Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 718):
By the same token, when a figure is realised metaphorically by a group or phrase, it is deprived of the interpersonal status of a proposition or proposal, making it inarguable. It is thus presented as something already established; and any modifications, including interpersonal evaluative ones, have to be taken for granted:
A standard empirical hypothesis is that one component of the mind/brain is a parser, which assigns a percept to a signal (abstracting from other circumstances relevant to interpretation). [Chomsky, 1995, The minimalist program. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, p.18.]Any serious approach to complex phenomena involves innumerable idealisations, and the one just sketched is no exception. [Chomsky, The minimalist program, p.19.]But interesting (and conflicting) arguments have been presented. [Chomsky, The minimalist program, p. 22.]Much of the fruitful inquiry into generative grammar in the past years has pursued the working hypothesis that UG is a simple and elegant theory, with fundamental principles that have an intuitive character and broad generality. [Chomsky, The minimalist program, p. 29.]