David Rose On The Absence Of Semantic Structures In Halliday's Model

David Rose wrote to sys-func on 1/8/22 at 17:09:

MAKH’s procedure for semantic networks was taken up by RH, who generalised their application, specifying the entry condition as messages, realised by clauses (Hasan, Cloran, Williams, & Lukin 2005)...

Naturally, the focus had to be not on a context specific semantic network, but on a language-exhaustive one, or contextually open...

What remained the same was classification of sub-types, still realised as features in grammar systems, rather than semantic structures. In RH’s 1983 system below, features classify sub-types of questions, by more general grammatical criteria than MAKH 1972.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the procedure that Hasan (1983) took up from Halliday (1972) was simply the use of system networks to model semantics paradigmatically.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The networks in Halliday (1972) do not specify how semantic features are realised lexicogrammatically; see previous post. 

[3] This is misleading. As can be seen by examining the semantic network in Hasan (1983), the features are distinguished on the basis of meaning, not on grammatical criteria.

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It is important to understand the nature of Rose's argument in these posts. His claim is that Halliday's model of semantics does not include structures, and his method of arguing is to seek out old papers (1972, 1983) that were written before semantic structures were discussed in the modern framework. That is, Rose studiously ignores later evidence, such as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999), in which, for example, grammatical metaphor is modelled as a Token-Value relation between semantic structures. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 208-9):

It is the fact that metaphor multiplies meanings within the semantic system that opens up the possibility of metaphorical chains, with one congruent starting-point and another highly metaphorical end-point (A"' stands for A" stands for A' stands for A; e.g. 'engine failure' stands for 'the failing of an engine' stands for 'an engine failed'). The semantic system is being expanded along the dimension of the metaphorical token-value relation; but the expansion is still within the semantic system itself. 

 

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429) explain:

… in our model there are two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realised in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realised in lexicogrammatical ones. As we saw in Chapter 6 in particular, grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures.

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As Peter Medawar once wrote of another author:

Its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive himself.