… But the following [from Rose] is very nice to hear:Metafunctionality as I tried to suggest, is a property of lg that its syntagmatic structuring has evolved to enable, together with ranks and strata. So it’s basic to lg but not to semiotic modes in general.I'm wondering how well that statement goes down more generally: consequences should actually follow.I think the question of what dimensions are common across semiotic modes is very interesting and also central for a semiotics. I'd readily take rank to have to be present, otherwise axis has no domain (s) to operate in. Structural configurations have to be configurations of something. Stratification is also a good bet. Moreover, since semiosis is inherently dynamic, we'll have instantiation and sedimentation relating to reservoires and repositories I'd expect. These would all seem to be necessarily bound up in a single 'definition' of a particular kind of signs for my money. This means there is no 'picking and choosing' to do. …Metafunction again turns up there as a bit of a swamp... the original idea of "distinctive regions of relatively interdependent systems" gets tricky without sufficiently strongly motivated systems. And I am not yet sure to what extent the different kinds of structure (which I like a lot) actually match well with kinds of functions parallel to linguistically motivated metafunctions in nonverbal semiotic modes.
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[1] To be clear, this is not "very nice to hear" from a theoretical point of view. See David Rose Misunderstanding Metafunctionality And Axis (Inter Alia).
[2] To be clear, rank is one way of modelling formal constituency. In language, rank is a dimension of lexicogrammar and phonology/graphology. Therefore, in modelling semiotic systems without a grammar — that is, those other than language — rank can only be a dimension of the expression plane, not the content plane.
[3] This is misleading because it is untrue. To be clear, semantics has no rank scale because it has no forms to rank, and yet semantics is modelled with both axes, paradigmatic and syntagmatic; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).
Bateman's false claim derives from two theoretical misunderstandings. Firstly, rank is not the domain of axis. Axis and rank are distinct local dimensions. Axis has two orders: the paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Rank has four orders: clause, group/phrase, word, morpheme in lexicogrammar. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):
Secondly, structures are configurations of functions (Senser^Process) not rankscale forms (nominal group ^ verbal group). The sequencing of formal units is a syntagm.
[4] To be clear, without the stratification of content and expression, there can be no semiotic system. Semiosis requires that a Token means a Value. However, the stratification of the content plane is restricted to language, as demonstrated by the fact that only language can be read aloud, since the locutions that a Sayer projects are the wordings of the lexicogrammatical stratum.
[5] This is possibly a garbled reference to 'reservoir' and 'repertoire' in Martin's Bernstein-derived model of individuation.
[6] To be clear, this misrepresents the metafunctions. The metafunctions are "strongly motivated" as the basic types of meaning: construing experience as meaning, enacting intersubjective relations as meaning, and weaving these together as text. Each of these understandings of the metafunctions can be applied to semiotic systems. Indeed, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532-3) are sceptical of there being full semiotic systems without metafunctions:
These three "metafunctions" are interdependent; no one could be developed except in the context of the other two. … There are — or could be — semiotics that are monofunctional in this way; but only very partial ones, dedicated to specific tasks. A general, all-purpose semiotic system could not evolve except in the interplay of action and reflection, a mode of understanding and a mode of doing — with itself included within its operational domain.
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