beyond its congruent mode, there is metaphorical complementarity: the ideational model offers a complementarity between the congruent mode itself and the metaphorical mode, making it possible to take some phenomenon as already construed and then reconstrue it as if it was a phenomenon of a different kind.
still in its congruent mode, there are systemic complementarities: the ideational potential offers systemic complementarities such as the ergative and transitive models of participation in processes, and the mass and count(singular/plural) models of quantity;
within this congruent mode, there is a fractal complementarity: the highly generalised semantic types of projection & expansion are manifested in complementary domains — those of sequences, figures, and participants; so that, for example, some phenomenon of experience construed as having temporal expansion might appear either as a sequence or as a configuration;
in the congruent mode of construing experience, there is a metafunctional complementarity: the ideational potential offers two complementary modes for construing experience — the highly generalised logical mode, with projection & expansion as the dominant semantic motifs, and the more particularised experiential mode, with its typologies of processes, things, qualities, and circumstances;
The ideational meaning potential embodies not one single semantic system but rather several such systems coexisting; in Firth's terms, it is a "system of systems" — in two distinct but related ways [internal complementarities and registerial variation]. …
[Internal] complementarities constitute one form of indeterminacy of the system — one that allows it to be "polysystemic" in the particular sense of embodying more than one way of construing experience.
It seems likely that all these different kinds of indeterminacy are what make it possible for the grammar to offer a plausible construal of experience — one that is rich enough, yet fluid enough, for human beings to live with. We should stress once again that the examples cited here are features of the ideation base of one particular language, namely English. No other language will be identical. Indeed the distribution of indeterminacies is likely to be precisely one of the features in which languages differ most, and even perhaps varieties within one and the same language. But every language depends on indeterminacy as a resource for meaning — even if our grammatics is not yet very clever at teasing it out.
There are of course many different contexts for all these indeterminacies, in different regions of the total semantic space. Certain types of ambiguity appear to be not so much artefacts of the realisation (not just grammatical puns, so to speak) but rather another kind of complementarity, where the grammar is as it were "having things both ways" — both interpretations have to be accepted at one and the same time. This is sometimes the case with Token + Value structures, in figures of being. These clauses are always ambiguous, if the verb is be, since this verb does not mark the passive; yet some depend on being interpreted both ways — particularly, perhaps, some proverbial sayings, Thus, one man's meat is another man's poison is both Token ^ Value 'what one person likes may displease another' and Value ^ Token 'what one person dislikes may please another'; contrast what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, which can be interpreted only as Token ^ Value.
When two figures are linked into a sequence, by some logical-semantic relation, there is a rather wide range of possible semantic relations between the two: the relations of time and of cause and condition are particularly elaborated in this respect, but there are others besides — the manner, the matter, and so on. The distinctions among these relationships, however, may be to a greater or lesser degree neutralised, where one clause is construed as dependent on the other; this happens as the dependent clause moves from finite to non-finite status.
For example, in they get caught taking bribes the distinction that would be made in the agnate finite clause, among, say
they get caught if they take bribes,
they get caught when they take bribes,
they get caught because they take bribes,
is simply neutralised — it is not a blend of all three, nor is there any ambiguity involved. An intermediate degree of specificity, with partial neutralisation, can be seen in the non-finite clause with accompanying preposition, as in
they get caught for taking bribes.
What happens here is that the fact that there is a connection between the two figures is unequivocally construed by the dependency; but the nature of this connection — what kind of logical relationship is being set up — does not enter the picture.
In those figures where there is a second direct participant, some form of agency runs through all the different types of process; but agency is such a complex aspect of human experience that the grammar does not delineate it by a single stroke, but construes it by means of a fundamental complementarity, that between the transitive and the ergative perspectives. Thus figures involving two direct participants, such as Actor + Goal in the material, are aligned along two different axes: the transitive one, based on the potential extension of force (mechanical energy) from a doer to another entity; and the ergative one, based on the potential introduction of agency (causal energy) from another entity as external source. Thus the earthquake shook the house is construed both as 'earthquake + shake' plus optional Goal 'house', and as 'house + shake' plus optional Agent 'earthquake'. As always in cases of complementarity, certain parts of the region are more strongly aligned to one perspective, other parts to the other, but the total picture requires the confrontation of the two.
As we saw, the grammar distinguishes a number of types of process, material, mental, verbal and relational; the distinctions are made by a cluster of syntactic variables — the valency of associated participant roles, the class of entity that takes on each role, the potential for combining with other figures, the associated tense systems and the like. But since these variables "draw the line" at different places, there are areas of overlap, with mixed categories that share some characteristics with one group and some with another.
We gave the example of behavioural processes; these are a mixed category, formed by the overlap of the material, on the one side, and the mental or verbal on the other. Behaving is construed as a type of figure that (like the mental) typically has a conscious participant as the central role, and does not extend beyond this to a second participant; but, on the other hand, it does not project, and it has a time frame like that of the material. Thus behavioural processes lie squarely athwart a fuzzy borderline.
But, thirdly, within the overall construction of experience, the diversity of spheres of social action is realised by variation in the line-up of semantic features — that is, by variation in register. The probabilities are reset; and in some cases one or two "critical systems" are strongly affected in this way, such that the local norm skews the system, or perhaps even reverses the skewing set up by the global norm. It is here that we find future taking over as the unmarked primary tense in weather forecasting. As we said above, we define register variation in just these terms, as the ongoing resetting of probabilities in the lexicogrammar, which then functions to construe the ongoing variation at the level of the social process.
Secondly, systems have varying probability profiles, so that (in terms of information theory) they carry differential loads of information: the skewer the probabilities of the terms in a system, the greater the redundancy that it carries — hence the less we need to attend to its unmarked state. For example: it has been found that, in an English clause, positive is about ten times as frequent as negative (Halliday & James, 1993). What this means is that we build in to our sense of a figure the presumption that something is or something happens, rather than that something is not or does not happen; extra work has to be done if a process is being construed as negative. The same applies to future tense, as we saw: extra grammatical energy is required to assign a figure to the future.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 557):
How would we summarise the significance of indeterminacy, from the point of view of the semantic construal of experience? It lies first and foremost, perhaps, in the general principle that is being proclaimed, if indeterminacy is a typical and unremarkable feature of the grammar: that 'this is the way things are'. Our "reality" is inherently messy; it would be hard to construe experience, in a way that was beneficial to survival, with a semiotic system whose typical categories were well-defined, clearly bounded, and ordered by certainty rather than probability. This is the problem with designed systems, including semiotic ones: as a rule, they fail to provide adequately for mess.
Blogger Comments:
Given the immanent view of meaning, which the authors espouse, 'messiness' can only be a property of semiotic systems themselves.
Synchronically (that is, viewed synoptically in this way as a meaning potential) a language is, as we have said, a probabilistic system: if we say that, in the grammar, there is a system of primary tenses past/present/future, we assume the rider 'with a certain probability attached to them'. But we do not, of course, speak or write with one grammatical system at a time. Systems intersect with each other simultaneously (we choose tense along with voice, polarity, mood, transitivity and so on), and they follow each other in linear succession (we choose tense in clause 1, again in clause 2, again in clause 3 and so on). Each instance has its environment, both of previous instances, and of simultaneous instances of systems with their own sets of probabilities.
We shall not attempt to discuss this issue here; except to refer briefly to what is one important aspect of indeterminacy, namely partial association between systems. We model the grammar as if each of these choices was independent that the choice of tense, say, is not affected by the simultaneous choice of mood. This may, in fact, be so; but when choice is made in two systems simultaneously, such that each serves as environment for the other, there is often a conditioning effect on the probabilities. This may be an indication of a change in progress, or it may be a stable feature of the overall system.
The significance of global probabilities in the grammar emerges in various ways, both historical and synchronic. Historical change in language is typically a quantitative process, in which probabilities in systems at every level are gradually nudged in one direction or another, now and again becoming categorical so that some systemic upheaval takes place. Each instantiation of a tense form, say, whenever someone is speaking or writing in English, minutely perturbs the probabilities of the system — because what we call "system" and "instance" are one and the same phenomenon, being observed from different depths in time.
There are, of course, more catastrophic types of change: languages become creolised, creolised systems in turn become decreolised, or a language ceases to be spoken altogether. At the "instance" end, a single highly-valued instance may exert a disproportionate effect: quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare are familiar triggers of this "Hamlet factor" in English (in media discourse today almost every change is a sea change, which goes into our folk taxonomy of types of change).
But such qualitative effects take place against a background of microscopic quantitative pressures, the sort of nanosemiotic processes by which a language is ongoingly restructured as potential out of the innumerable instantial encounters of daily life — the "sheer weight of numbers", as we sometimes call it.
And in the ontogenetic dimension of history, the growth and development of language in a human child, an analogous dialectic can be observed: highly valued instances of text (rhymes, favourite stories and the like) interact with the quantitative pressures of the talk going on around (the child's access to the global probabilities — note that children do not begin learning the grammar by sorting out functional variation!) to yield a meaning potential that is a reasonable copy of the probabilistic system shared among the community.
This illustrates one very powerful feature of a probabilistic system of this kind: that it accommodates systematic functional variation. We have discussed the two text types, weather forecasting and recipes, as examples of variation in register: of the way in which the meaning selections in texts tend to vary systematically with their contextual function — their value in the social process. We pointed out that this variation is seldom categorical: except in very closed registers, or "restricted languages", no major options are likely to be totally excluded. What happens is that the probabilities are reset. This may be a relatively minor skewing affecting a large number of semantic features; but one or other system may stand out by being particularly clearly realigned, as happens with tense and with mood, respectively, in our two examples. We can in fact define register variation as the resetting of probabilities in the lexicogrammatical and semantic systems, including those in the ideation base. We observe these probabilities in the form of frequencies in the text;
What we are saying is that there is a global pattern of probabilities in English, including a probability profile of the tense system whereby the probability of future is (say) 0.1. The register of weather forecasting, however, sets up a local pattern in which the probability of future is (say) 0.5. This changes the meaning of the system of primary tense, because it reverses the marking and hence sets up a new relationship among the different terms. It construes a realm of experience in which the future becomes the familiar dimension of time, the point of reference by which both present and past are defined.
We have sometimes referred to the relative frequency of a particular feature of the grammar. For instance, in our two examples of the meaning base as a resource in language processing, certain patterns characteristically recurred: future tense in the weather forecasts, imperative mood in the recipes. In each case this was a special feature pertaining to the register in question: in weather forecasts, the future tense is especially frequent relative to the other primary tenses.
To say this means that there is a general expectancy in English discourse that, again relative to the other primary tenses, future will occur less frequently than it does here. In other words, there is some global expectation, in the grammar of English, about the relative frequency of the different terms in the primary tense system, past, present and future. Similarly there is some global expectation about the relative frequency of imperative and indicative mood. Frequency in the text is to be interpreted, therefore, as the manifestation of underlying probability in the system.
Local indeterminacies of all these types are found in all regions of the content plane, either within one stratum or at the interface between one stratum and another (including of course puns, which are formed at the interface of content and expression). Some of them involve very general categories, and hence resonate across wide stretches of semantic space, like the transitive/ergative complementarity. We may call them "local", however, in contrast to one global form of indeterminacy which is a feature of the entire system of language, and probably of any evolved semiotic system, namely its probabilistic character.
(5) Complementaritytransitivity (i): transitive perspectivedry = 'make dry' (cf. wipe)transitivity (ii): ergative perspectivedry = 'become dry' (cf. fade)
As discussed in Chapter 4 above, the grammar adopts two complementary perspectives on agency, the transitive and the ergative. Most processes are oriented primarily within one perspective or the other; here we have illustrated the complementarity with a verb that is at home in both.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 551):
(4) NeutralisationIf the dependent clause in such an environment is finite, it selects one or other type of enhancing relation: condition, cause or time. If the dependent clause is non-finite, the distinction is partially or wholly neutralised.
(3) Overlap ('borderline case')
Behavioural processes such as listen, watch share some features with material processes ('present-in-present' as unmarked tense; no projection), other features with mental processes (the Medium/ Behaver is a conscious being). They lie on the borderline between 'doing' and 'sensing' (so can be re-iterated as do in some contexts but not in all).
(2) Blendthey might win tomorrow— ability 'they may be able to'x— probability 'it is possible they will'Here, on the other hand, the meaning of the oblique modal might combines the two senses of 'able' and 'possible', rather than requiring the listener to choose between them. If the verbal group is 'past', however, this again becomes an ambiguity:they might have won— ability 'they were capable of winning (but they didn't)'— probability 'it is possible that they won (we don't know)'
(1) Ambiguity(i) must:You must be very careful! (when you do that)
— obligation 'it is essential that you should be'
You must be very careless! (to have done that)
— probability 'I am certain that you were'
Here the listener/reader adopts either one interpretation or the other — usually, of course, without noticing that there is another possible meaning. In (i), the Attribute suggests the choice (one does not usually instruct someone to be careless!); but cf. you must be very sure of yourself ('before you do that'/ 'to have done that'). Compare also (ii), where the ambiguity is one that is typical of identifying clauses.(ii) home is where your heart is
— Token ^ Value 'if you live in a place, you love it'— Value ^ Token 'if you love a place, it is home to you'
There are perhaps five basic types of indeterminacy in the ideation base: ambiguities, blends, overlaps, neutralisations, and complementarities — although it should be recognised from the start that these categories are also somewhat indeterminate in themselves. What follows is a brief characterisation of each in turn:
(1) ambiguities ('either a or x'): one form of wording construes two distinct meanings, each of which is exclusive of the other.(2) blends 'both b and y'): one form of wording construes two different meanings, both of which are blended into a single whole.(3) overlaps ('partly c, partly z'): two categories overlap so that certain members display some features of each.(4) neutralisations: in certain contexts the difference between two categories disappears.(5) complementarities: certain semantic features or domains are construed in two contradictory ways.
We have tried to make the point that the human condition is such that no singulary, determinate construction of experience would enable us to survive. We have to be able to see things in indeterminate ways: now this, now that, partly one thing, partly the other — the transitivity system is a paradigm example, and that lies at the core of the experiential component of grammar.
What does it mean to say that a natural language is an indeterminate system? In the most general terms, it suggests that the generalised categories that constitute language as a system — as "order", rather than as randomness or "chaos" (let us say randomness rather than chaos, since chaos in its technical reading is also a form of order) — are typically not categorical: that is, they do not display determinate boundaries, fixed criteria of membership, or stable relationships from one stratum to another. We could refer to them as "fuzzy", in the sense in which this term is used in fuzzy logic, fuzzy computing, etc.; but we prefer to retain the term "indeterminate" for the phenomena themselves, since "fuzzy" is usually applied to the theoretical modelling of the phenomena (it refers to meta-fuzz rather than fuzz).
In the world of classical physics, the flux of experience was held under control: reality had to be prevented from wriggling, while it could be observed and experimented with. The control over experience is partly a physical matter; but it is also in part semiotic, and the semiotic control of experience is achieved by the nominalising power of the grammar. Since it is the grammar that has construed it in the first place, the grammar is able to transform it by reconstruing it in other terms. Grammatical metaphor played an important role in shaping our humanist world.
But it shaped it in a way which soon came to be felt as decidedly inhuman. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, within a hundred years of Newton's "Opticks", people were reacting against the rigidity of the world of physics; what they could not accept were the ideological constraints set up by scientific discourse, by a grammar which construed all experience in terms of things. In our own twentieth century the scientists themselves have become weary of it, finding that it prevents them from engaging with the indeterminacy and the flow that they now regard as fundamental — let alone with the concept of the universe as conscious and communicating, as something itself to be interpreted as a semiotic system-&>process. Once we conceive of reality in semiotic terms, it can no longer surprise us that language has the power to construe it, maintain it, and transform it into something else.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 546):
We have shown that the motive for reconstruing experience in this way was in the first instance a textual one: in the grammars of these languages, when one is developing a reasoned chain of logical argument such that complex phenomena have to be given a clearly defined status in the organisation of information (the clause as "message"), such phenomena have to be constructed in nominal form. But there is no insulation between one part of the grammar and another, and this inevitably has ideational effects.
Any semantic construct that appears as topical Theme has a function in transitivity; if it is formed as a nominal group, it is potentially a participant in some process, and therefore at some level it is an entity, a thing. If we say diamond is transformed into graphite, this is a process involving two things, diamond and graphite; if we reconstrue this as the transformation of diamond into graphite it has become one thing, transformation, with diamond and graphite serving only circumstantially to qualify it as a thing of a certain kind.
This reconstrual of experience is complex: what were first construed as happenings have become things, with the original things now serving merely as their appendages; but at the same time what were first construed as logical relationships between processes have been reconstrued as processes in their own right. So the transformation of diamond into graphite is caused by ... .
It is also complex in another way: the original status accorded to the phenomenon is not lost, but enters into a metaphorical nexus with the new one. So transformation is still a process, as well as being a thing; is caused by, as well as being a process, is still a logical relation between processes. But, as we have seen, the overwhelmingly predominating effect of this reconstrual is a nominalising one, in which other phenomena are transformed into things. This is a major shift in ideational terms, and plays a significant part in the historical semiotic.
But to say that the semantic relations have become less explicit is to imply that these relations themselves have not changed. In one sense, this is true: we can "unpack" the metaphor, and experts will generally agree on how to do it. But in another sense it is not true.
Scientific discourse began, as we saw, with the creation of technical taxonomies and mathematical constructs; these were already modulating the semiotic construal of experience, even if only at the margins, by creating a new realm of abstract things that had not existed before.
But the transformation brought about by the renaissance was a more fundamental one; not only was this realm of abstract things greatly extended, but, more significantly, phenomena hitherto construed as processes and properties were now transformed into things — they were reconstrued, by grammatical metaphor. We have illustrated this transformation from English; but it took place in all those languages that took over the semiotic functions of medieval Latin.
