Folk Model Of Sensing vs The "Scientific" Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 598):

Here a contrast is construed in the grammar between the congruent we think, we believe, we know and the metaphorical the mind's operations. This contrast represents the conflict between our everyday experience of ourselves seeing, feeling, thinking, remembering, and so on, and the "scientific" model of cognitive science. Indeed, Dennett (1988) makes the generalisation that "every cognitivist theory currently defended or envisaged ... is a theory of the sub-personal level". Given this orientation, it would thus seem that the unified senser existing as a person who "senses" is an illusion construed by the grammar as part of a folk theory of our own sense of conscious processing.

The Effacement Of Sensers In The Mainstream Cognitive Science Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 598):

The mainstream cognitive science model is thus basically derived from a variety of the commonsense model. It creates a metaphorical distance from experience as construed in our congruent grammar, so that the conscious processing that we experience can be reconstrued as a 'subconscious' domain that we do not have access to — an abstract space where figures of doing & happening and of being & having are the ones that operate, rather than figures of sensing. This would seem to be at one remove (at least) from the folk model, which might reasonably be seen as one of experientialist cognition in Lakoffs (1988) sense — one that is in direct contact with the everyday, embodied experience of Sensers. 

Thus, the metaphorical reconstrual of mental processes effaces the Sensers involved in these processes — the conscious beings, prototypically human, who are thinking, knowing, believing, remembering and so on. 

This effacement of the Sensers is of course not accidental: in fact, one central feature of the way in which cognitivists reconstrue mental processing in metaphorical terms is that the grammatical metaphor makes it possible to distance the account from our everyday experience.

The 'Scientific Model' Of Sensing In Cognitive Science And Formal Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596, 596n):

The 'scientific model' in mainstream cognitive science is centrally concerned with information located in the individual's mind.⁶ This information is organised in some way as a conceptual system.

⁶ Alongside this cognitivist approach, there is a material one embodied in formal approaches to semantics, where the 'aboutness' of linguistic expressions is taken as central and these expressions are interpreted in terms of models of possible worlds. However, in this respect there is a formal-cognitivist alliance: meaning is interpreted not as something in its own right but as something outside language, either a mental construct (concepts, ideas etc.) or a material one (referents in the real world or a formal model of a possible world).

The Central Motif In The Metaphorical Reconstrual Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596, 597):

Figure 14-10 represents the central motif in the metaphorical reconstrual of sensing: sensing is 'extracted' from figures of sensing as a domain, and reified to become one of a variety of participants that take on roles in figures of being & having and doing & happening, taking place in the mind construed as a container.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Loss Of The Interpersonal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596):

Since Sensers are effaced, and projection is lost as a feature of the Senser/sensing complementarity, the gateway to the interpersonal realm — where Sensers are enacted as interactants in dialogic exchange — is closed, and the interpersonal element in the ideational/interpersonal complementarity is lost.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: A Scientific Taxonomy Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 596):

Since figures of sensing are reined as participants, the path is opened up to the taxonomic interpretation of sensing, in the form of scientific taxonomy: memory —long-term/short-term memory, sensory memory, semantic memory; recall — free recall; learning — associative learning/cognitive learning/classical conditioning;....

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: Mind As Location Of Non-Mental Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595-6, 596n):

Since figures of sensing are reified as participants, they can themselves be construed in participant roles. Here another feature of the folk model is taken oven its spatial metaphor is retained and further elaborated. Thus the mind is construed as a space where the metaphorical participants of sensing are involved in processes of doing & happening and of being & having: thoughts, concepts, memories, images are stored, located, retrieved, activated and so on.⁵ 

⁵ The widespread lexical metaphor of memory as a kind of space predates cognitive psychology by many hundreds of years; see e.g. Yates, 1966, on medieval notions such as the "memory theatre" used as aids to remembering.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Loss Of Senser/Sensing Complementarity And Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

Since figures of sensing are reified as participants, the processes of sensing are likewise turned into things, and the participants in sensing, the Sensers, are typically effaced. The Senser/sensing complementarity of the folk model is thus lost, as is the feature of Sensers projecting ideas into existence.

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: The Domain Of Sensing Reified As The "Mind"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

Since it is not taken over as a theory, the fundamental insights of the folk theory are ignored: figures of "Sensers sensing (that ...)" are re-construed through grammatical metaphor as participants. In particular, the domain of sensing is reified as the "mind", so that instead of somebody perceiving things happening, or somebody thinking that the moon was a balloon, the model of cognitive science has perception, vision, cognition, learning, memory, ... .

Cognitive Science As An Elaboration Of The Folk Model: Sensing As The Object Of Study

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 595):

The congruent ideational system separates out consciousness from the rest of our experience and construes it as a domain of sensing, embodying a Medium + Process complementarity where conscious beings (Medium) perceive, think, want, feel (Process). Sensing is thus 'mediated' through the Senser; and this process may project ideas into semiotic existence. This domain of Sensers sensing (that...), which is construed in the congruent system, is taken over in cognitive science. However, it is not taken over as being itself a theory of conscious processing; instead, it is treated as a phenomenon — that is, sensing is turned into the object of study.

The Model Of Sensing In Mainstream Cognitive Science

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 594, 595):

… the object of study of cognitive study is constructed by ideational metaphor, as reified sensing (perceiving, thinking) or as names of sensing (the mind, mental phenomena). 

… while the domain of scientific theorising about cognition is determined by the grammar of processes of sensing, the model is depersonalised, and sensing is construed metaphorically in terms of abstract "things" such as knowledge, memory, concepts. This suggests that mainstream cognitive science is basically an elaborated variety of a folk model, rather than a different scientific alternative …

Folk vs Scientific Construals Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 593):

What Is Lost In The Scientific Model Of Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 588-9):

The scientific model is metaphorical; and it stands as a metaphor for the congruent folk model. As [Figure 14-9] makes explicit, there is a considerable loss of ideational information as one moves from the congruent mode to the metaphorical mode: grammatically, a clause complex is compressed into a clause, and the clauses that are combined in the clause complex are compressed into nominal groups. As a result, the subtle distinction between the cognitive projection of ideas (sb believing that....) and the perceptive sensing of acts (sb seeing sth happen) is lost, and participants can be left implicit. … 

The possibility of leaving participants implicit means in practice that Sensers are effaced in the scientific model and, as a result, the consciousness we experience in the living of life is also construed out of the picture, being replaced with unconscious processes not accessible to our experience.

The Nature Of The Move From Folk To Scientific Model

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 586-7, 588):

What is the nature of the move from our everyday construal of the experience of consciousness — our folk theory of Sensers sensing phenomena or projecting ideas — to the way cognitive scientists construe that experience? We can see the essential nature of this move when the folk theory is reconstrued as if it was a scientific one. …

The two modes of construing our experience of consciousness ate compared in grammatical terms in Figure 14-9.

Projecting Combined With Material Lexical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 586):

This mind-space may enter into material processes of storing, searching, crossing, escaping etc., either as participant or as circumstance, and also into relational processes of "being + Location". It is interesting to note that in these various lexical metaphors the Sensers are still very much present; they are not effaced. In fact, a number of these lexical metaphors constructed on the model of material clauses retain the option of projecting; see Figure 14-8.

Types Of Lexical Metaphors In The Domain Of Sensing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 585-6):

(i) mind:

— mind as space: cross one's mind, broaden the mind, be out of one's mind, to be driven out of one's mind, get something out of one's mind, search one's mind, at the back of one's mind, to put at the back of one's mind, at the front of one's mind

— mind as container: occupy the mind, escape/slip one's mind, an open mind, a closed mind, keep in mind, to have in mind,

— mind as physical organ: blow one's mind, to boggle the mind, to have something on one's mind, the mind recoils

(ii) other mental constructs:

— emotion as location in vertical space: be up/ down, be high/ low, depress sb, lift sb's spirits, spirits soar; fall in love, love deeply, abhor/ detest/ dislike deeply

— emotion as liquid/ gas (contained in body): explode, vent one's anger, blow one's top, to boil over, to smoulder, to cool down, to keep the lid on,

Sensing As A Bounded Semantic Domain

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 585):

The grammar thus construes sensing as a bounded semantic domain within our total experience of change. This picture is further enriched through lexis, prominently through lexical metaphors. Metaphors relating to space, with the mind as a container (Reddy, 1979; cf, Lakoff & Kôvecses, 1987, on Anger), a finite space or a physical entity reinforce the grammar's construal of a bounded domain of sensing.

The Differentiation Of Inner And Outer Experience

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 584-5):

This 'world view' can be depicted using the conventions of comic strips: see Figure 14-7.

The conventions of comic strips clearly differentiate between figures of sensing and saying on the one hand and figures of being & having and doing & happening on the other: the latter are represented graphically, whereas the former are represented linguistically, in terms of their projected content Comic strips thus codify the higher-order nature of projections and their constitution in language.

The Verbal Externalisation Of Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 584):

The everyday grammar's contribution to the construal of sensing is thus both rich and varied. Some features of it are particularly significant to the uncommonsense model of mainstream cognitive science. The grammar separates out consciousness from the rest of our experience in the form of mental processes, capable of projecting ideas; but in addition, consciousness may also be 'externalised' in the form of verbal processes, capable of projecting locutions.

The Ideational And Interpersonal Modes Of Constructing The Self

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 583-4):

A projection mental clause such as I (don't) think, since ideationally it realises a figure of sensing, construes the speaker as 'Senser at the time of speaking' (it occurs metaphorically only in simple present tense); at the same time, it enacts the speaker's own 'intrusion' into the dialogue — his or her judgment about how much validity can be attached to the proposition contained in the projected clause. 

Interpersonal metaphor is thus the hinge between the ideational and the interpersonal modes of constructing the self. In the ideational mode we construe ourselves as conscious Sensers, while in the interpersonal mode we enact ourselves as speakers interacting with addressees; the metaphor brings the two together in such a way that the ideational construal stands for the interpersonal enactment (see Figure 14-6).

The grammar of everyday discourse thus clearly points to the significance of interpersonal meaning in the way that we construct ourselves — the self is not only construed but it is also enacted. Cognitive scientists, however, have derived their object of study, and their model of this object from the ideational perspective alone, failing to take the interpersonal perspective — that of enacting — into account.

The Ontogenesis Of Construing Mental Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 580):

Painter (1993) documents how one child first learned to construe mental projection: he began with figures in which he himself was the Senser. The system made it possible for him then to generalise his own experience of consciousness by construing other persons in the Senser role, as he built up a model in which this role could be occupied by any conscious (prototypically human) being.

The Grammar's Construal Of Consciousness As Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 579, 580):

Figure 14-5 shows how the proposition construed by the idea clause is projected, as the "content of consciousness", by the Senser involved in the process of sensing. This content is brought into existence by the sensing process, as actualised through the Senser; and it is construed as being of a higher order of semiotic abstraction than the process of sensing itself (i.e. it is always at one further remove from the instantial context).

Why Projected Clauses Are Not Constituents Of Projecting Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 578-9):

In the grammar, the 'idea' is a separate clause that combines with the 'sensing' clause in a clause complex, through the relation of projection; see Figure 14-4 for a structural interpretation.

In our analysis (unlike that of the mainstream grammatical tradition), the projected clause is not a constituent part of the mental or verbal clause by which it is projected. There are numerous reasons for this; some of them are grammatical — for example, 

• it cannot be the focus of theme-predication [we do not say: it is that they're absolutely horrible that I think]; 
• it cannot be the Subject of a passive mental clause [we do not say: they're absolutely horrible is thought by me]; 
• it is presumed by the substitute so, which is also used to presume conditional clauses in clause complexes: I think they're absolutely horrible and my husband thinks so too]. 

But these, in turn, reflect the semantic nature of projection: this is a relationship between two figures, not a device whereby one becomes a participant inside another. We can thus show the difference between these and 'fact' clauses, those where the idea clause is a projection but it is not the accompanying mental clause that is doing the projecting; such readymade projections do function as constituents. An example here is I don't care whether they are devoted or not; compare it's not whether they are devoted or not that I care about.

Consciousness As A Complementarity Of Change And Persistence Through Time

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 578):

The figure of sensing is a configuration of a Process (think) and the participant engaged in sensing, the Senser (I); that is, consciousness is construed as a complementarity of change through time and persistence through time — as a conscious participant involved in an unfolding process.

The Folk Model Of Consciousness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 577):

We have shown how the system of the ideation base construes consciousness: as conscious processing by a conscious being. Conscious processing can create a higher-order world of ideas (or, as we would say, meanings), comparable in certain respects to Popper's World 3; this defines the essential distinction between projection and expansion as ways of relating one figure to another. Conscious processes themselves appear as the central figures in the construal of experience, and they are pivotal in differentiating among the various types of participant. This folk model is constituted in innumerable encounters in the course of casual conversation; and it is instantiated again and again in contexts of everyday life. 

Conscious processes are of two kinds: sensing, and saying. Since what we are exploring here is the modelling of "mind", our concern in the first instance will be with sensing.

The Reification Of Experience In Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 575-6):

The most central aspect of the various changes that took place [in the move from folk to scientific models] was the reification of experience — the grammatical metaphor whereby processes were reconstrued as things. In the language of everyday commonsense, A attracts B, so B moves — a complex of two clauses; in the language of science, attraction causes (or is the cause of) movement — where the everyday clause complex, the sequence of two processes of action, has been 'compressed' into one clause with two nominalised elements, and a single process of being (cause 'be causally', or be). 

When they are reconstrued as things, processes lose their location in time and often also their participants; for instance, A attracts B is likely to be reconstrued simply as attraction. Attraction, repulsion, motion, gravity, acceleration, etc. can then be taxonomised in the same way as ordinary things such as plants and animals; they become part of an explicit taxonomy of metaphorical things. These basic resources were already in place in ordinary language — the nominal group for representing things and for organising them into taxonomies, nominalising suffixes for reconstruing non-things as things, and so on; but their potential was being exploited to a greater extent and in significantly different ways. 

This change in the grammar entailed a change in world view, towards a static, reified world — so much so that Bohm (1979) complains that language makes it hard to represent the kind of flux that modem physics likes to deal with. Bohm's dissatisfaction is directed at language in general; but bis real target is — or should be — the language of science. The everyday language of casual speech is, by and large, a language of flux, construing experience in much the way that Bohm seems to demand (see Halliday, 1987).

Folk And Scientific Models As Co-existing Varieties

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 573-4):

As we also noted above, we can interpret folk models and scientific ones as co-existing varieties of the same basic system within the ideation base. In the first instance, we will, of course, be aware of them as differing in particular domains — e.g. as operating with different lexical semantic organisations; but they also tend to construe experience differently in general terms — scientific models tend to rely on grammatical metaphor and thus embody a metaphorical construal of experience: see Figure 14-3.

Fig. 14-3: Folk and scientific models within the ideation base

Folk Models As Evolved And Everyday, Scientific Models As Designed And Restricted

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 573):

As we noted above, folk models are part of the unconscious background of thinking in everyday situation types; they have evolved without any conscious design and are not associated with academic contexts. Folk models can also be more conscious, of course — these are the models that people talk about, that they believe they believe. Scientific models are consciously designed in more restricted situation types, usually within academic institutions, to serve as resources in reasoning about the world.

The Shift From Folk To Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 572-3):

The shift from folk models to scientific ones thus takes place over a long period of time; it typically involves several factors: see Figure 14-2.

Folk Models Co-existing Alongside Scientific Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 572):

As designed semiotic systems emerge, both the registers of everyday language and the original specialist registers continue to exist and to develop; folk models of the world will co-exist alongside the scientific ones. A certain degree of intertranslatablity is likely to be maintained — linguistic renderings of logical or mathematical formulas, for instance; and this constitutes one of the contexts in which ordinary language is brought into explicit contact with more scientific varieties. 

There will always be some complementarity of function between the more designed varieties and those that are naturally evolving. They may be allocated to different spheres of activity: for example, the language of bird-watchers vs. the language of ornithologists. 

But in other cases the two are closely integrated as submotifs within a single sphere: for example, the use of both natural language and mathematical expressions side by side in the learning and practice of mathematics. This kind of interpenetration still entails a semiotic complementarity, but of a very sensitive kind, requiring a delicate interpretation of the context in order to bring it out.

The Emergence Of Scientific Registers In The West

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569-70):

In the early scientific period in the West, new registers evolved as part of the ongoing reconstruction of experience in the form of systematic knowledge and experimental science. Perhaps the earliest to evolve in these new contexts were those registers associated with the exploration, storage and dissemination of new knowledge about plants and herbs in the 16th and 17th centuries. These new contexts put pressure on the linguistic resources, and the meaning-creating power of these resources correspondingly increased. We can hypothesise a gradual evolution from the registers of ordinary language, with their folk models of the world, including folk taxonomies of plants and herbs, to more specialised scientific ones. It was at this point, as people became aware of the rapid development of new knowledge and the need for processing and storing it, that conscious design of language began, with nomenclatures and taxonomies being explicitly discussed and fixed. At the same time — but in this case without conscious design — new ways of meaning evolved in the construction of figures and sequences.

Unequal Awareness Of The Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

In addition to the different degrees of their awareness of different grammatical units, such as words and clauses, people are also not equally aware of the different kinds of functions in which the resources of language are organised. In particular, in constructing and reasoning about more conscious models, people are readily aware of those linguistic resources whose function it is to interpret and represent experience, those of the ideational metafunction; but they are much less aware of those of the other two metafunctions, the interpersonal and the textual — no doubt because these do not embody representations of experience but reflect our engagement with the world in different ways. However, although they tend to be overlooked when one comes to build a 'scientific' model of language and the mind, these other metafunctions are no less important than the ideational.

Whorf's Cryptotypes

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 569):

It is only in more recent times that the more covert areas of grammar have been systematically studied — those that, following Whorf, we have referred to as "cryptogrammar". Whorf (1956) distinguished between overt and covert categories and pointed out that covert categories were often also "cryptotypes" — categories whose meanings were complex and difficult to access. Many aspects of clause grammar, and of the grammar of clause complexes, are essentially cryptotypic. It is the analysis of some of these more covert features embodied in the everyday grammar, in particular the theory of mental processes, that throws light on the domain of cognitive science.

Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568-9):

Certain aspects of language are closer to conscious awareness than others (see Halliday, 1987): these are the more exposed parts of language, which are also the parts that tend to get studied first. In Western thinking about language, the most exposed aspect of language has been the "word": to talk is to "put things into words". 

The folk notion of the "word" is really a conflation of two different abstractions, one lexical and one grammatical. 

(i) Vocabulary (lexis): the word as lexical item, or "lexeme". This is construed as an isolate, a 'thing' that can be counted and sorted in (alphabetical) order. People "look for" words, they "put thoughts into" them, "put them into" or "take them out of another's mouth", and nowadays they keep collections of words on their shelves or in their computers in the form of dictionaries. Specialist knowledge is thought of as a matter of terminology. The taxonomic organisation of vocabulary is less exposed: it is made explicit in Roget's Thesaurus, but is only implicit in a standard dictionary. Lexical taxonomy was the first area of language to be systematically studied by anthropologists, when they began to explore cultural knowledge as it is embodied in folk taxonomies of plants, animals, diseases and the like. 

(ii) Grammar: the word as one of the ranks in the grammatical system. This is, not surprisingly, where Western linguistic theory as we know it today began in classical times, with the study of words varying in form according to their case, number, aspect, person etc.. Word-based systems such as these do provide a way in to studying grammatical semantics: but the meanings they construe are always more complex than the categories that appear as formal variants, and grammarians have had to become aware of covert patterns.

Models At Different Levels Of Awareness

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568):

There is thus a range of variation from our everyday folk models to scientific models, with expert models somewhere coming in between (Linde, 1987). Such models vary considerably in the degree to which we are consciously aware of them as models (cf. Whorf s, 1956, notion of critical consciousness). We are more aware of models that 'stand out' as belonging a particular subculture than of those that are pan of our everyday repertoire; and we are more aware of scientific models than of folk models. 

Whatever the scope and sophistication of a model, however, we are likely to be more aware of a model as a cultural construct than as a linguistic construct, since language is typically further from our conscious attention.

Scientific Models Of Experience: Context

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 567):

We can characterise them in terms of field, tenor and mode as follows (from Halliday & Martin, 1993: 54):

field: (i) extending, transmitting or exploring knowledge (ii) in the physical, biological or social sciences;

tenor: addressed to specialists, to learners or to laymen, from within the same group (e.g. specialist to specialist) or across groups (e.g. lecturer to students);

and

mode: phonic or graphic channel, most congruent (e.g., formal 'written language' with graphic channel) or less so (e.g., formal with phonic channel), and with variation in rhetorical function — expository, hortatory, polemic, imaginative and so on.

These ranges of field, tenor and mode values define a great variety of situation types within institutions of higher education, of research and of technological development. However, these situation types are quite constrained relative to the context of culture as a whole: only certain members of the culture participate in these situation types and engage with the scientific models that are developed, maintained, changed and transmitted within them. In this respect, scientific models are clearly subcultural models: contextually they are located somewhere between the potential and the instance. If we focus on particular scientific models, such as those of the mind in cognitive science, we will find that they are even more contextually constrained.

Folk vs Scientific Models Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 566-7):

The everyday folk models are likely to be embraced unconsciously by everybody in the culture, because they are everyday models, instantiated in casual conversation, and because they are construed as congruent in the cryptogrammar. The general model of the phenomena of our experience, including those of our own consciousness — seeing, thinking, wanting, and feeling — is of this highly generalised kind.

In contrast, scientific models are much more contextually constrained: they are developed, maintained, changed and transmitted within those situation types that we associate with scientific language.

Models Of Experience: Instantiation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 566, 567):

At both these strata, models are also located along the cline of instantiation, running between the potential — the overall resources for making meaning, within the context of culture, and the instance — instantial 'texts' constituted of meanings that have been selected from this potential, within particular contexts of situation. The potential end of the cline of instantiation embodies all the contextual-semantic models that the culture embraces. …

Figure 14-1 shows the dispersal of contextual-semantic models along the cline of instantiation. As the figure indicates, an inherent property of instantiation is variation; and scientific models (like other subcultural models) vary one in relation to another. Sometimes they are complementary, sometimes they conflict.

Models Of Experience: Stratification

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 565-6):

Any given model of experience exists at different orders of abstraction. It is a configuration of higher-level meanings within the context of culture; at the same time, it is also construed semantical!y in the ideation base. The relationship between these two orders of abstraction, contextual and semantic, is a stratal one; hence a model is a cultural construct that is construed in language (together with other, language-dependent semiotic systems such as expository drawings and diagrams).

The Domain Of Cognitive Science As A Metaphorical Extension Of The Folk Model

 Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 565):

We shall examine this variation [on the cline from folk to scientific theories] with particular reference to those phenomena to which we are offering the ideation base as a conceptual alternative: the mind, knowledge, cognition — as the concerns of cognitive science. We shall suggest that the domain of cognitive science is construed ideationally within the folk model; but that this model is extended metaphorically in cognitive science itself, and this extension in fact invites the interpretation of knowledge as meaning. … Cognitive science operates with a scientific model of the individual mind; but, we shall suggest, it is one that is based fairly uncritically on certain aspects of a folk model, in particular in its selection of, and perspective on, its own domain of enquiry.

The Cline From Folk To Scientific Theories

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 565):

As a resource for making sense of our experience, the ideation base enables us to construe a range of different theories, commonsense as well as scientific. There is a cline between folk, or commonsense, theories and scientific, or uncommonsense, ones; and at any point along the cline alternative theories may be in competition. The ideation base, by dint of being polysystemic, accommodates variation along this cline, not only from folk to scientific but also across alternatives: it embodies both congruent and metaphorical construals of experience, and it provides elasticity within the overall construction space.

The Move From The Registers Of Everyday Life To The Registers Of Education

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 564):

From an educational point of view, the most fundamental complementarity is the move from the registers of everyday life to the registers of education: this is a move from folk or commonsense models to the "uncommonsense" models of systematic and technical knowledge. To say that the ideational system is polysystemic means that it can support these different theoretical angles on experience: semantic variation of all kinds is the manifestation of the different theoretical interpretations that language places on experience.

Domain Models: Variant Subtheories Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 563):

The overall ideation base thus comprises many different registerial variants — register-specific systems that we called domain models. Now, just as the overall ideation base is a theory of our total experience of the world around us and inside us — the theory that is shared by the culture as a whole, so also the different registerial variants constitute different 'subtheories' of our experience. 

These 'subtheories' may complement one another by simply being concerned with different domains of experience. This complementarity is purely additive, although for society as a whole it constitutes the semiotic aspect of the division of labour, whereby different people construe different facets of the overall cultural experience. 

But such subtheories may also be concerned with more or less the same domain, bringing alternative theoretical perspectives to the construal of experience that is shared. Halliday (1971) shows how this is achieved in William Golding's novel The Inheritors, by means of alternative deployments of the resources of transitivity as Golding presents the world view of two groups of early humans; these different perspectives on the shared experience are constituted as variants of the same overall transitivity system.

Registerial Variation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 563):

In addition, the ideation base is polysystemic in another sense: registerial variation. We have seen that such variation can be construed in terms of the probabilistic nature of the linguistic system, as variation in the probabilities associated with terms in systems. Seen in this light, a register is a particular probabilistic setting of the system; and the move from one register to another is a re-setting of these probabilities. What is globally the 'same' ideational semantic system can thus appear as a collection of different systems, as one moves along the cline of instantiation from potential to instance. As we noted above, the effect is quantitative; but it is also qualitative, in the sense that it provides different perspectives on experience within the same system.

Internal Complementarities: Metaphorical Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

beyond its congruent mode, there is metaphorical complementarity: the ideational model offers a complementarity between the congruent mode itself and the metaphorical mode, making it possible to take some phenomenon as already construed and then reconstrue it as if it was a phenomenon of a different kind.

Internal Complementarities: Systemic Complementarities

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

still in its congruent mode, there are systemic complementarities: the ideational potential offers systemic complementarities such as the ergative and transitive models of participation in processes, and the mass and count(singular/plural) models of quantity;

Internal Complementarities: Fractal Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

within this congruent mode, there is a fractal complementarity: the highly generalised semantic types of projection & expansion are manifested in complementary domains — those of sequences, figures, and participants; so that, for example, some phenomenon of experience construed as having temporal expansion might appear either as a sequence or as a configuration;

Internal Complementarities: Metafunctional Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562):

in the congruent mode of construing experience, there is a metafunctional complementarity: the ideational potential offers two complementary modes for construing experience — the highly generalised logical mode, with projection & expansion as the dominant semantic motifs, and the more particularised experiential mode, with its typologies of processes, things, qualities, and circumstances;

The Polysystemic Nature Of Ideational Meaning Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 562, 563):

The ideational meaning potential embodies not one single semantic system but rather several such systems coexisting; in Firth's terms, it is a "system of systems" — in two distinct but related ways [internal complementarities and registerial variation]. …

[Internal] complementarities constitute one form of indeterminacy of the system — one that allows it to be "polysystemic" in the particular sense of embodying more than one way of construing experience.

The Distribution Of Indeterminacies Across Languages

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 561-2):

It seems likely that all these different kinds of indeterminacy are what make it possible for the grammar to offer a plausible construal of experience — one that is rich enough, yet fluid enough, for human beings to live with. We should stress once again that the examples cited here are features of the ideation base of one particular language, namely English. No other language will be identical. Indeed the distribution of indeterminacies is likely to be precisely one of the features in which languages differ most, and even perhaps varieties within one and the same language. But every language depends on indeterminacy as a resource for meaning — even if our grammatics is not yet very clever at teasing it out.

Token + Value Structures "Having Things Both Ways"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 561):

There are of course many different contexts for all these indeterminacies, in different regions of the total semantic space. Certain types of ambiguity appear to be not so much artefacts of the realisation (not just grammatical puns, so to speak) but rather another kind of complementarity, where the grammar is as it were "having things both ways" — both interpretations have to be accepted at one and the same time. This is sometimes the case with Token + Value structures, in figures of being. These clauses are always ambiguous, if the verb is be, since this verb does not mark the passive; yet some depend on being interpreted both ways — particularly, perhaps, some proverbial sayings, Thus, one man's meat is another man's poison is both Token ^ Value 'what one person likes may displease another' and Value ^ Token 'what one person dislikes may please another'; contrast what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, which can be interpreted only as Token ^ Value.

The Neutralisation Of Logical Semantic Relations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 560-1):

When two figures are linked into a sequence, by some logical-semantic relation, there is a rather wide range of possible semantic relations between the two: the relations of time and of cause and condition are particularly elaborated in this respect, but there are others besides — the manner, the matter, and so on. The distinctions among these relationships, however, may be to a greater or lesser degree neutralised, where one clause is construed as dependent on the other; this happens as the dependent clause moves from finite to non-finite status. 

For example, in they get caught taking bribes the distinction that would be made in the agnate finite clause, among, say 

they get caught if they take bribes, 
they get caught when they take bribes, 
they get caught because they take bribes, 

is simply neutralised — it is not a blend of all three, nor is there any ambiguity involved. An intermediate degree of specificity, with partial neutralisation, can be seen in the non-finite clause with accompanying preposition, as in 

they get caught for taking bribes. 

What happens here is that the fact that there is a connection between the two figures is unequivocally construed by the dependency; but the nature of this connection — what kind of logical relationship is being set up — does not enter the picture.

Transitive-Ergative Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 559-60):

In those figures where there is a second direct participant, some form of agency runs through all the different types of process; but agency is such a complex aspect of human experience that the grammar does not delineate it by a single stroke, but construes it by means of a fundamental complementarity, that between the transitive and the ergative perspectives. Thus figures involving two direct participants, such as Actor + Goal in the material, are aligned along two different axes: the transitive one, based on the potential extension of force (mechanical energy) from a doer to another entity; and the ergative one, based on the potential introduction of agency (causal energy) from another entity as external source. Thus the earthquake shook the house is construed both as 'earthquake + shake' plus optional Goal 'house', and as 'house + shake' plus optional Agent 'earthquake'. As always in cases of complementarity, certain parts of the region are more strongly aligned to one perspective, other parts to the other, but the total picture requires the confrontation of the two.

Behavioural Process As Mixed Category

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 559):

As we saw, the grammar distinguishes a number of types of process, material, mental, verbal and relational; the distinctions are made by a cluster of syntactic variables — the valency of associated participant roles, the class of entity that takes on each role, the potential for combining with other figures, the associated tense systems and the like. But since these variables "draw the line" at different places, there are areas of overlap, with mixed categories that share some characteristics with one group and some with another. 

We gave the example of behavioural processes; these are a mixed category, formed by the overlap of the material, on the one side, and the mental or verbal on the other. Behaving is construed as a type of figure that (like the mental) typically has a conscious participant as the central role, and does not extend beyond this to a second participant; but, on the other hand, it does not project, and it has a time frame like that of the material. Thus behavioural processes lie squarely athwart a fuzzy borderline.

The Significance Of Indeterminacy [3]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 557):

But, thirdly, within the overall construction of experience, the diversity of spheres of social action is realised by variation in the line-up of semantic features — that is, by variation in register. The probabilities are reset; and in some cases one or two "critical systems" are strongly affected in this way, such that the local norm skews the system, or perhaps even reverses the skewing set up by the global norm. It is here that we find future taking over as the unmarked primary tense in weather forecasting. As we said above, we define register variation in just these terms, as the ongoing resetting of probabilities in the lexicogrammar, which then functions to construe the ongoing variation at the level of the social process.

The Significance Of Indeterminacy [2]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 557):

Secondly, systems have varying probability profiles, so that (in terms of information theory) they carry differential loads of information: the skewer the probabilities of the terms in a system, the greater the redundancy that it carries — hence the less we need to attend to its unmarked state. For example: it has been found that, in an English clause, positive is about ten times as frequent as negative (Halliday & James, 1993). What this means is that we build in to our sense of a figure the presumption that something is or something happens, rather than that something is not or does not happen; extra work has to be done if a process is being construed as negative. The same applies to future tense, as we saw: extra grammatical energy is required to assign a figure to the future.

The Significance Of Indeterminacy [1]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 557):

How would we summarise the significance of indeterminacy, from the point of view of the semantic construal of experience? It lies first and foremost, perhaps, in the general principle that is being proclaimed, if indeterminacy is a typical and unremarkable feature of the grammar: that 'this is the way things are'. Our "reality" is inherently messy; it would be hard to construe experience, in a way that was beneficial to survival, with a semiotic system whose typical categories were well-defined, clearly bounded, and ordered by certainty rather than probability. This is the problem with designed systems, including semiotic ones: as a rule, they fail to provide adequately for mess.

Blogger Comments:

Given the immanent view of meaning, which the authors espouse, 'messiness' can only be a property of semiotic systems themselves.

The Synchronic Significance Of Global Probabilities In The Grammar: Partial Association Between Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 555-6):

Synchronically (that is, viewed synoptically in this way as a meaning potential) a language is, as we have said, a probabilistic system: if we say that, in the grammar, there is a system of primary tenses past/present/future, we assume the rider 'with a certain probability attached to them'. But we do not, of course, speak or write with one grammatical system at a time. Systems intersect with each other simultaneously (we choose tense along with voice, polarity, mood, transitivity and so on), and they follow each other in linear succession (we choose tense in clause 1, again in clause 2, again in clause 3 and so on). Each instance has its environment, both of previous instances, and of simultaneous instances of systems with their own sets of probabilities.

We shall not attempt to discuss this issue here; except to refer briefly to what is one important aspect of indeterminacy, namely partial association between systems. We model the grammar as if each of these choices was independent that the choice of tense, say, is not affected by the simultaneous choice of mood. This may, in fact, be so; but when choice is made in two systems simultaneously, such that each serves as environment for the other, there is often a conditioning effect on the probabilities. This may be an indication of a change in progress, or it may be a stable feature of the overall system.

The Historical Significance Of Global Probabilities In The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 555):

The significance of global probabilities in the grammar emerges in various ways, both historical and synchronic. Historical change in language is typically a quantitative process, in which probabilities in systems at every level are gradually nudged in one direction or another, now and again becoming categorical so that some systemic upheaval takes place. Each instantiation of a tense form, say, whenever someone is speaking or writing in English, minutely perturbs the probabilities of the system — because what we call "system" and "instance" are one and the same phenomenon, being observed from different depths in time. 

There are, of course, more catastrophic types of change: languages become creolised, creolised systems in turn become decreolised, or a language ceases to be spoken altogether. At the "instance" end, a single highly-valued instance may exert a disproportionate effect: quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare are familiar triggers of this "Hamlet factor" in English (in media discourse today almost every change is a sea change, which goes into our folk taxonomy of types of change). 

But such qualitative effects take place against a background of microscopic quantitative pressures, the sort of nanosemiotic processes by which a language is ongoingly restructured as potential out of the innumerable instantial encounters of daily life — the "sheer weight of numbers", as we sometimes call it. 

And in the ontogenetic dimension of history, the growth and development of language in a human child, an analogous dialectic can be observed: highly valued instances of text (rhymes, favourite stories and the like) interact with the quantitative pressures of the talk going on around (the child's access to the global probabilities — note that children do not begin learning the grammar by sorting out functional variation!) to yield a meaning potential that is a reasonable copy of the probabilistic system shared among the community.

Register Variation Defined

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 554):

This illustrates one very powerful feature of a probabilistic system of this kind: that it accommodates systematic functional variation. We have discussed the two text types, weather forecasting and recipes, as examples of variation in register: of the way in which the meaning selections in texts tend to vary systematically with their contextual function — their value in the social process. We pointed out that this variation is seldom categorical: except in very closed registers, or "restricted languages", no major options are likely to be totally excluded. What happens is that the probabilities are reset. This may be a relatively minor skewing affecting a large number of semantic features; but one or other system may stand out by being particularly clearly realigned, as happens with tense and with mood, respectively, in our two examples. We can in fact define register variation as the resetting of probabilities in the lexicogrammatical and semantic systems, including those in the ideation base. We observe these probabilities in the form of frequencies in the text;

Systemic vs Registerial Probabilities

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 553-4):

What we are saying is that there is a global pattern of probabilities in English, including a probability profile of the tense system whereby the probability of future is (say) 0.1. The register of weather forecasting, however, sets up a local pattern in which the probability of future is (say) 0.5. This changes the meaning of the system of primary tense, because it reverses the marking and hence sets up a new relationship among the different terms. It construes a realm of experience in which the future becomes the familiar dimension of time, the point of reference by which both present and past are defined.

Text Frequencies Manifest System Probabilities

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 552-3):

We have sometimes referred to the relative frequency of a particular feature of the grammar. For instance, in our two examples of the meaning base as a resource in language processing, certain patterns characteristically recurred: future tense in the weather forecasts, imperative mood in the recipes. In each case this was a special feature pertaining to the register in question: in weather forecasts, the future tense is especially frequent relative to the other primary tenses.

To say this means that there is a general expectancy in English discourse that, again relative to the other primary tenses, future will occur less frequently than it does here. In other words, there is some global expectation, in the grammar of English, about the relative frequency of the different terms in the primary tense system, past, present and future. Similarly there is some global expectation about the relative frequency of imperative and indicative mood. Frequency in the text is to be interpreted, therefore, as the manifestation of underlying probability in the system.

Local Indeterminacies vs Global Indeterminacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 552):

Local indeterminacies of all these types are found in all regions of the content plane, either within one stratum or at the interface between one stratum and another (including of course puns, which are formed at the interface of content and expression). Some of them involve very general categories, and hence resonate across wide stretches of semantic space, like the transitive/ergative complementarity. We may call them "local", however, in contrast to one global form of indeterminacy which is a feature of the entire system of language, and probably of any evolved semiotic system, namely its probabilistic character.

Indeterminacy: Complementarity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 551-2):

(5) Complementarity

transitivity (i): transitive perspective

dry = 'make dry' (cf. wipe)

transitivity (ii): ergative perspective

dry = 'become dry' (cf. fade)

As discussed in Chapter 4 above, the grammar adopts two complementary perspectives on agency, the transitive and the ergative. Most processes are oriented primarily within one perspective or the other; here we have illustrated the complementarity with a verb that is at home in both.

Indeterminacy: Neutralisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 551):

(4) Neutralisation

If the dependent clause in such an environment is finite, it selects one or other type of enhancing relation: condition, cause or time. If the dependent clause is non-finite, the distinction is partially or wholly neutralised.

Indeterminacy: Overlap

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 551):

(3) Overlap ('borderline case')

Behavioural processes such as listen, watch share some features with material processes ('present-in-present' as unmarked tense; no projection), other features with mental processes (the Medium/ Behaver is a conscious being). They lie on the borderline between 'doing' and 'sensing' (so can be re-iterated as do in some contexts but not in all). 

Indeterminacy: Blend

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 550):

(2) Blend

they might win tomorrow

— ability 'they may be able to'

                           x

— probability 'it is possible they will'

Here, on the other hand, the meaning of the oblique modal might combines the two senses of 'able' and 'possible', rather than requiring the listener to choose between them. If the verbal group is 'past', however, this again becomes an ambiguity:

they might have won

— ability 'they were capable of winning (but they didn't)'

— probability 'it is possible that they won (we don't know)'

Indeterminacy: Ambiguity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 550):

(1) Ambiguity

(i) must:

You must be very careful! (when you do that)

— obligation 'it is essential that you should be'

You must be very careless! (to have done that)

— probability 'I am certain that you were'

Here the listener/reader adopts either one interpretation or the other — usually, of course, without noticing that there is another possible meaning. In (i), the Attribute suggests the choice (one does not usually instruct someone to be careless!); but cf. you must be very sure of yourself ('before you do that'/ 'to have done that'). Compare also (ii), where the ambiguity is one that is typical of identifying clauses.

(ii) home is where your heart is

— Token ^ Value 'if you live in a place, you love it'

— Value ^ Token 'if you love a place, it is home to you'

Five Basic Types Of Indeterminacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 549):

There are perhaps five basic types of indeterminacy in the ideation base: ambiguities, blends, overlaps, neutralisations, and complementarities — although it should be recognised from the start that these categories are also somewhat indeterminate in themselves. What follows is a brief characterisation of each in turn:

(1) ambiguities ('either a or x'): one form of wording construes two distinct meanings, each of which is exclusive of the other.

(2) blends 'both b and y'): one form of wording construes two different meanings, both of which are blended into a single whole.

(3) overlaps ('partly c, partly z'): two categories overlap so that certain members display some features of each.

(4) neutralisations: in certain contexts the difference between two categories disappears.

(5) complementarities: certain semantic features or domains are construed in two contradictory ways.

Indeterminacy In Construing Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 549):

We have tried to make the point that the human condition is such that no singulary, determinate construction of experience would enable us to survive. We have to be able to see things in indeterminate ways: now this, now that, partly one thing, partly the other — the transitivity system is a paradigm example, and that lies at the core of the experiential component of grammar.

Language As An Indeterminate System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 547-8):

What does it mean to say that a natural language is an indeterminate system? In the most general terms, it suggests that the generalised categories that constitute language as a system — as "order", rather than as randomness or "chaos" (let us say randomness rather than chaos, since chaos in its technical reading is also a form of order) — are typically not categorical: that is, they do not display determinate boundaries, fixed criteria of membership, or stable relationships from one stratum to another. We could refer to them as "fuzzy", in the sense in which this term is used in fuzzy logic, fuzzy computing, etc.; but we prefer to retain the term "indeterminate" for the phenomena themselves, since "fuzzy" is usually applied to the theoretical modelling of the phenomena (it refers to meta-fuzz rather than fuzz).

The Ideological Constraints Set Up By Scientific Discourse

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 546-7):

In the world of classical physics, the flux of experience was held under control: reality had to be prevented from wriggling, while it could be observed and experimented with. The control over experience is partly a physical matter; but it is also in part semiotic, and the semiotic control of experience is achieved by the nominalising power of the grammar. Since it is the grammar that has construed it in the first place, the grammar is able to transform it by reconstruing it in other terms. Grammatical metaphor played an important role in shaping our humanist world.

But it shaped it in a way which soon came to be felt as decidedly inhuman. Already at the end of the eighteenth century, within a hundred years of Newton's "Opticks", people were reacting against the rigidity of the world of physics; what they could not accept were the ideological constraints set up by scientific discourse, by a grammar which construed all experience in terms of things. In our own twentieth century the scientists themselves have become weary of it, finding that it prevents them from engaging with the indeterminacy and the flow that they now regard as fundamental — let alone with the concept of the universe as conscious and communicating, as something itself to be interpreted as a semiotic system-&>process. Once we conceive of reality in semiotic terms, it can no longer surprise us that language has the power to construe it, maintain it, and transform it into something else.

The Textual Motive And Ideational Effects Of Ideational Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 546):

We have shown that the motive for reconstruing experience in this way was in the first instance a textual one: in the grammars of these languages, when one is developing a reasoned chain of logical argument such that complex phenomena have to be given a clearly defined status in the organisation of information (the clause as "message"), such phenomena have to be constructed in nominal form. But there is no insulation between one part of the grammar and another, and this inevitably has ideational effects. 

Any semantic construct that appears as topical Theme has a function in transitivity; if it is formed as a nominal group, it is potentially a participant in some process, and therefore at some level it is an entity, a thing. If we say diamond is transformed into graphite, this is a process involving two things, diamond and graphite; if we reconstrue this as the transformation of diamond into graphite it has become one thing, transformation, with diamond and graphite serving only circumstantially to qualify it as a thing of a certain kind.

This reconstrual of experience is complex: what were first construed as happenings have become things, with the original things now serving merely as their appendages; but at the same time what were first construed as logical relationships between processes have been reconstrued as processes in their own right. So the transformation of diamond into graphite is caused by ... . 

It is also complex in another way: the original status accorded to the phenomenon is not lost, but enters into a metaphorical nexus with the new one. So transformation is still a process, as well as being a thing; is caused by, as well as being a process, is still a logical relation between processes. But, as we have seen, the overwhelmingly predominating effect of this reconstrual is a nominalising one, in which other phenomena are transformed into things. This is a major shift in ideational terms, and plays a significant part in the historical semiotic.

The Transformation Brought About In The Emergence Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 545-6):

But to say that the semantic relations have become less explicit is to imply that these relations themselves have not changed. In one sense, this is true: we can "unpack" the metaphor, and experts will generally agree on how to do it. But in another sense it is not true. 

Scientific discourse began, as we saw, with the creation of technical taxonomies and mathematical constructs; these were already modulating the semiotic construal of experience, even if only at the margins, by creating a new realm of abstract things that had not existed before. 

But the transformation brought about by the renaissance was a more fundamental one; not only was this realm of abstract things greatly extended, but, more significantly, phenomena hitherto construed as processes and properties were now transformed into things — they were reconstrued, by grammatical metaphor. We have illustrated this transformation from English; but it took place in all those languages that took over the semiotic functions of medieval Latin.

Grammatical Metaphor Renders Many Of The Semantic Relationships Implicit

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 545):

We have suggested that the immediate context for this change was a discursive one: the evolution of a register of experimental science, in which certain forms of argumentation were highly valued. This is usually interpreted simply as the emergence of a particular genre, the scientific article; but that is only one side of the story — no such genre could have come into being without these changes in the grammar of the clause. At the same time, they have other significant consequences. 

We have already pointed out the fact that one effect of grammatical metaphor is to render many of the semantic relationships implicit: if the happening is construed as a clause, the semantic relations are spelt out in the configuration of grammatical elements, whereas if it is construed as a nominal group they are not, or only partially so (compare his energy balance approach to strength and fracture with he investigated how strong [glass] was, and how it fractured, using [the idea that] the energy [...] balanced out). 

On the whole, the greater the degree of metaphor in the grammar, the more the reader needs to know in order to understand the text.

The Metaphorical Use Of Verbs To Express Logical-Semantic Relations Between Nominalised Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 544-5):

When the processes and properties turn into nouns, the verbs do not disappear from the scene. Scientific discourse is still written in clauses, and these clauses still have verbs in them. Let us return briefly to the examples from Newton's "Opticks":

those Colours argue a diverging and separation of the heterogeneous Rays from one another by means of their unequal Refractions

the variety of Colours depends upon the Composition of Light

the cause of Reflexion is not the impinging of Light on the solid, impervious parts of Bodies

We might suggest a more congruent form of the first and second examples here: 

colours vary because light is composed [in this way];  

because those colours (appear] we know the heterogeneous rays diverge and separate from one another.... 

The verbs depend upon and argue both express a logical-semantic relation between the two nominalised processes: either an external cause, 'a happens; so x happens', or an internal cause, 'b happens, so we know y happens'. This is another grammatical metaphor; the congruent form of representation of a logical relation is a conjunction. The two types of metaphor work together, to construe the two processes as one: 'happening a causes happening x', 'happening b proves happening y'. 

It is not the case, of course, that this type of construction had never occurred in English before; it had. But it was rare; whereas from the time of Newton onwards it gradually took over, becoming the most favoured clause type of scientific language — as indeed we find it today.

The Textual Motivation For Nominalisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 543-4):

There are similar contexts [in Newton's Opticks] for expressions such as an inequality of Refractions, the impinging of Light on ... Bodies, the thickness of the Body, reflecting power in the passages cited above. The nominalised forms inequality, impinging, thickness are not technical terms; or rather, they are so to speak technicalised for the given instance, but they do not lose their semantic status as property or event. Why then are they reconstrued as nouns? 

The reason is to be found in the grammar of the textual metafunction. In order to function with the requisite value in the message, which means either as Theme or as focus of information, they cannot remain as complete clauses; they have to be "packaged" into single elements of clause structure, and the only available constituent for this purpose is the nominal group. Instead of being a process in its own right, light impinges on a body, the phenomenon in question is construed as a participant, the impinging of light on a body. It can then take on a clearly defined status in the grammatical construction of the discourse.

What is beginning to emerge here is a grammar for experimental science: a way of construing experiential meaning so that it can be organised textually into a form of discourse for the advancement of learning.

A Function Of Grammatical Metaphor In Newton's Argument

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 543):

If we look at Newton's "Opticks", from which these are taken, we find that it consists of three simultaneous discourses interspersed. In one of these phases, Newton describes his experiments; in another he draws conclusions from the experiments; and in the third he provides mathematical explanations. … The examples just cited of grammatical metaphor are typical of the second phase. It is here that Newton is proceeding by logical steps through a reasoned argument; and he frequently needs to summarise the argument up to that point, or in anticipation of what is to come. A typical sequence would be the following:

… when Light goes out of Air through several contiguous refracting Mediums as through Water and Glass, … that Light … continues ever after to be white. … … the permanent whiteness argues, that …

The metaphorical nominalisation permanent whiteness summarises the earlier sequence of inductions.

Grammatical Metaphor In The Writing Of Newton

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 542-3):

When we come to the writing of Newton, however, we find formulations such as the following:

… by these two Experiments it appears, that in equal Incidences there is a considerable inequality of Refractions. 

… the cause of Reflexion is not the impinging of Light on the solid impervious parts of bodies, but .. . 

… if the thickness of the body be much less than the Interval of the Fits of easy Reflexion and Transmission of the Rays, the Body loseth its reflecting power.

These contain a great deal of grammatical metaphor, contrast them with more congruent forms of expression such as 

light is refracted unequally (even) when it falls at the same angle; 

light is reflected not because it impinges on the solid, impervious parts of bodies'; 

if the body is much less thick than the interval between the points where the rays are easily reflected and (where they are easily) transmitted, the body is no longer able to reflect (light). 

Why has the mode of expression changed along just these lines?

The First Recorded Emergence Of Scientific Discourse In English

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 542):

This discourse first appears in English in the work of Chaucer, for example his "Treatise on the Astrolabe", written about 1391. Here we find the same linguistic resources brought into play: nouns as technical terms, and extended nominal groups. The former are partly technological (to do with the construction and operation of the astrolabe), generally Anglo-Saxon or Norman French, like plate, ring, turet (eye, or swivel), riet (from rete 'net', i.e. grid), moder ('mother', body of the instrument); and partly theoretical (from astronomy, mathematics or general methodology), mainly borrowings from Latin like altitude, ecliptik, clymat (climatic zone), degree, equation, conclusioun, evidence. The latter do not attain any spectacular length but involve the expected mixture of clauses and prepositional phrases, as in the same number of altitude on the west side of this line meridional as he was caught on the east side. This is clearly the discourse of organised knowledge; but it is not sharply set off from the language of everyday life.

It is with the "new learning" of the Renaissance that a distinct language of science begins to emerge, with a vastly greater dependence on grammatical metaphor. The earlier exercises in nominalisation had been abstract but only minimally metaphorical; there is a trace of grammatical metaphor in expressions like conclusion and the same number of altitude, but no more than is found in the language of daily life.

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.