Identifier As Unmarked New Information

Halliday (1994: 124):

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It was Fawcett who mistakenly claimed that Identified-Identifier could be explained as Given-New.

Identity vs Class Membership

Halliday (1994: 122):

Intensive Relational Processes: Identifying

Halliday (1994: 122):

Metaphor As A Correspondence Between Two Semantic Configurations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 288, 289):

The correspondence that is construed through grammatical metaphor is an elaborating relationship: an identity is set up between two patterns, a sequence and a figure, a figure and a participant, and so on. In this identity, the metaphorical term is the Token' and the congruent term is the 'Value': 'engine failure' stands for (means, represents) 'engines fail'. This is the 'core' meaning of the elaborating relation; but it also covers the senses of 'summarise', 'distil' — the metaphor may 'distil' congruent meanings that have accumulated in the text. The identity holds between the two configurations as a whole; but, as our representations indicate, the components of the configurations are also mapped one on to another: see Figure 6-16.

Qualities Of Elaboration: Identity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 212):

Qualities of elaboration, subtype identity are not inherent properties, but rather are comparative. Thus the standard of comparison can always be construed: their car is the same/similar/different : their car is the same as/similar to/different from ours; and they are agnate with processes: their car is/resembles/differs from ours. The line between elaboration: identity and enhancement: manner, comparison is a fuzzy one; and processual agnates such as their car resembles ours are within the domain of enhancement.

Elaborating & Extending Figures As Alternative Modes Of Construal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 146):

Elaboration and extension are agnate, one with the other; they offer alternative modes of construal, often with very little apparent difference. Thus we may find both

(1)Elaborating 'Man' is +male, + adult & + human ;

'Man' is a male, adult & human being

(2)Extending 'Man' consists of +male, + adult & + human :

'Man' has the features +male, +adult & +human

But if we technicalise these alternatives, they do constitute significantly different approaches to the interpretation of meaning. In this book and elsewhere in systemic-functional work, elaborating interpretations tend to be taken further than in many other approaches: this means emphasising realisation, delicacy, and identities across metafunctions to supplement the traditional emphasis on constituency and composition.

Product: Definition & WH– Probe

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 326):

Product corresponds to the interrogative what into? with the meaning of ‘become’, similarly as attribute or identity; e.g. aren’t you growing into a big girl? (‘becoming a big girl’), he moulded the army into a disciplined fighting force.

Guise: Definition, Realisation & WH– Probe

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 326):

Guise corresponds to the interrogative what as? and construes the meaning of ‘be’ (attribute or identity) in the form of a circumstance … The usual preposition is as; other, complex prepositions with this function are by way of, in the rôle/shape/guise/form …

Indeterminacy In Possessive Attributive Clauses: Possession As Attribute

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 295):

These are not, in fact, syntagmatically distinct from ‘identifying’ clauses; the clause the piano is Peter’s could be either ‘attributive’, ‘the piano is a member of the class of Peter’s possessions’ or ‘identifying’, ‘the piano is identified as belonging to Peter’. (Note that the reversed [form] Peter’s is the piano can only be ‘identifying’.)

Circumstantial Relational Clauses: Attributive Vs Identifying Mode

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 293):

The line between ‘attributive’ and ‘identifying’ modes is less clear in the ‘circumstantial’ than in the ‘intensive’ type of ‘relational’ clause. This is natural, since it is less obvious whether an expression such as on the mat designates a class (that has members — the class of things on the mat) or an identity (the thing that is identified by being on the mat). Nevertheless there is a distinction …

Identifying Mode: Decoding Vs Encoding

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 279-80):

… either the Token is ‘decoded’

or else the Value is ‘encoded’.

If the Token is construed as Identified and the Value as Identifier, the clause is a decoding one …

if the Value is construed as Identified and the Token as Identifier, the clause is an encoding one …

In other words, the identity either decodes the Token by reference to the Value

or it encodes the Value by reference to the Token.

Relational Clauses & Semiotic Dimensions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 263):

… we can see how the grammar models the realisational relationship between two strata in the form of ‘relational’ clauses of identity. … In this way, the grammar of relational clauses is based on the dimensions of a semiotic system.

Relational Clauses: Instantiation And Realisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 263):

In her account of ‘relational’ clauses, Davidse (1992, 1996) adopts a semiotic approach, interpreting class–membership by reference to the semiotic relation of instantiation and identity by reference to the semiotic relation of realisation.

Relational Clauses: Class–Membership And Identity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 262):

The configuration of Process + ‘Be-er1’ + ‘Be-er2’ opens up the potential for construing the abstract relationships of class–membership and identity in all domains of experience. Class–membership is construed by attributive clauses and identity by identifying ones. These two ‘relational’ clause types cut across the inner and outer experience of ‘mental’ and ‘material’ clauses …

Realisation As Identifying Process & Instantiation As Attributive Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514): 

They [relational processes] are modelled, in fact, on the two basic relationships that characterise semiotic systems: realisation (identifying processes such as this is (‘realises’) my sister), and instantiation (attributive processes such as she is (‘instantiates’) a student of law).

Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514): 

… these [verbal processes] shade into something else, which the grammar again construes as phenomenally distinct: relations of identity (including symbolic identity, like red means stop) and attribution. Expressions of this kind, which in English often have the verb be, hardly seem to fit the label “process” at all; but the grammar firmly represents them as such, so we call them “relational processes”.

Two Versions Of The Intensive Relation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 461):

… ascriptive intensive relations … represent a relation of inclusion … Identity and inclusion are two versions of the intensive relation: identity is the limiting case of inclusion and inclusion is partial identity.

Metaphor As A Correspondence Between Two Semantic Configurations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 288):

The correspondence that is construed through grammatical metaphor is an elaborating relationship: an identity is set up between two patterns … In this identity, the metaphorical term is the ‘Token’ and the congruent term is the ‘Value’ … The identity holds between the two configurations as a whole; but … the components of the configurations are also mapped one onto another …

The metaphorical relation is thus similar to inter-stratal realisation in that it construes a token–value type of relation. Here, however, the relation is intra-stratal: the identity holds between different meanings, not between meanings and wordings. The metaphor consists in relating different semantic domains of experience …

Elaboration As Auto-Genetic Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 224-5):

Here we have foregrounded especially the motif of elaborating, with particular reference to its manifestation in the identifying and ascriptive figures of being. We have tried to show how elaboration makes it possible to “import” extra-linguistic experience into the meaning base by actively construing it (as in ‘that [thing there] is a circle’); and also to “transport” meanings internally from one region of the ideation base in order to construe new meanings in another (as in ‘balance means you hold it in your fingers and it does not go’).  The extension of meaning in delicacy — not merely generalising across different types but construing such types into dimensional and open-ended taxonomies — is a function of the elaborating potential, exploiting the basic dimensions of the system itself.

Qualities Of Elaboration: Identity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 212):

Qualities of elaboration, subtype identity are not inherent properties, but rather are comparative. Thus the standard of comparison can always be construed: their car is the same/similar/different : their car is the same as / similar to / different from ours; and they are agnate with processes: their car is / resembles / differs from ours. The line between elaboration: identity and enhancement: manner: comparison is a fuzzy one; and processual agnates such as their car resembles ours are within the domain of enhancement.