Monday 17 February 2014

David Rose On Meaning

At 13:17 on 17/2/14 David Rose to sys-func:
My point was similar, that 'the SFL model of grammar differs sharply from the traditional (formal) model of syntax' (which you've usefully discussed). To elaborate slightly, meaning is not simply a token/value relation between strata of 'wording' and 'meaning', but is construed through multiple relations of abstraction and generality within and between each stratum.
A model of lg content plane stratified into 'wording' and 'meaning' seems to me intermediate, both theoretically and historically, between the bricks-&-mortar model and the (post-60s) SFL model. It resembles Hjelmslev's 'content substance/content form' duality.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Rose's partial construal of meaning as "a token/value relation" between strata of 'wording' and 'meaning' is logically incoherent.  Compare: X is a relation between Y and X.

[2] The stratification of the content plane into wording and meaning is the "(post-60s) SFL model" — see Halliday (1985, 1994) and Halliday & Matthiessen (1999, 2004) — so it is logically incoherent to construe it as intermediate between itself and another model.  Compare: Z is intermediate between Y and Z.