The SFL Construal Of Ideational Semantics From The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 16):

We are also constructing meaning out of the grammar. But there are two significant differences.

(i) One is that we are not starting from the word, but from larger units of grammatical organisation: clauses and clause complexes (sentences) — the largest units, in fact, that are constructed on grammatical principles.

(ii) The other is that we are starting not from the overt categories and markers of the grammar, like case and case inflexions, but from the often covert, cryptogrammatical relations that are less immediately accessible to conscious reflection yet constitute the real foundation on which the grammar construes the world of our experience.

The History Of Construing Semantics From The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 15-6):

In approaching the semantic environment from within grammar, as opposed to approaching it from some postulated cognitive or conceptual plane (i.e. in constructing it as meaning rather than as knowing), we are following the principle from which semantics first evolved in western thought. By the time of Aristotle there had emerged the grammatical concept of a word, and of word classes; for example, 'noun'. This concept was born in the work of the Sophists, in their study of rhetoric, out of the dialectic between form and function. A noun was that 'about which something is said', thus embodying the functional concept of a syntactic (Theme-Rheme) structure; and that  'which inflects for number and case but not for gender', embodying the formal concept of a morphological (case and number) paradigm. The category of noun once established, the question arises of why does a noun appear sometimes in singular sometimes in plural number, sometimes in nominative sometimes in accusative, genitive or dative case? These questions are answered with semantic explanations: a noun is the name of a person, other living creature or inanimate object; a noun is in the plural if it refers to more than one of these entities; it is in the nominative case if it refers to the 'doer' in some kind of action, the accusative if it refers to the 'done-to', and so on. The semantics was construed by exegesis out of the grammar: both the general conception of meaning as a linguistic phenomenon and the specific meanings that were constructed by words, their classes and their variants.

Two Corollaries Of Using A Functional Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 15):

We have mentioned two corollaries of using a functional grammar. One was that the grammar is 'natural': that is, the forms of the grammar are non-autonomous, non-arbitrary in their relation to meaning. The other was that the grammar is explained in functional terms: specifically, in systemic grammar, in terms of the interaction among various functional constructions of meaning or 'metafunctions': ideational, interpersonal, and textual.

Delicacy And Stratal Realisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 15):

The more general semantic potential is realised by selections in the grammar; but as we move towards the more delicate part of the ideation base, we come to types of phenomenon that are realised primarily by lexical means.

Delicacy Vs Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 15):

Note that it is important to keep delicacy and instantiation distinct. … The difference is essentially that between being a type of x (delicacy) and being a token of x (instantiation). Both may be construed by intensive ascription.

The Overall Dimensions Of The Ideation Base: Delicacy x Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14, 15):

 

In general, the ideation base can thus be thought of as a large semantic 'space' organised in terms of these two basic dimensions: see Figure 1-5 above.

The Dimension Of Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14):

The ideation base has one other primary dimension, that of instantiation. The ideation base is not just a repository of particular facts and other instantial meanings but also a systemic network of meaning potential. For any given domain the ideation base incorporates not only the known particulars of that domain but also the resources necessary for assimilating new information. Instantiation refers to the move from the semantic potential within the general system to instances of this potential within a particular text (cf. Halliday, 1973, 1977, 1992). Intermediate between these two on the instantiation cline are patterns of instantiation that recur in particular situation types — semantic domains located within the overall meaning potential as situated variants of it.

The Global Organisation Of The Ideation Base

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 14):

The distinction between paradigmatic organisation and syntagmatic organisation opens up one dimension of the ideation base. As we have said, syntagmatic specifications occur in paradigmatic environments, as realisations of paradigmatic types. But the global organisation of the ideation base is paradigmatic; the paradigmatic network is ordered in delicacy (subsumption, classification, specialisation), from the least delicate (most general) to the most delicate (most specific types).

The Relation Of Paradigmatic To Syntagmatic Modes Of Construal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 13):

We have said that the ideation base is a resource for construing our experience of the world. Such construal is both paradigmatic and syntagmatic. (i) In paradigmatic construal, we construe a phenomenon as being of some particular type — some selection from a set of potential types. The ideation base is in fact organised as a network of inter-related types of phenomena, (ii) In syntagmatic construal, we construe a phenomenon as having some particular composition — as consisting of parts in some structural configuration.

For example, if some phenomenon is construed as belonging to the type 'creative doing', it will configure as an Actor, a Process, and a Goal which is brought into existence through the actualisation of the Process, These two modes of construal are related: on the one hand, syntagmatic organisation realises paradigmatic organisation; on the other hand, types in the network of paradigmatic organisation correspond to fragments of syntagmatic specification — this is one way in which such types are differentiated.

The Clause Complex As Defining The Scope Of Ideational Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 13):

Since our approach is via the grammar, we have taken the boundaries of the grammar as criterial, using the clause complex — the highest rank of ideational organisation — to define the scope of the ideational-semantic representation. This is not a necessary constraint; but it is one that is clearly motivated in terms of the overall design, and which may turn out to define the optimal moment of interfacing between the ideational and the other components. This will depend on subsequent work on the text base and the interaction base. The constraint does not imply, however, that the scope of ideational semantics does not extend over sequences longer than a clause complex.

'Pragmatics' Viewed Through SFL Theory

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 12):

There is no separate component of "pragmatics" within our interpretative frame. Since it emerged as a distinct field of scholarly activity, pragmatics has by and large been associated with two aspects of language. 

On the one hand, it has dealt with those aspects of the meaning of a text which depend on specific instances — particulars of the situation and of the interactants, and inferences drawn from these. But just as, in grammatics, we do not distinguish between the grammar of the system and the grammar of the instance — a systemic theory is a theory of both, and necessarily (therefore) of the relationship between them — so in semantics we would not want to separate the system from its instantiation in text. In this aspect, pragmatics appears as another name for the semantics of instances. 

And on the other hand, pragmatics has served as an alternative term for the interpersonal and textual domains of semantics. Here the distinction that is being labelled is one of metafunction, not of instantiation; but it seems undesirable to obscure the relationship between ideational meaning on the one hand and interpersonal and textual meaning on the other hand by locating them within different disciplines.

The Three Meaning Bases In Relation To The Metafunctional Components Of The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 12, 13):

The three bases are shown in relation to the metafunctional components of the grammar (at the rank of clause) in Figure 1-4. Here the three bases are shown as different metafunctional domains within the overall meaning base, with the textual one as internal to the meaning base and oriented towards both the ideation base and the interaction base.

The Text Base

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 12):

The text base provides the resources that enable the speaker to produce contextualised discourse and to guide the listener in interpreting it. These include resources for engendering a wide variety of diverse rhetorical structures, for differentiating among the different values and statuses of the components of the unfolding text, and for ongoingly expanding the text so as to create and maintain the semiotic flow.

The Interaction Base: Dialogic Exchange & Social Personæ

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 11-2):

The interaction base provides the resources for speaker and listener to enact a social and intersubjective relationship, through the assignment of discursive roles, the expression of evaluations and attitudes. The base includes both the semantic strategies speaker and listener deploy in dialogic exchanges and the social personæ of the interactants. This second component is a model of the interpersonal and ideational distance between speaker and listener.

The Ideation Base

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 11):

The ideational semantic resources construe our experience of the world that is around us and inside us. The phenomena of our experience are construed as units of meaning that can be ranked into hierarchies and organised into networks of semantic types. The units of meaning are structured as configurations of functions (rôles) at different ranks in the hierarchy. For instance, figures are configurations consisting of elements — a process, participants and circumstances; these figures are differentiated into a small number of general types — figures of doing & happening, of sensing, of saying, and of being & having.

Metafunctional Meaning Bases

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 11):

… the present book is concerned with just one portion of the higher-level environment of the grammar, that having to do with the ideational metafunction. In other words, we are concerned with that portion of the semantics which "controls" the ideational systems in the grammar, primarily, that of transitivity in the clause and those of projection and expansion in the clause complex. Transitivity is the grammar of processes: actions and events, mental processes and relations. It is that part of grammar which constitutes a theory of "goings-on". Projection and expansion are the fundamental relations between processes: this is the part of the grammar that constitutes a theory of how one happening may be related to another. Thus our aim is towards a general ideational semantics. We may call this the ideational meaning base, or ideation base for short. It is complemented by meaning bases supporting the other two metafunctions — the interaction base (supporting the interpersonal metafunction) and the text base (supporting the textual metafunction).

Blogger Comments:

The term 'controls' is in scare quotes because the theoretical relation between semantics and grammar is not enhancement (cause), but elaboration (intensive identification).

Grammatical Syntagm, Rank Scale & Rankshift

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 9-10):

[A] sequence of classes is called a syntagm to distinguish it from the (function) structure. It specifies constraints on the units serving within the clause — the units on the rank below the clause on the grammatical rank scale. The rank scale determines the overall constituency potential in the grammar: in English, clauses consist of groups (/ phrases), groups consist of words, and words consist of morphemes. The units below the clause on the rank scale are all groups (nominal, verbal adverbial, etc.) or phrases (prepositional phrases), or else clauses that are shifted downwards on the rank scale to serve as if they were groups or phrases. Such down-ranking is known as rankshift. This has the powerful effect of expanding the resources of grammar by allowing the meaning potential of a higher-ranking unit to enrich that of a unit of lower rank.

Semantic Counterparts Of The Clause: Figure, Move & Message

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 8-9):

Ideationally, a clause construes experience by categorising and configuring it as a figure. …Interpersonally, the clause enacts a relationship between speaker and addressee as a move in a potential exchange … Textually, the clause presents the ideational and interpersonal information as a message — a contribution to the text evolving in its context.

The Metafunctional Diversification Of The Content Plane

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7-8):

The content plane of a natural language is functionally diverse: it extends over a spectrum of three distinct modes of meaning, ideational, interpersonal and textual. These highly generalised functions of the linguistic system are referred to in our theory as metafunctions. The ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience — it is language as a theory of reality, as a resource for reflecting on the world. The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting interpersonal relations through language, with the adoption and assignment of speech roles, with the negotiation of attitudes, and so on — it is language in the praxis of intersubjectivity, as a resource for interacting with others. The textual metafunction is an enabling one; it is concerned with organising ideational and interpersonal meaning as discourse — as meaning that is contextualised and shared. But this does not mean processing some preexisting body of information; rather it is the ongoing creation of a semiotic realm of reality.

Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7):

One essential task for our semantics is that of modelling a particular phenomenon of the content plane that is known as grammatical metaphor. This is the phenomenon whereby a set of agnate (related) forms is present in the language having different mappings between the semantic and the grammatical categories, for example:

alcohol's dulling effect on the brain

alcohol has a dulling effect on the brain

alcohol has the effect of dulling the brain

alcohol affects the brain by dulling it

the effect of alcohol is to dull the brain

the effect of alcohol is to make the brain dull

if one takes/drinks alcohol it makes the brain dull

if one takes/drinks alcohol the/one's brain becomes dull &c.

Since this phenomenon of grammatical metaphor is fundamental to adult uses of language, we shall take it as a central thrust of our book. One way in which we shall seek to demonstrate the validity and power of a semantic approach is by using it to handle grammatical metaphor, and to show how this pervasive aspect of the lexicogrammar expands the potential of the meaning base.

A Model Of Semantics Developed From A Functional, Semantically Motivated Grammatics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 6-7):

Thus we can say that a grammatics is a theory of grammar, while a grammar is (among other things) a theory of experience. But to show that a grammar is a theory of experience we use a functional, semantically motivated grammatics, since this allows us to seek explanations of the form of the grammar in terms of the functions to which language is adapted. But this closeness of fit between the semantics (i.e. the meaning) and the grammar does not mean that our grammatics can take over the semantic domain. Adopting a functional approach enables us to extend the domain of grammar in significant ways in the direction of semantics — not thereby reducing the scope of the semantics but rather enabling us to investigate how experience is construed in semantic terms — to develop the "meaning base" model that is the topic of the present book.

Grammar vs Grammatics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 6):

There is a warning to be issued in connection with the term "grammar". It is not uncommon in English for the same word to stand both for a phenomenon itself and for the study of that phenomenon. For example, "psychology" is used to mean both the study of the "psyche" and the psyche itself (so "feminine psychology" means women's psychic make-up, not theories of psychology developed by women scholars). In linguistics, while we do distinguish "language" (the phenomenon) from "linguistics" (the study of the phenomenon), we fail to make such a distinction with the word "grammar", which means both the grammar of a language and the study of grammar. To avoid such pathological ambiguity, we find it helpful to refer to the study of grammar by a special name, grammatics. We will use this term from time to time in order to make it quite clear that we are talking about the model, the theory used to interpret the phenomenon, and not the phenomenon itself.

Thus we can say that a grammatics is a theory of grammar, while a grammar is (among other things) a theory of experience. But to show that a grammar is a theory of experience we use a functional, semantically motivated grammatics, since this allows us to seek explanations of the form of the grammar in terms of the functions to which language is adapted. But this closeness of fit between the semantics (i.e. the meaning) and the grammar does not mean that our grammatics can take over the semantic domain.

Lexicogrammar: The Complementarity Of Grammar And Lexis

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 5-6):

A word needs to be said here about the interpretation of the term "grammar" itself. As used in systemic theory, this term stands for lexicogrammar. The lexical region, or lexis, is not a separate component, but simply the most "delicate" end of the (unified) lexicogrammar. There is a complementarity here. Lexis and grammar are not two different phenomena; they are different ways looking at the same phenomenon. Some aspects of this phenomenon of "wording" in language are foregrounded by viewing it as grammar, others by viewing it as lexis.

Three Strata Differentiated According To Order Of Abstraction

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 4-5):

Language, therefore, is a resource organised into three strata differentiated according to order of abstraction. These strata are related by means of realisation. Semantics, or the system of meaning, is realised by lexicogrammar, or the system of wording (that is, grammatical structures and lexical items); and lexicogrammar is realised by phonology, or the system of sounding. [This is the traditional formulation; more properly: semantics is realised by the realisation of lexicogrammar in phonology.]

For instance, a sequence of figures (a sequence of configurations of processes with participants and attendant circumstances) at the level of semantics is realised by a complex of clauses at the level of grammar; this, in turn, has its own realisation in the phonology — for example, a particular complex of clauses might be realised by a particular sequence of tones (pitch contours).

Between lexicogrammar and phonology runs the line of symbolic arbitrariness: prototypically the relation between these two levels is conventional, whereas that between semantics and lexicogrammar is prototypically natural. What this means is that experience is construed twice in the content plane, once semantically and once lexicogrammatically. The ideational meaning base that we are concerned with in this book is a construct that is 'located' within the semantic system — that is, at the highest level — and realised in the lexicogrammar.

Language As A Tri-Stratal System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 4, 5):

We might refer to the Hjelmslevian notion of the "content plane" as incorporating both a grammar and a semantics (e.g., Hjelmslev, 1943). Grammar and semantics are the two strata or levels of content in the three-level systemic theory of language, and they are related in a natural, non-arbitrary way. The third level is the level of expression, either phonology or graphology. We can draw this model of language as in Figure 1-1. 

Here the relationship is not one of 'consists of or 'is a subset of: the concentric cotangential circles show the stratal environment of each level — thus lexicogrammar appears in the environment of semantics and provides the environment for phonology. This ordering of levels is known as stratification. We have used circles for all three levels to represent the fact that they are all based on the same fundamental principles of organisation: each level is a network of inter-related options, either in meaning, wording or sounding, which are realised as structures, based on the principle of rank.

A Systemic Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3-4):

A systemic grammar is one of the class of functional grammars, which means (among other things) that it is semantically motivated, or "natural". In contradistinction to formal grammars, which are autonomous, and therefore semantically arbitrary, in a systemic grammar every category (and "category" is used here in the general sense of an organising theoretical concept, not in the narrower sense of 'class' as in formal grammars) is based on meaning: it has a semantic as well as a formal, lexicogrammatical reactance. [The reactance of a category is its distinctive treatment.]

Looked at from the formal angle, of course, this means that it is likely to appear complex; many of the categories are "cryptotypic", manifested only through a long chain of realisations (a "realisational chain"). Hence it takes a long time and a great deal of effort to get such a grammar off the ground in any context (such as natural language processing) requiring total explicitness. Once airborne, however, because it is semantically natural it has considerable potential as the basis on which to represent higher level organisation — provided, that is, such organisation is interpreted in linguistic terms, as meaning rather than as knowledge.

Language As The Foundation Of Human Experience, And Meaning As The Essential Mode Of Higher-Order Human Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

Thus "knowledge" and "meaning" are not two distinct phenomena; they are different metaphors for the same phenomenon, approaching it with a different orientation and different assumptions. But in almost all recent work in this area, the cognitive approach has predominated, with language treated as a kind of code in which pre-existing conceptual structures are more or less distortedly expressed. We hope here to give value to the alternative viewpoint, in which language is seen as the foundation of human experience, and meaning as the essential mode of higher-order human consciousness. This may have more to offer both in theoretical power and in relation to the many practical tasks for which we need to engage with "knowledge". What we are doing is mapping back on to language those patterns that were themselves linguistic in their origin.

Defining Experience In Linguistic Terms

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

This suggests that it should be possible to build outwards from the grammar, making the explicit assumption that the (abstract structure of) categories and relations needed for modelling and interpreting any domain of experience will be derivable from those of language. Our contention is that there is no ordering of experience other than the ordering given to it by language. We could in fact define experience in Linguistic terms: experience is the reality that we construe for ourselves by means of language.

The Knowledge Enshrined In A Particular Discipline

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

Hence when we consider the knowledge enshrined in a particular discipline, we understand this by examining the language of the discipline — the particular ways of meaning that it has evolved. The most obvious example is perhaps that of scientific taxonomies; but aspects of the grammar are no less crucial: this will appear below in our discussion of models of agency and of grammatical metaphor, among other features.

All Knowledge Is Constituted In Semiotic Systems, With Language As The Most Central

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 2-3):

What is the significance of this switch of metaphor from knowing to meaning? A meaning base differs from a knowledge base in the direction from which it is construed. In modelling the meaning base we are building it 'upwards' from the grammar, instead of working 'downwards' from some interpretation of experience couched in conceptual terms, and seen as independent of language. We contend that the conception of 'knowledge' as something that exists independently of language, and may then be coded or made manifest in language, is illusory. All knowledge is constituted in semiotic systems, with language as the most central; and all such representations of knowledge are constructed from language in the first place.