Theme In A Hypotactic Clause Nexus: Regressive Sequences

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 393):

Here the dependent clause is given thematic status. … In general, thematic beta-clauses serve to set up a local context in the discourse for the alpha-clause: they re-orient the development (as in the staging of a narrative), often distilling some aspect of what has gone before to provide a point of departure for the dominant clause, thus creating a link to the previous discourse. … The textual domain of a thematic dependent clause is often a sub-complex rather than just a single clause, and it may even extend beyond the clause complex in which the clause serves.

The Sentence

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 371):

… the clause complex is realised graphologically as a ‘sentence’ … . The sentence is the highest unit of punctuation on the graphological rank scale and has evolved in the writing system to represent the clause complex as the most extensive domain of grammatical structure.

Attitudinal Adjectives Functioning As Post–Deictic

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 319):

… many of them may also occur as post–Deictic; in that case their deictic function consists rather in referring to, or even constructing, an occasion of shared experience as in a miserable few dishes of peanuts.

Prepositional Phrases: Viewed From Above

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 311):

In terms of the modal structure of the clause, prepositional phrases serve as Adjuncts, and in terms of experiential structure, they serve as circumstances.

Ideational Metafunction: Logical Component

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 310):

… language as the expression of certain very general logical relations … the logical component defines complex units …

Construing Experience As Categories

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 82): 

From a typological point of view, construing experience in terms of categories means locating them somewhere in [a] network of relations.

Social Personæ

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 12):

… the social personæ of the interactants … is a model of the interpersonal and ideational distance between speaker and listener.

(Second Order) Agent In Mental Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 301):

… mental clauses with an Inducer …

Mental Clauses: Emanating Vs Impinging As Middle Vs Effective

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 301):

… the mental distinction between ‘emanating’ and ‘impinging’ is … the distinction between ‘middle’ and ‘effective’.

Identifying Clause: Decoding Is Medium + Range, Encoding Is Agent + Medium

Halliday (1994: 165):

[With] decoding clauses (those where Token = Identified/Medium) the passive [ie receptive] is … rather rare. By contrast, in an encoding identifying clause, where the Token is Identifier/Agent and the Value is Identified/Medium, passive [ie receptive] is more or less as frequent as active [ie operative] … but only the active [ie operative] will accommodate a further agency …

The Transitive Model: Extension Of The Process [Defining Variable]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 287):

… the variable is one of extension. … does the process extend beyond the Actor, to some other entity, or not?

Three Planes Of Reality: Experiential, Interpersonal & Textual Time

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 280):

Experiential time is time as a feature of a process: its location, its duration or its repetition rate in some real or imaginary history. Interpersonal time is time enacted between speaker and listener: temporality relative to the speaker–now, or usuality as a band of arguable space between positive and negative poles. Textual time is time relative to the current state of the discourse: ‘then’ in the text’s construction of external reality, or in the internal ordering of the text itself.

Circumstance Vs Qualifier [Diagnostic: Thematicity]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 221):

To differentiate them in analysis, we can apply textual probes: in principle, being an element of the clause, a circumstance is subject to all the different textual statuses brought about by theme, theme predication and theme identification. … In contrast, a Qualifier cannot on its own be given textual status in the clause since it is a constituent of a nominal group, not of the clause; so it can only be thematic together with the rest of the nominal group it is part of.

Prepositions Attached To Verbs [Diagnostic: Thematic Agnates]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 278):

There is no simple diagnostic criterion for deciding every instance; but a useful pointer is provided by the thematic structure, which gives an indication of how the clause is organised as a representation of the process …

Time Phase Of Attribution: Tense

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 222-3):

When it is specified for time, the tense may be like that of ‘material’ clauses rather than like that of ‘relational’ ones … That is, coming into being is construed on the same model as activities, as far as time is concerned; but it is still construed as a configuration of being …

Phase Of Attribution: Neutral Or Phased

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 222):

Like other processes, processes of attribution unfold through time. In the unmarked case, the phase of the unfolding is left unspecified (‘neutral’); alternatively, it is specified in terms of time, appearance or sense–perception …

Existential ‘There’

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 119n):

… this there is a pronoun. The proportionality is:

the : that : it :: a(n) : one : there

Validity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 117):

Semantics has nothing to do with truth; it is concerned with consensus about validity, and consensus is negotiated in dialogue.

Conjunctive Adjuncts Vs Conjunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 83-4):

… whereas conjunctions set up a grammatical (systemic–structural) relationship with another clause, which may be either preceding or following, the relationship established by conjunctive Adjuncts, while semantically cohesive, is not a structural one (hence they can relate only to what has gone before). These Adjuncts often are thematic; but they do not have to be.

Textual & Interpersonal Themes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 83):

… the speaker or writer is making explicit the way the clause relates to the surrounding discourse (textual), or projecting his or her own angle on the value of what the clause is saying (interpersonal) …

Instantiation As Process

Matthiessen (1998: 5.18):

A text can be interpreted as an ongoing process of selection of features — an ongoing instantiation of a more permanent system.

Metaredundancy In Stratal Realisation

Halliday (1992: 24): 

… it is not that (i) meaning is realised by wording and wording is realised by sound, but that (ii) meaning is realised by the realisation of wording in sound. We can of course reverse the direction, and say that sounding realises the realisation of meaning in wording.