Sunday 2 March 2014

David Rose On Beyond the Clause (Complex)

David Rose wrote at 11:07 on 2/3/14 to sysfling:
Beyond the clause (complex) is the text. Here is a relevant quote from Ch 1 of Working with Discourse: meaning beyond the clause







Blogger Comments:

[1] Beyond the clause (complex) is the cotext at the level of wording (lexicogrammar).

In terms of stratification, the clause is the uppermost rank unit in stratum of wording (lexicogrammar) — and the clause complex is an expansion of that unit — whereas text is the uppermost 'unit' in the stratum of meaning (semantics).   In terms of instantiation, text is an instance of the system, and so can be viewed at the level of meaning (semantics), wording (lexicogrammar) and sounding (phonology).

[2] Meaning 'beyond the clause' is the meaning (semantic stratum) that is realised on the grammatical stratum as the textual systems of cohesion: CONJUNCTION, REFERENCE, SUBSTITUTION & ELLIPSIS and LEXICAL COHESION.  See Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 524-85).