Sunday 20 July 2014

The Ideation Base As Semogenic Resource For Construing Itself

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 82):
The ideation base is a resource for construing extra-linguistic experience (such as visual experience). But it is also a semogenic resource for construing itself, since it is built up out of the kinds of relations it itself construes — relations such as intensive ascription. Once critical semantic mass has been built up, new categories can be construed internally within the system of the ideation base.