant); otherwise it does not. Prominence in the message means functioning either (i) as marked Theme (ie Theme but not Subject) or (ii) as ‘late news’ — that is, occurring after some other participant, or circumstance, that already follows the Process. In other words, prominence comes from occurring either earlier or later than expected in the clause; and it is this that is being reinforced by the presence of the preposition. The preposition has become a signal of special status in the message.

Why Is An Instance 'A Token Of A Type'?

The organising principle of the cline of instantiation is intensive attribution (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 14-5, 145).

Attribution is concerned with class membership.

Attribution + elaboration includes type–subtype relations.

But, the most delicate subtype has just a single member.

The relation between a category and its single member is identification.

The category and the member uniquely identify each other.

The member is the Token that realises the category Value.

An instance is the Token that realises the most delicate category Value.

This is the distinction between instance and subtype.

The Success Of Mediocre Ideas

A mediocre idea that guarantees enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.

 — Mary Kay Ash