The Natural Relationship Among Projections, Processes And Structures

Halliday (1994: 272-3):

Free Indirect Speech

Halliday (1994: 261-2):

Language: A Semantic System With Other Systems For Encoding Its Meanings

Halliday (1994: xvii):

Why Language Is Able To Create Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

Language is able to create meaning because it is related to our material being (ourselves, and our environment) in three distinct and complementary ways. 

In the first place, it is a part of the material world: the processes of language take place in physiological (including neural) and physical space and time. 

In the second place, it is a theory about the material world: language models the space-time environment, including itself, in a "rich" theoretical mode: that is, both construing it (our ideation base) and enacting it (our interaction base). 

In the third place, it is a metaphor for the material world: the way that language itself is organised, as a stratified, metafunctional system, recapitulates — acts out, so to speak both the make-up of this environment in natural (physical-biological), social and semiotic systems-&-processes (our metafunctions) and the internal contradictions, complementarities and fractal patterning by which all such systems-&-processes are characterised (our stratification). 

In other words, language has evolved as part of our own evolution.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this characterises the material world as a construal of experience as meaning, such that language itself is part of that semiotic construal, language is a theory about that semiotic construal, and language is a metaphor for that semiotic construal. That is, language creates meaning out of prior meaning: that created by perceptual systems.

It Is Language That Creates Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 602):

Language is not a second-order code through which meanings created in some higher-order realm of existence are mysteriously made manifest and brought to light. To borrow the conceit that Firth was fond of caricaturing, there are no "naked ideas" lurking in the background waiting to be clothed. It is language that creates meaning, in the sense that meaning has for us as human beings (which is the only sense of it that we can know).

Blogger Comments:

It was Samuel Johnson who quipped Language is the dress of thought, though he also said Words are but the signs of ideas.

Semogenic Resources For Grammatical Metaphor: From Greek To Latin And Beyond

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 541-2):

The forms of scientific discourse developed by the Greeks were then taken over into Latin. Although Latin differed in certain significant respects (for example, it had no definite article, and it did not readily accept prepositional phrases as Qualifier in the nominal group), it was close enough to Greek, both linguistically and culturally, for this to present few problems. Most Greek derivational compounds could be calqued directly into Latin (e.g., peripherêia to circumferens ); Latin had its own stock of nominalising suffixes, like -atio(nem) and -mentum; and a reasonably similar potential for expanding nominal groups. 

As Latin took over as the language of learning throughout the greater portion of Europe, it had already developed an equivalent semogenic power. In the mediæval period Latin continued to serve; but by this time, although its morphology was largely unchanged, it had taken on the semantic patterning of the vernacular European languages. So when Latin itself was replaced by these languages, the transition was not unlike that which had taken place earlier into Latin from Greek: first the Greeks developed new meanings in Greek form, then these meanings were taken over into Latin forms, then new meanings were developed in Latin, then these new meanings were taken over into the modem European languages, then new meanings were developed within these languages. Thus there was a continuous evolution in the discourse of technology and science: in each transition, one component of the system was preserved.

A Second Semogenic Resource For The Emergence Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 540-1, 541n):

The second of the resources that was brought into play was a syntactic one, the structure of the nominal group. The nominal group of ancient Greek was very like that of modern English: it had a similar arrangement of elements around the Head noun, allowing both prepositional phrases and clauses in modifying function (with some difference of ordering), and included among its deictic elements one which was very close to the English the. Thus any noun could accumulate qualifying clauses and phrases which were explicitly signalled as defining, analogous to English the electrons in an atom, the angles which make up a triangle. 

One context which demanded elaborate nominal group structures of this kind was that of mathematics, as scholars conducted more and more sophisticated measurements, for example in their attempts to understand planetary motion. Here is the English translation of a nominal group from the work of Aristarchus of Samos, sometimes referred to as "the ancient Copernicus" because he was the first to propose that the earth revolved around the sun:

the straight line subtending the portion intercepted within the earth's shadow of the circumference of the circle in which the extremities of the diameter of the circle dividing the dark and the bright portions in the moon move

This has 32 words in the original Greek (fewer than the English because the equivalent of of is the genitive case of the noun); note that it is only the Subject of the clause, which continues ... is less than twice the diameter of the moon.¹

 

¹ The one minor piece of linguistic engineering that had to be undertaken was to ensure that the prepositional phrases in such constructions were placed after the Head word rather than before. It was also possible for a qualifying expression to be inserted between the Deictic and the Head, equivalent to English the in an atom electrons; this has only a limited potential for expansion, as can be shown by rewriting "The House that Jack Built" in this format:

This is the that Jack built house.

This is the that lay in the that Jack built house malt.

This is the that ate the that lay in the that Jack built house malt rat.

This is the that killed the that ate the that lay in the that Jack built house malt rat cat.

 With the qualifying phrase or clause at the end, the structure branches "to the right" (using the linear metaphor derived from European orthographies) and there is much less restraint on adding further elements. On the other hand, the fact that it is possible to put the qualifying element before the Head, which in English it is not, helps to avoid some ambiguity in the bracketing, as this example shows: here, both (which is) intercepted in the shadow of the earth and of the circle along which ... are qualifying the word circumference, and the Greek makes this clear with the intercepted-in-the-shadow-of-the-earth circumference of the circle along which ... . The English translation cannot follow this ordering. 

A First Semogenic Resource For The Emergence Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 539-40):

The first of these was their resource for creating technical terms. For systematic scholarship it is necessary to technicalise some of the words that are used, and this imposes two requirements: the words must be interpretable in an abstract sense, since they need to refer not to outward appearances but to the properties and principles that lie behind them; and they need to relate to one another in a regular and systematic way, so as to form stable taxonomies. 

Ancient Greek was a language of settlement, in which the potential for this kind of development lay predominantly in the nouns; and there existed already a number of noun-forming suffixes by which words of other classes — verbs and adjectives — were transcategorised. …

Using … nominalising suffixes the Greek scientists created hundreds of new technical terms; and by combining them with other derivational resources they developed extended series of semantically related forms …

In this way they established the foundations of the lexical component of a technical discourse, and the principles on which it could be indefinitely extended.

The Origins Of Grammatical Metaphor

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 539):

Why did such a significant development take place? The most important single factor was undoubtedly the evolution of science and technology. It is possible to trace the emergence of this pattern of grammatical metaphor back to the origins of western science in ancient Greece, and to follow its development step by step; each stage in the evolution of the grammar realises a stage in the evolution of a world view.

The philosopher-scientists of the ancient Greek world, Thales, Pythagoras, Anaximander and their successors, inherited a language with a grammar of the kind outlined above, in which experiential meanings were construed in clausal patterns as a balanced interplay of happenings and things; nouns enjoyed no special privileged status. In the course of their writings (and no doubt first of all in the course of their sayings, only we have no access to these) they distilled this into a language of learning. We do not know how much they reflected on this process; it is unlikely they engaged in any very explicit language planning. What they did was to exploit the resources of everyday Greek, its fundamental semogenic potential. In particular, they exploited two of its grammatical powers: the power of forming new words, and the power of extending grammatical structures.

Expansion And Projection As Autogenic Resource

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 224-5):

The fractal types of projection and expansion are also a primary resource by which the semantic system creates new meanings. The ideation base thus itself embodies, auto-genetically, the principles on which it is organised and enabled to develop further, such that the primary systems of ideational meaning then serve as a grid within which more delicate categories are construed. 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" extralinguistic 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 on 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.

Blogger Comments:

Since SFL Theory assumes that there is no meaning outside semiotic systems, 'extralinguistic experience' can be understood as the construal of the meaningless by perceptual semiotic systems.

Default Alignments: Quoted Locutions And Reported Ideas

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 111-2):

The second consequence is that although the two variables, locution/idea and quoting/reporting, can combine in either of the two possible alignments, there is a natural default condition, which is that locution goes with quoting and idea goes with reporting, as shown in Figure 3-6. 

The reason for this is clear where the first-order phenomenon is one of saying (prototypically shared semiosis), the projected figure can be presented as if it was also of the same order: Harriet said + "Shall I feed the cat?" (reversible as "Shall I feed the cat?" + said Harriet). 

Where the first-order phenomenon is one of sensing (unshared semiosis), the projected figure has no counterpart on the first-order plane of experience and cannot be naturally presented as if it had; so, Harriet wondered + whether she should feed the cat. 

But there is always the possibility of semogenic extension by cross-coupling; so we also find the corresponding marked alignments: locution/report Harriet asked + whether she should feed the cat, and idea/quote Harriet wondered + "Shall I feed the cat?" — the latter being again reversible. See Halliday (1985: Chapter 7) and Nesbitt & Plum (1988).

Semantic Categories Are Construed By Means Of Realisation In The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 97-8):

The semantic categories are themselves construed by means of realisation; they are constructed within the grammar and the lexis of a language. If we model the ideation base as a semantic space, we are foregrounding one aspect of the construction of meaning in language, namely the way in which lexicogrammar construes our experience of the world in the guise of multidimensional matrices or grids. This is an important feature of language as a semiotic system, an inevitable consequence of the principle of arbitrariness: since the forms of expression are arbitrary, they impose discontinuity on the content. We have to decide about any given instance whether it is singular or plural, temporal or causal, possible, probable or certain; whether it is a bus or a van, smiling or grinning, cloudy, misty or foggy. But the semantic categories themselves (seen from above, as it were) are much more fluid and indeterminate than their realisations in wording imply. The notion of semantic space allows us to adopt a complementary standpoint from which we can view these phenomena topologically, bringing out the inherently elastic quality of the dimensions involved, and gaining a deeper insight into the semogenic processes by which the meaning potential is ongoingly remoulded in the history of the system, of the user, and of the text.

A General Semogenic Strategy

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 95):

Construing a category thus includes locating it not only taxonomically and meronymically but also eco-functionally, as in the case of 'conscious being' just referred to. We noted above in connection with the cat example how the fact that a participant serves a participant role in a figure can be viewed either from the perspective of the figure or from the perspective of the participant (i.e. as a property of the participant). If cats kill mice, the ideation base accommodates the view from the angle of the figure: 'cats kill mice'; but it also accommodates the view from the angle of the participant: 'animals that kill mice'. Here the figure in which cats participate as actors has been construed as if it was a property, so that the category of cats might be construed within the system of the ideation base by means of the definition 'cats are animals that kill mice'. (In formal systems of representation, this can be expressed by means of lambda abstraction.)

There is a general semogenic strategy at work here. We referred to 'sequences', 'figures' and 'elements' as three orders of complexity in Section 2.1. The shift in perspective means that configurations of meanings that are of a particular order of complexity can be accessed through selection not only in their normal environment (within phenomena of the next higher order of complexity) but also within phenomena of lower orders of complexity. Through this semogenic strategy of opening up the possible domains of selection, a great deal of experiential complexity can be imported into the construal of a participant.

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.

Semantics Unfolds By Semogenic Principles In Three Semohistories

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 25):

Thus an interpretation of semantics must account not merely for the system at some particular point in its evolution but also for the processes by which it got there and the changes that will shape it in the future. As far as text is concerned, the changes in semantic styling that take place in the course of a text cannot be dismissed as simply ad hoc devices for making the text shorter (or longer!), more interesting or whatever, they should be seen as the operation of general semogenic principles in the specific context which is engendering and being engendered by that text.

The Interaction Between Recycling Meanings And Constructing New Ones

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 24):

Of course, not every instance of the use of language involves the creation of new meanings. The greater part of most discourse consists of wordings which have been constructed on countless previous occasions — in the language, in the individual, and even in the course of the text. When we come across the sentence Rain is expected in the northern part of the region, falling as snow over high ground we recognise probably all of it as something that is ready to hand: not only has it occurred in the English language many times before, but the same writer has probably written it many times before, and many of these instances could be seen as forming part of the same discourse (that is, day-by-day weather reports in a sense constitute one continuous text). The storing of meanings for repetitive use and reuse is just as important as the potential for creating new ones. 

The production of discourse by an individual speaker or writer can be seen as a dialectic between these two semiotic activities: between 

(i) recycling elements, figures and sequences that that individual has used many times before, and so for him or her are already fully codified, and  

(ii) constructing new ones that are being codified for the first time (and some of which may remain codified for future use — especially with a child who is learning the system).

Codifying As Generalisation: Syntagmatic Compacting vs Paradigmatic Condensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 24):

In general the process of creating meaning involves constructing some kind of lexicogrammatical generalisation — some form of wording that is in some respect unique. It is not possible to quantify the degree to which any semantic feature or domain has been codified at any one moment in semohistory; but meanings that are more highly codified are those that have been to a greater extent condensed and/or compacted, where 'compacting' is generalising on the syntagmatic axis (e.g. animal that has four legs > quadruped), while 'condensing' is generalising on the paradigmatic axis (forming into a system at some point along the scale of delicacy). The evolution of language (i.e. of specific languages in their various registers), the learning of language by children, and the production of language in the form of discourse constitute the historical contexts in which meanings are continuously being created along these lines.

Codifying Example

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 23):

Consider a series of examples such as the following:

What happens here is that a meaning has gradually crystallised, as it were, out of the total meaning potential of the system so that it can be deployed in codified form instead of being constructed afresh each time. In an animal that has four legs, each of the component elements animal four & legs is codified separately, as are the various grammatical relations involved; but the complex is not codified as a whole. When we come to quadruped, it is. Again, this codifying progression takes place in all the three dimensions of history: quadruped evolves later in the system, is learnt later by a child, and typically at least appears later in the text (cf. an animal that has four legs is called a quadruped).

Codifying

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 22-3):

Semogenic processes of the kinds just described take place in all three dimensions of semohistory: as the system of language evolves, as children develop their language, and as the language of a text unfolds. Hence language embodies the potential for its own ongoing expansion; and since the system at any moment is the repository of its own history, we can sometimes recognise disjunctions or interstices that offer a likely context for new meanings to appear. For example, the 'double -ing ' form of the English verb, which has recently been establishing itself (e.g. being raining, as in it seemed better to stay at home with it being raining), could have been predicted from a knowledge of the present state and recent history of the tense system. A change of this kind will propagate steadily throughout the system: sometimes very rapidly, but more often in an irregular and rather uneven flow.

Let us refer to this process as that of codifying, noting that as always it is at once both semantic and lexicogrammatical: there is no implication that meanings are already there and waiting to be codified.

Semogenic Processes And Markedness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 22):

Typically processes of this type leave their traces in the form of marking, as marked/unmarked oppositions. The original member of the set remains the unmarked one. (One could say 'the unmarked term in the system'; but this formulation assumes that the offspring combine with the parent to form a system. Sometimes they do, but not always.) In these first set of examples, the unmarked mapping is that of participant ^ noun; when the noun realises some other element in the figure, it is a marked variant (grammatical metaphor). Presumably many 'unmarked' variants originate in this way, although in most instances we no longer have the evidence which would enable us to judge.