Ticking All The Right Boxes

Projecting Verbal Group Complex Or Projecting Clause Complex?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 586):

Fig. 8-14 Projecting verbal group/clause nexuses: 

(a) Mary wanted to go (i) as verbal group complex [preferred], (ii) as clause complex; 

(b) Mary wanted John to go (i) as verbal group complex, (ii) [preferred] as clause nexus

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 588):

A verbal group nexus is intermediate between a clause nexus and a verbal group: a verbal group construes a single event, and a clause nexus construes two distinct processes; but a verbal group nexus construes a single process consisting of two events. These different options are available to speakers and writers when they construe their experience of the flow of events. They choose whether they construe a given experience as a process consisting of a single event, as a process consisting of a chain of two (or more) events, or as a chain of two (or more) processes.

Affiliation

Defeasible Reasoning

In logic, defeasible reasoning is a kind of reasoning that is rationally compelling, though not deductively valid. Defeasible reasoning is a particular kind of non-demonstrative reasoning, where the reasoning does not produce a full, complete, or final demonstration of a claim, i.e., where fallibility and corrigibility of a conclusion are acknowledged. In other words, defeasible reasoning produces a contingent statement or claim.

Defeasible reasoning finds its fullest expression in jurisprudence, ethics and moral philosophy, epistemology, pragmatics and conversational conventions in linguistics, constructivist decision theories, and in knowledge representation and planning in artificial intelligence. It is also closely identified with prima facie (presumptive) reasoning (i.e., reasoning on the "face" of evidence), and ceteris paribus (default) reasoning (i.e., reasoning, all things "being equal").

Positive Space

Timewave is the third episode in Series XII of Red Dwarf.

A ship from the 23rd century, the SS Enconium, is washed up from the past, and the Dwarfers run into a crew where

• ineptitude is to be tolerated by law, 
• audacious self-expression is encouraged, and 
• all forms of criticism are illegal.

Meaning At Risk

Word Of The Day

MUMPSIMUS – Someone who obstinately sticks to old ways or ideas in spite of all the evidence showing that they're wrong.

Having Been Had

The Interpersonal Constructs The Personal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the "interpersonal" metafunction, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being. The word "construct" is used to suggest a form of enactment — though something on which we inevitably build a theory, of ourself and the various "others" to whom we relate.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 583):

in the interpersonal mode we enact ourselves as speakers interacting with addressees;

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 583):

If we move outside the ideational metafunction to the interpersonal, the resource through which we interact with other people, we find that here we are acting out our conscious selves — "modelling" consciousness not by construing it but by enacting it.

No Problem

Field: The Ideational Dimension Of Culture As Semiotic System

Note that 'field' does not refer to the ideational meanings of language (as system, register or text).


Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

context of culture: the culture as social-semiotic system: networks of social semiotic features constituting the systems–&–processes of the culture; defined as potential clusters of field, tenor and mode.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 320): 

The context encompasses both the field of activity and the subject matter with which it is concerned (‘what’s going on, and what is it about?’) … .  The field is thus the culturally recognised repertoires of social practices and concerns …

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 321-2):

… there are two aspects to this category. In most contexts, there is both a first order field and a second order field — the first order field is the social activity being pursued (e.g. instructing somebody in how to prepare a dish …) and the second order field is the ‘subject matter’ the activity is concerned with (e.g. the ingredients and methods of cooking …).

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 322): 

… a full account of field would include a typology of the possible first and second order values that occur in a culture. Such a typology would show how closely various fields are related — how they form families.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 323):

… the semantic correlate of a contextual field is a domain. When we model the ideational semantics of a particular field, we create a domain model.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 323): 

Domain models are variants of the general model. A particular domain model specifies which of the semantic systems in the overall model are activated in a particular contextual field: the ideational meanings that are “at risk”. Each field thus has its own semantic profile, which can be seen against the background of the overall semantic potential.

University Admin And Its Academic Underlings

Functions Of SFL Theory

1. Ideational: construing experience.  The theory can be used to understand language and the culture it construes.
2. Interpersonal: enacting the self.  The theory can be used to legitimate the work of anyone who claims to be using it.

Anaphoric Reference

Beware Of Introduction to Functional Grammar & Construing Experience through Meaning

Caveat:

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

Spell Checker

SFL Metalanguage: A Stratified Semiotic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 30-4):

We noted above that the semantics/lexicogrammar of natural language is itself a 'realisation' (an abstract construction) of daily experience. Likewise, the system we use to explore the semantics/lexicogrammar — our theory of semantics and our grammatics — is a 'realisation' of that part of daily experience that is constituted by semantics and lexicogrammar; that is, it is an abstract construction of language. This system is itself a semiotic one — a metalanguage; in Firth's more everyday terms, it is language turned back on itself (cf. Matthiessen & Nesbitt, 1996). So whereas a language is (from an ideational point of view) a resource for construing our experience of the world, a metalanguage is a resource for construing our experience of language. 

Metalanguage has the same basic properties as any semiotic system. This means that it is stratified. It construes language in abstract theoretical terms; but this construal is in turn realised as some form of representation — either language itself, in discursive constructions of theory, or some form of designed semiotic (system networks, constituency rules, conceptual networks, logical formulae, and so on). In the environment of computational work, this level is in turn realised in some form of implementation (stated in a programming language1 such as LISP, Prolog or C). We could summarise as follows (see Figure 1-7): 

• metalanguage construes language at various strata (theoretical construal, representation, and implementation)
• metalanguage construes language in terms of resources (the circles) and processes using the resources (the arrows), where processes include description, deduction and compilation.
• the relationship between theoretical construal and representation should preferably be a natural one (note the 'should be'!), while the relationship between representation and implementation is likely to be more arbitrary (for instance, it should not matter whether LISP, Prolog or C is used).
• the range of phenomena accounted for in metalanguage tends to decrease at lower levels. (A primary goal of research is always to expand it.)

If we recognise stratification as an aspect of the design of metalanguage, we are in a position to locate aspects of the overall construal of meaning at the appropriate stratum. … 

Thus any account of [language] has to be metalinguistically stratified. It has to be constructed as a theoretical model out of the resources the theory provides and according to the constraints imposed by these resources. … 

As we have already noted, the representational semiotic may also be language itself — the theory may be represented discursively in the registers) of linguistics. In this case, the relationship between theory and language is similar to the relationship between 'theme' and 'language' in Hasan's (1985/9) theory of verbal art — a relationship where theory might be construed as a connotative semiotic (in Hjelmslev's, 1943, conception: a semiotic system whose expression plane is a semiotic system) … 

Finally, the representational semiotic may also be a diagrammatic one — e.g. network graphs, tree diagrams, our circle diagrams. With such graphic representation, it is important to ask (i) if the information represented graphically can be restated in some other form of representation and (ii) if its realisational relationship with respect to theory is clear. 

Another Thing Up With Which A Teacher Will Not Put

Ignorance Of Incompetence Explained

Arranging Language Data To Fit Discourse Semantic Theory

Halliday On Discourse Analysis

Halliday (1985/1994: xvi-xvii):

The current preoccupation is with discourse analysis, or 'text linguistics'; and it has sometimes been assumed that this can be carried on without grammar — or even that it is somehow an alternative to grammar.  But this is an illusion.  A discourse analysis that is not based on grammar is not an analysis at all, but simply a running commentary on a text … the exercise remains a private one in which one explanation is as good or as bad as another.

A text is a semantic unit, not a grammatical one.  But meanings are realised through wordings; and without a theory of wordings — that is, a grammar — there is no way of making explicit one's interpretation of the meaning of a text.

Standards

Entry Condition

Lemke On Covariate "Structure"

Lemke (1988: 159) reinterpreted his 'covariate structure' as a structuring principle, rather than a kind of structure:

My own 'covariate structure' (Lemke 1985), which includes Halliday's univariate type, is for the case of homogeneous relations of co-classed units, and should perhaps be called a 'structuring principle' rather than a kind of structure. 

Negotiating Commitment To Affiliation

The Teaching–Learning Unicycle

The Distinction Between Generality, Abstraction And Instantiation In SFL

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 615):

General terms are not necessarily abstract; a bird is no more abstract than a pigeon.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 144-5):

In other words, the elaboration sets up a relationship either of 

• generality (delicacy), of 
• abstraction (realisation), or of 
• token to type (instantiation);

Blogger Comments:

1. Generality/delicacy is equivalent to hyponymy and can be construed as either an identifying or attributive relation;
2. Abstraction/realisation can only be construed as an identifying relation;
3. Instantiation can only be construed as an attributive relation.

Affiliation

Hierarchy vs Taxonomy vs Cline As General Scale Types

Halliday (1961: Section 2.2):

... I have used the terms 'hierarchy', taxonomy', and 'cline' as general scale types. 

A hierarchy is taken to mean a system of terms related along a single dimension which must be one involving some form of logical precedence (such as inclusion). 

A taxonomy is taken to mean a special type of hierarchy, one with two additional characteristics:

(i) there is a constant relation of each term to the term immediately following it, and a constant reciprocal relation of each to that immediately preceding it; and 

(ii) degree is significant, so that the place in order of each one of the terms, statable as the distance in number of steps from either end, is a defining characteristic of that term.

A cline resembles a hierarchy in that it involves relation along a single dimension; but instead of being made up of a number of discrete terms a cline is a continuum carrying potentially infinite gradation.

The Facial Expression Of Content

The Meaning Of 'Topology' In SFL

Lemke (unpublished, undated):

A topology, in mathematical terms, is A SET OF CRITERIA FOR ESTABLISHING DEGREES OF NEARNESS OR PROXIMITY AMONG THE MEMBERS OF SOME CATEGORY. It turns a 'collection' or set of objects into a space defined by the relations of those objects. Objects which are more alike by the criteria are represented in this space as being closer together; those which are less alike are further apart. There can be multiple criteria, which may be more or less independent of one another, so that two texts, for instance may be closer together in one dimension (say horizontal distance), but further apart in another (vertical distance).  What is essential, obviously, is our choice of the criteria, the parameters, that define similarity and difference on each dimension.