The Semantic System Includes A Theory Of How Meanings Are Construed

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 72-3):

One central semantic motif that has emerged from these studies is that of elaboration: both in relational clauses (realising figures of being & having) and in complexes, especially nominal ones (the traditional notion of apposition, realising sequences of participants). Here elaboration is at work e.g. in 'distilling' new meanings over extended passages. That is, the semantic system includes a theory of how meanings are construed; and this theory is itself a resource for construing new meanings. Thus when a young child says cats also aren't people, he is using a type of figure of being & having to construe a taxonomic relationship in the ideation base, so that the membership of 'cats' (construed as Carrier) in the class of 'people' (construed as Attribute) can be probed, in this case to 'outclassify' cats from the class of people. Figures of being & having of the intensive and ascriptive kind thus construe, among other things, the taxonomic relation among classes or types in the semantic system.

The ideation base is thus a resource both for construing experience and for construing its own construal of experience. It has the potential for expanding itself precisely because it includes a theory of how meanings are construed

The Systemic-Functional Position On Categorisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 72):

From a systemic-functional point of view, the intellectual context was rather different. Systemic-functional theory was not oriented towards philosophy and logic, and the Aristotelian conception of a category did not figure as a traditional frame of reference that therefore had to be rejected. Already at the outset of the theoretical work that was to become systemic-functional theory, a major descriptive focus was on intonation (see e.g. Halliday, 1963a, b, 1967), a domain that clearly cannot be construed in Aristotelian terms; and the notion of cline was part of the theory already in the first major statement (see Halliday, 1961). Further, the system was conceived of as a probabilistic one even in proto-systemic work (see e.g. Halliday, 1956).

Systemic-functional work on 'categorisation' has thus not engaged with the philosophical tradition; nor has it tended to proceed by experimental methods. Rather, it has been concerned with how meaning is construed in naturally occurring text, e.g. in child language studies (Halliday, 1975 onwards; Painter, 1996) and in factual writing (e.g. Halliday & Martin, 1993; Harvey, in prep.). Here one of the questions has been what resources are available in the semantic system for construing new meanings — for 'category development', both in the ontogenetic time frame and in the logogenetic time frame.

The Cognitive Linguistic Position On Categorisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 72):

Categorisation has received much attention in recent work in linguistics, especially within the framework of cognitive science. The received tradition was the classical or Aristotelian conception of a category as a type definable in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions — its essential characteristics rather than its accidental ones. One central aim of cognitively oriented linguists has been to show that the Aristotelian conception does not apply to semantic categories, which have to be re-theorised in terms of prototype theory. The initial impetus came from a series of well-known experiments in categorisation by E. Rosch and by Labov (1973) and from Berlin & Kay's (1969) study of colour terms across languages; Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances had provided an earlier insight within a philosophical frame of reference (cf. Ellis, 1993). Since there are now a number of summaries of these positions, and of the critique of the Aristotelian conception (e.g. Lakoff, 1987; Taylor, 1989), we will not review the discussion here.

The Relationship Between Typological And Topological Perspectives

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 70-1):

What is the relationship between these two perspectives on meaning? So far in work on semantics only the typological perspective has been able to be realised in a formal system; the power of the topological perspective still derives largely from the metaphor of space within theories of meaning. For present purposes, we can say that the topological organisation construes a semantic space, creating the correspondences shown in Table 2(4).

Both perspectives are valuable. The typological perspective allows us to gain insight into the organisation of meaning through the network, both as theoretical metaphor and as a system of formal representation. The topological perspective gives us complementary benefits — in the first instance, the general notion of a multidimensional elastic space. We have indicated in the rightmost column some implications that derive from adopting the topological perspective. The general motif here is that of indeterminacy. For example, we can show how regions of meaning overlap (e.g. doing & happening overlapping with sensing in an area of 'sensing as activity'). We will use informal topological diagrams at various points in our discussion to bring out this central feature of the ideational system.

The last row in the table above also represents indeterminacy, but this is indeterminacy of a particular kind, relating to the probabilistic nature of the semantic system. The types in the semantic system are instantiated according to probability values; these are manifested as relative frequencies in text. The equivalent in the spatial interpretation of meaning would be curvature or chreodisation. Chreodisation embodies time and represents the change of systemic probabilities over time (see e.g. Waddington, 1977, Sheldrake, 1988: Ch. 6, for discussion).

Blogger Comments:

Waddington modelled biological development as unfolding in an abstract space in which there were canals (curvatures) that represented the necessary path of development ('chreode'), which, crucially, the process of development could return to after being perturbed. Here Halliday & Matthiessen are only concerned with using space curvature as a means of representing probability differences topologically.

Topology Example: Content Plane

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 69, 71):

We can now consider a comparable example from the content plane of language — from the ideation base. In our description of sequences, we recognised two simultaneous systems: the relative status of the figures ('equal/ unequal') and the kind of relationship between them ('projecting/ expanding'). This account constitutes the typological perspective on this region of the ideation base; it is mapped onto the topological perspective in Figure 2-9. Sequences are thus construed as a two-dimensional region within the overall semantic space. The correspondences are the same as those already noted for the vowel space. 

Topology Example: Expression Plane

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 69, 70):

We shall relate typology and topology to one another as complementary perspectives on meaning, and then we shall say a few words about the value of keeping the topological perspective in view. Let us start with our analogy from the expression plane: a vowel system can be construed both typologically as a set of systems, e.g. two systems 'front/ back' & 'open/ closed' defining four vowel values, and topologically as a two-dimensional space with four focal (core, cardinal vowel) locations. These two perspectives are related to one another in Figure 2-8. 

Each system in the typology corresponds to a dimension in the topology. We can thus say that the two simultaneous systems correspond to a two-dimensional space. The systemic terms, or values, correspond to regions within the vowel space along one of its dimensions; an intersection of two systemic terms such as 'front* & 'open' is a region located along two dimensions. If we add further systems in the typology, e.g. rounding ('rounded/ unrounded'), nasality ('nasal/ non-nasal') and tongue root position ('neutral position/ advanced position'), these will correspond to further dimensions in the vowel space. With tongue root position we are still maintaining a reasonably congruent relationship between our representation of the vowel space and the oral cavity in which vowels are articulated, since advanced tongue root position is simply a global shift of the whole space; but with nasality we are beginning to use our representation more metaphorically, since the control of airflow through the nose is not a feature of the oral cavity.

Typological And Topological Perspectives On The Organisation Of Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 68-9):

So far we have sketched the most general organisation of the ideation base as a typology of semantic types or classes. This is one theoretical perspective on the organisation — a perspective realised in certain conventional systems of representation, such as the system network. It allows us to bring out quite clearly the global organisation of the ideation base as a resource for construing experience; and it also allows us to show how the semantic types in this global organisation are interrelated, as in the case of participants filling Actor and Goal rôles in figures of doing. 

At the same time, there is another theoretical perspective on the organisation of meaning — the topological perspective. Here meaning is construed in terms of a spatial metaphor: we can view the ideation base as an elastic, multidimensional semantic space. This metaphor is already familiar in discussions of meaning; we find it in Trier's notion of semantic fields, in the distinction between core meanings and more peripheral meanings, in specifications of semantic distance, and so on.

The notion of a vowel space (with its 'cardinal vowels') provides a familiar analogy. As a material construction, it is limited to the three dimensions of physical space; but as a physiological space, it accommodates variation along a number of dimensions, and brings an elasticity to the expression plane that is in some extent analogous to the metaphorical elasticity that we are ascribing to the plane of the content.

Domains Of Categorisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 68):

Naturally our categorisation tends to be oriented towards phenomena on a particular scale, those that lie within the bandwidth of those phenomena which are most readily accessible to our senses and which we engage with in day to day existence. This is the realm which impinges most closely on our physical, biological and social being; the semantic system has evolved with this as its primary semogenic environment. Lying beyond this are the micro- and the macro-worlds which are accessible to us only by instrument and by inference. 

It is a powerful demonstration of the potential of the semantic system that it readily fashions new meanings that model these experientially remote domains. What is less obvious, perhaps, is that it has had to be equally resourceful in modelling the ongoing changes in our social environment, where both the overall social order and our local interpersonal networks are constantly being modified and realigned.

Categorising Is A Creative Act

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 68):

Categorisation is often thought of as a process of classifying together phenomena that are inherently alike, the classes being as it were given to us by the nature of the experience itself. But this is not what really happens. Categorising is a creative act: it transforms our experience into meaning, and this means imposing a categorical order rather than putting labels on an order that is already there. As Ellis has expressed it, categorisation consists in grouping together sets of phenomena that are essentially not alike (1993: Ch. 3). There would be indefinitely many ways of construing analogies among different elements in the total flux of experience; what our semantic resources enable us to do is to construe those analogies which yield categories resonating with what as a species, and as members of a particular culture, we have found to carry material and symbolic value.

Semantic Types Are Categories To Which Phenomenological Instances Are Ascribed

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 66):

We have presented an initial sketch of the ideation base as a resource for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us. The focus of this sketch was the most general system of semantic types such as 'figure', 'being-&-having', 'participant', 'conscious being'. These semantic types are categories to which phenomenological instances are ascribed; they thus embody the fundamental principle of generalising across individual phenomenological variation. And they are located somewhere in delicacy between the most general type, the all-inclusive class of 'phenomenon', and the most delicate types we can recognise as being codified lexically in English.

General Options For Sequence, Figure And Element

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 65, 67):

Plate 10 below shows the lattice as described up to this point, incorporating all the categories introduced above (but still omitting those embodying any grammatical metaphor).

Element: Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 64-5):

Processes serve in the most central or nuclear rôle in a figure; they embody the temporal properties of a figure unfolding in time: see Plate 9. Other than metaphorical processes, the process element is either polar (positive/negative) or modal (some intermediate degree between positive and negative); it may embody phase, or aspect; and it will refer to past, present or future time. Polarity and modality derive from the interpersonal perspective on the process.

Element: Circumstance

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 63-4):

Circumstances fill circumstantial rôles in figures. We can recognise two simultaneous distinctions; see Plate 8. One concerns the type of circumstantial relation construed; the primary contrast is between circumstances of projection and circumstances of expansion and within the latter we distinguish those of elaboration, extension and enhancement The other concerns the experiential complexity of the circumstance; circumstances are either 'simple' or 'macro', the former being more truly elemental while the latter are more like figures. …

Among simple circumstances, the most usual are those of time, place, manner-quality and intensity, all of which are circumstances of enhancement. Examples: [skies will be partly cloudy] today (locative: time), increasingly (manner: intensity), widespread (locative: place), easily, carefully (manner: quality).

Macro circumstances are those which are made up of a special type of figure having another participant inside it, for example (circumstances of enhancement): (locative: place [abstract]) in the low to mid 60s, (locative: place) from the northeast, (manner: quality) at 15 to 25 m.p.h., (locative: place) throughout the northern Rockies, (locative: place) in a casserole, (locative: place) in a hot oven, (extent: duration) for 10-15 minutes, (manner: means) with a clean absorbent cloth.

Element: Participant: Simple Quality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 62-3):

Qualities characterise things along various parameters, as in green cabbage : red cabbage: see Plate 7.

Again, a number of simple qualities are metaphorical; of the remainder, the "ordinary" qualities, one subtype is qualities of projection and the other is qualities of expansion. (As we will show in subsequent chapters, the categories of projection and expansion are very prevalent in the organisation of the ideation base.)

Element: Participant: Simple Thing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 60-1):

Some 'simple things' are metaphorical; the remainder are referred to as 'ordinary', and these are either conscious or non-conscious (this is the distinction that is actually made in the semantic system, not animate/inanimate or human/non-human): see Plate 6.

Non-conscious ordinary things are distinguished along more than one dimension, but the categorisation given here can be taken as primary, in the sense that it is the one that seems to have the clearest reactances in the grammar.

Blogger Comments:

When we construe any organism as being able to see, for example, we are construing it as conscious, since perception is a type of mental process.

Element: Participant

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 59-60):

Participant rôles in figures are filled by elements of the type 'participant'; they are phenomena capable of taking on a participant rôle in a process configuration, e.g. bringing it about or being affected by it. They are further differentiated according to two parameters: see Plate 5. Macro-participants are all metaphorical and will be left out of consideration for the time being. Simple participants may be things or qualities.

Types Of Element

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 58-9):

As we have seen, elements fill the roles of figures. Participant roles are filled by participants (things or qualities), circumstance roles by circumstances (times, places, causes, etc.), and the process role by a process. There are correlations here between the taxonomy of configurational phenomena and that of simple phenomena … . 

The elements of a figure are of three kinds:

(i) the process itself (action/event, process of consciousness, or relation),
(ii) a participant in that process, or
(iii) a circumstantial element or circumstance. …

As already noted above, processes are realised by verbal groups, participants by nominal groups, and circumstances by adverbial groups or prepositional phrases. In addition to the three types of element that serve in figures, there is one further type of element — the relator: see Plate 4. Relators serve to construe logico-semantic relations of expansion between figures in a sequence; they are realised by conjunction groups.

The Rôle Restrictions For Sensing, Saying And Doing Summarised

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 57-8):

The rôle restrictions for sensing, saying, and doing are summarised in Table 2(1) below.

These rôle restrictions represent a kind of metaphysics of English transitivity. For example, according to English, ideas and locutions cannot act on things, but there is no general restriction on what kinds of things may act on other things. Not only persons, but also inanimate things and abstractions may kill people (a figure of doing): the rifleman/the rock/his stupidity killed cousin Henry. 

In contrast, if we had built our model according to the demands of the transitivity grammar of Navajo, we would have had to rank things in terms of their capacity to act upon other things; e.g., an inanimate cannot act upon an animate thing (Witherspoon, 1977).

Subtypes Of Figures And Participant Role Value Restrictions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 57-8):

As already mentioned, there is a typology of figures based largely on the nature of the particular types of the process, participant, and circumstance roles; the most general part of this is shown in Figure 2-6.

 

Each type of figure has its own set of more delicately specified roles with particular value restrictions. For example, figures of doing have an Actor, which in turn is a participant (rather than some other kind of phenomenon). (Notice that the specification of the filler of the Phenomenon role in a sensing figure is more general than 'participant' — any type of phenomenon can be sensed.)

Grammatical Realisations Of Process, Participant And Circumstance

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 54-5):

Grammatically, the nuclear process, its participants, and its circumstances are typically represented as constituents in the transitivity structure of a clause: see Figure 2-3.

The Principle Of Organisation Of A Figure (vs Sequence)

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 53-4):

The principle of organisation of a figure is different from that of a sequence. As we have seen, a sequence is constructed by interdependency relations of expansion and projection. In contrast, a figure is constructed as an organic configuration of parts. Each part stands in a specific relation to the figure as a whole. The parts of a given configuration are (i) a nuclear process, (ii) one to three participants of different kinds taking part in the process, and (iii) up to around seven circumstances of different kinds associated with it.

Participants are inherent in the process; they bring about its occurrence or mediate it. There are a number of specific ways in which a participant may take part in a process; it may act out the process, it may sense it, it may receive it, it may be affected by it, it may say it, and so on. The different configurations of participants are the bases for a typology of process types. The distinction between participants and circumstances is a cline rather than a sharp division, but it is semantically quite significant.

Circumstances are typically less closely associated with the process and are usually not inherent in it. They specify the spatial or temporal location of the process, its extent in space or time (distance or duration), its cause, the manner of its occurrence, and so on.

Types Of Figure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 52-3):

A figure is a representation of experience in the form of a configuration, consisting of a process, participants taking pan in this process and associated circumstances. There are, of course, indefinitely many kinds of process in the non-semiotic world; but these are construed semiotically, according to the way in which they configure participants, into a small number of process types — being, doing, sensing, and saying. The first three of these have clearly defined subcategories: see Plate 3.

Then, each figure may be either projected (by another figure, or in some other way) or else not; and if projected, it may be an idea or locution or [fact] …

Types Of Sequence

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 50-1):

A sequence is a series of related figures. Consequently, sequences are differentiated according to the kinds of relations figures can enter into — temporal (x happened, then y happened, etc.), causal (x happened, so y happened, etc.), and so on; in the most general terms, the relations yield the following type of sequence: see Plate 2.

In any pair of figures related in sequence, one figure may (i) expand the other, by reiterating it, adding to it or qualifying it; or (ii) project (report, quote) the other by saying it or thinking it. In either case, the two may be either equal or unequal in status, or semantic weight. … Sequences are organised by interdependence relations and they are indefinitely expandable.

The Congruent Realisation Of Ideational Semantics In Lexicogrammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 48, 49):

While figures are said to consist of elements and sequences are said to consist of figures, the 'consist-of' relation is not the same: elements are constituent parts of figures, functioning in different roles; but figures form sequences through interdependency relations. … The typical representation of sequences, figures and elements in the grammar is as in Figure 2-1.

Ideational Semantics: The Phenomena Of Human Experience As Three Orders Of Complexity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 48, 49):

A phenomenon is the most general experiential category — anything that can be construed as part of human experience. The phenomena of experience are of three orders of complexity: elementary (a single element), configurational (configuration of elements, i.e. a figure) and complex (a complex of figures, i.e. a sequence) — see Plate 1.

Four Representational Challenges For SFL Metalanguage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 45):

We shall mention four such challenges briefly here.

(i) The first representational challenge is the need to handle the dimension of instantiation.  

As a process, instantiation can be represented as involving traversal of the system network and activation of realisation statements. The instance is thus a set of features (semantic types) selected, with associated realisational specifications — an instantial pattern over the semantic potential. 

However, instantiation also defines a scale between the potential and the instance, with intermediate patterns of instantiation. We will introduce these later as register-specific domain models. Such patterns of instantiation will need to be represented: perhaps as systemic probabilities, or as domain-partitions within the overall ideation base.

(ii) The second representational challenge is the need to model how the overall ideation base is expanded by grammatical metaphor. It must be shown how metaphor adds junctional types to the ordinary types …

(iii) The third representational challenge comes from outside the account of the ideation base itself: the ideation base has to be related to the other metafunctional modes of meaning, the interaction base and the text base. The interaction base will include alternative 'projections' of the ideation base to account for the relationship between speaker and addressee. …

(iv) The fourth representational challenge concerns the non-discreteness of the various systems that construe semantic space. The semantic types represented by the features of systems in the system network do not constitute discrete Aristotelian categories; they are values on semantic clines — core regions, to use the metaphor of semantic space. We can bring this out by adopting a topological view on meaning; we can also explore the possibility of interpreting features as names of fuzzy sets.

Representation Stratum Of SFL Metalanguage Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 44):

Figure 1-12 shows an example of a systemic representation, with the graphic conventions for the system network. Preselection is shown by means of a pointer leading from the function (role) being restricted to the feature that it is restricted to.

Representation Stratum Of SFL Metalanguage: Types Of Realisation Statement

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 43-4):

The general form of a realisation statement is 'realisation operator + one or more realisation operands', as in 'insert Senser' and 'conflate Medium and Senser'. The operators used to specify functional structuring are insert, conflate, and preselect. The first operand is always a semantic function (role); additional operands may be functions or features. The realisation statements we will make use of in our representation of ideation base information are as follows:

(1) Presence of functions in the structure: the presence of a function in a function structure is specified by inserting the function into the structure; the operation of insertion is symbolised by '+'; e.g. +Actor, +Senser, etc.

(2) Conflation of one function with another: one function from one perspective is conflated with a function from another perspective — they are identified with one another. Conflation is symbolised by '/'; for example, Medium/Senser means that Medium (ergative perspective) and Senser (transitive perspective) apply to the same element of a figure.

(3) Restriction on the type of phenomenon that can serve a particular function: this is stated by preselecting one or more features from the unit serving that function; preselection is symbolised by ':', e.g. Senser: conscious being, which means that the participant serving as Senser is restricted to the type 'conscious being'. (Since 'conscious being' is more delicate than 'participant', the fact that a participant serves as Senser can be inferred from the statement 'Senser conscious being'. In general, it is only necessary to state the most delicate or specific restriction along any subsumption path in the system network.)

Representation Stratum Of SFL Metalanguage: The Realisation Statement

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 42-3):

If we use systemic representation to encode information in the ideation base, we factor out the logic of subsumption and alternatives from the syntagmatic realisation: this logic is represented in the system network. If each feature is interpreted as a type, this gives us a lattice of types. In European structuralist terms, the network is a representation of the paradigmatic organisation of a linguistic system. However, it is also necessary to show how feature choices are realised structurally; i.e., what are the structural properties of the types. This is the province of the realisation statement.

A realisation statement is a minimal specification of a piece of structure or configuration of roles presented in a paradigmatic context; it is always associated with a particular systemic feature. For instance, the realisation statement '+ Senser' occurs in the context of 'sensing' in the system of figures; it is the syntagmatic realisation of that feature: a figure of sensing is a configuration of roles one of which is Senser.

Representation Stratum Of SFL Metalanguage: The System Network

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 41-2):

Systemic representations include (i) system networks and (ii) realisation statements.

(i) A system network is an acyclic directed graph, consisting of systems partially ordered in delicacy. Each system constitutes a choice (alternation, opposition) between two or more terms. These terms are represented by features, and a system as a whole is a Boolean combination of features:

(1) It has an entry condition, the condition under which the systemic choice is available. The entry condition may be a single feature or a complex of features, conjunct and/ or disjunct. These features must serve as terms in other systems.

(2) It has a set of terms, the options that are available given the entry condition. The terms are represented by features, which are related by exclusive disjunction. Collectively, a set of related systems form a system network (since features in the entry conditions to systems must be terms in other systems).

Metalanguage: Representation Stratum

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 33-4):

The theoretical model makes considerable demands on the representational system or systems in which it is realised. Such a system must be able to handle the axial differentiation of the meaning base so that it represents not only structural configurations but also variation in delicacy, the indeterminacy between options in meaning, the move in instantiation from potential to instance, and other theoretical specifications. …

As we have already noted, the representational semiotic may also be language itself — the theory may be represented discursively in the register(s) of linguistics. In this case, the relationship between theory and language is similar to … a relationship where theory might be construed as a connotative semiotic (in Hjelmslev's, 1943, conception: a semiotic system whose expression plane is a semiotic system) …

Finally, the representational semiotic may also be a diagrammatic one — e.g. network graphs, tree diagrams, our circle diagrams. With such graphic representation, it is important to ask (i) if the information represented graphically can be restated in some other form of representation and (ii) if its realisational relationship with respect to theory is clear. There is a certain danger that the graphic representation is simply assumed to be natural and transparent even though it depends as much on semiotic conventions as any other system. Our own experience with circle diagrams is that, unless the representational convention has been made explicit, readers favour certain types of meaning: the circles are interpreted in terms of 'extension' rather than in terms of 'elaboration' — which is to say, they are read in constituency terms rather than in realisational terms. In any case, diagrams will only serve us as 'visualisations' as long as they construe a metaphor of abstract space at the theoretical stratum.