Mental Clauses Of The ‘Cognitive’ Type

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 449):

… these always project propositions. Here a proposition is, as it were, created cognitively; it is brought into existence by a process of thinking.

Verbal Quoting Clauses: General Verbs

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 448):

In addition [to say], we find the verb go used in quoting clauses.  This verb is also used to project representations of non-linguistic semiosis, as in the tyres went [sound of screeching].  A recent addition to quoting verbs in casual speech is be like; for example, I was like ‘Are you in the right show? …

Metaphenomena: Participanthood

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 441):

Metaphenomena — projections — can be associated only with certain types of process, essentially saying and sensing, plus in certain circumstances being; … . … Complication arises because the names of metaphenomena, nouns such as belief and fact, can sometimes enter into material processes where the metaphenomena by themselves cannot. … In other words, although projections cannot participate in processes other than those of consciousness, the names of projections can, because they can be used to label events or states of affairs.

Macrophenomenon (Expansion) Vs Metaphenomenon (Projection)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 440-1):

[Consider] we saw that the boats had been turned.  If I say I can see the boats turning, this is an event.  A process ‘the boats are turning’ is being treated as a single complex phenomenon — a macrophenomenon … .  If I say I can see that the boats are turning, this is a projection.  The process ‘the boats are turning’ is being treated as the projection or idea of a phenomenon — a metaphenomenon, something not just bigger but of a different order of reality.

Process Nominal Groups

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 439-40):

[Consider] we saw the turning of the boats.  Here the process has been nominalised at the word rank, with turning as noun … .  The structure is that of a nominal group having [a] prepositional phrase with of as Postmodifier; the Complement of the of phrase corresponds to what would be the Complement if the process was realised as a clause. … Where there would be an explicit Subject, if the process was realised as a clause, what corresponds to this is the ‘possessor’ of the process, as in his handling of the situation …

Grammatical Construal Of Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 425):

There is a gradual loss of information, in the way a process is construed in the grammar, as one moves from the finite free clause [to the bound finite clause to the bound non-finite clause] to the prepositional phrase … ( … this loss of information is carried still further through the use of grammatical metaphor).

Clause Finiteness & Dependency

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 423, 424):

A finite clause is in principle independent; it becomes dependent only if introduced by a binding (hypotactic) conjunction. If it is joined in a clause complex, its natural status is paratactic. In this case its logical-semantic relationship to its neighbour is typically shown by a linking (paratactic) conjunction. …

A non-finite clause, on the other hand, is by its nature dependent, simply by virtue of being non-finite. It typically occurs, therefore, without any other explicit marker of its dependent status. Hence when a non-finite clause occurs without a conjunction, there is no doubt about its hypotactic relation in a clause complex; but there may be no indication of its logical-semantic function.

Adverbial Conjunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 419):

Adverbial conjunctions are as/so long as, as/so far as, (as) much as, for example as long as you’re here …, as far as I know …, much as I’d like to … (compare non-finite as well as, which is extending not enhancing.  In origin these express limitation, a particular point up to which a certain circumstance is valid.

Nominal Conjunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 419):

Nominal conjunctions include in case, in the event that, to the extent that, and the + various nouns of time and manner, eg the day, the moment, the way.  These last have evolved from prepositional phrases with the enhancing clause embedded in them, eg on the day when we arrived; but they now function to introduce hypotactic clauses just like other conjunctions, eg their daughter was born the day we arrived, the way they’re working now the job’ll be finished in a week.  Note that they no longer have the nominal group potential for modification; thus while we can say on the beautiful day when we arrived, it would be odd (or impossible) to say their daughter was born the beautiful day we arrived.

Verbal Conjunctions: From Projection To Expansion

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 419):

Verbal conjunctions are derived from the imperative or from the present/active or past passive participle + (optionally) that: provided (that), seeing (that/how), suppose/supposing (that), granted (that), say (that).  In origin these are projections; their function as expanding conjunction reflects the semantic overlap between expansion and projection in the realm of ‘irrealis’: ‘let us think/say that’ = ‘if …’, as in say they can’t mend it, shall I just throw it away?.

Three Kinds Of Complex Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 419):

As well as simple conjunctions such as because, when, if, and conjunction groups groups like as if, even if, soon after, so that, there are three kinds of complex conjunction, one derived from verbs, one from nouns and the third from adverbs.

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.