Sunday 9 March 2014

Grammar: The Properties Of A Closed System

Halliday (2008: 174):
The notion of grammaticalisation depends on the notion of a closed system. This has the properties:
  1. a small fixed set of possibilities, x/y/z…, which are
  2. mutually exclusive, x = “not y or z”, and
  3. strictly proportional, x : y : z, is constant, with
  4. a defined condition of entry, eg nominal group, and
  5. generalised to a large domain of application, eg every major clause