6. Re ‘semantics (content) and phonology (form), with lexicogrammar as the "interlevel" between them’MAKH 1961 was strongly influenced by Hjelmslev, whose stratal model contrasted content and expression planes, and within each plane, form and substance...The ‘it’ that Firth rejected was the formal/functional dichotomy, since their models included both, as system/structure cycles in phonology and lexicogrammar.MAKH didn't explicitly equate semantics with substance, but via Hjelmslev in this 1972 quote...The term «meaning» has traditionally been restricted to the input end of the language system: the «content plane», in Hjelmslev's terms, and more specifically to the relations of the semantic interface, Hjelmslev's «content substance».As quoted in 1. below, he regarded phonology and grammar as ‘two strata of linguistic form’, and semantics as an ‘interlevel’ or ‘interface’ between grammar and context.
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[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday (1961), which outlined Scale & Category Grammar, not Systemic Functional Grammar, did not use Hjelmslev's notions of content and expression. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 39):
Hjelmslev’s (1953: 8) distinction between “hypothesis” and “theory”
[2] This is misleading, because it misrepresents Halliday (1961). It was Halliday that "rejected" the formal/functional dichotomy. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 51):
The “formal / functional” dichotomy is one of those which linguistics is better rid of;⁴⁵
In the footnote that Rose quotes, Halliday relates this dichotomy to others that Firth rejects.
[3] This is misleading, because it is not true. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 51) rejects the dichotomy on the following grounds:
The“formal / functional” dichotomy is one of those which linguistics is better rid of;⁴⁵ it is misleading to say even that classes are functionally determined, since they are set up with reference to the form of the unit next above – the whole description is both formal and functional at the same time, and “function” is merely an aspect of form.
Moreover, the notion of a system-structure cycle does not arise until the development of Systemic Functional Grammar, being first only foreshadowed in the description of 'realisational cycles', that relate content to expression, in Halliday (1979). Halliday (2002 [1979]: 204):
… the final output – the syntagm – that serves as input to the next realisational cycle.
[4] This is misleading. In this quote from 50 years ago, Halliday simply relates traditional uses of the term 'meaning' to Hjelmslev's term 'content substance'.
[5] This is misleading. While it is true that the quote (Halliday 2013) identifies 'wording or sound' as linguistic form, it does not identify "semantics as an ‘interlevel’ or ‘interface’ between grammar and context". This is because the latter describes Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961) — see [1] above — not Systemic Functional Grammar.
The Halliday (2013) quote in question, and Rose's misunderstandings of it, can be re-visited at:
