David Rose Explaining 'Mere' By Coupling

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 8 Sept 2024, at 11:15:

Can I suggest we think in terms of coupling? 

...first of lexical items – e.g. attitudinal mere with a target entity such as housemaid, construing a value in a field, such as a person’s occupational status. 

...secondly of lexical choices with grammatical functions. Given that attitude is expressed prosodically through structures such as nom gps – how does the choice of gram function adjust the meaning?

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, 'coupling' is merely Martin's term for grouping any selections.

[2] To be clear, this coupling of lexical items is merely taking a lexical perspective on APPRAISAL:

Under the [APPRECIATION] subcategory of `social value', the object, product or process is evaluated according to various social conventions. This domain is very closely tied to field in that the social valuation of one field will not be applicable or relevant in another.

[3] Trivially, 'entity' is not a type of lexical item, but a semantic category, and attitudes are interpersonal, and so enact (social relations as meaning); it is ideational systems that construe (experience as meaning).

[4] To be clear, the choice of lexical item adds different lexical (more delicate) features to a grammatical function, such as Epithet vs post-Deictic. Meaning is realised by all the lexicogrammatical features, from the most general (grammatical) to the most delicate (lexical).

David Rose Misconstruing 'Mere' As A Judgement Of Capacity

David Rose replied to Beatriz Quiroz Olivares on 7 Sept 2024, at 11:32:

Your questions always demand a bit of SF rigor. Quite right about the word class... I was blinded from above... manner degree so adverb... but mere/merely : adjective/adverb. …

And you’re right about gradability... in this context is it a judgement of capacity? Construing a series... a lowly scullery maid – mere housemaid – capable housekeeper

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is the topic sentence ("hyper-Theme"), with 'rigour' being Rose's evaluation of what follows.

[2] To be clear, the meaning of 'mere(ly)' is interpersonal (counter-expectancy: limiting), not experiential (manner: degree). For example, in he merely said it wasn't cooked properly, the Adjunct merely is not circumstantial: it does not qualify the manner in which he said it.

[3] Clearly, 'a mere housemaid' is not a judgement of the capacity of a servant. Mere housemaids may be more capable or less capable. In terms of APPRAISAL, it might be seen as a negative appreciation of the status of 'housemaid' in terms of social value:

But the fact that I’d sort of gone from that status position down to merely a housemaid, you know? 

David Rose Misconstruing 'Mere' As An Adverb Of Manner Serving As Attitudinal Epithet

After Beatriz Quiroz Olivares wrote to SYSFLING on 7 Sept 2024, 08:25:

What would be for you the function of 'mere' in the structure of a nominal group? …

But the fact that I’d sort of gone from that status position down to a mere housemaid, you know? … 

Linguists who specialise in corpus studies tend to refer to themselves, rather disingenuously, as ‘mere data-gatherers’.

Could it be an Epithet?

David Rose replied at 09:09:

I guess I’d ask what it’s doing in the nominal group (with clues from its word class and position). Isn’t it evaluating the Thing? So an attitudinal Epithet? ...realised by an adverb of manner:degree, preceding the Thing. Then how about ‘a mere three years later’ or ‘the mere mention of his name’

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, some adjectives can serve as either Epithet or post-Deictic (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 373-4), and so can evaluate as either Epithet or post-Deictic. Here Rose is ignoring the fact that CLÉiRIGh had already (heteroglossically) identified the function of mere in these instances as post-Deictic realising counter-expectancy: limiting. That is, the meaning of a mood Adjunct of intensity is here realised in a different grammatical domain: as the post-Deictic of a nominal group. The mood Adjunct agnates of the two instances are:

But the fact that I’d sort of gone from that status position down to merely a housemaid, you know? … 

Linguists who specialise in corpus studies tend to refer to themselves, rather disingenuously, merely as ‘data-gatherers’.

[2] Clearly, 'mere' is an adjective, not an adverb, and Olivares subsequently informed Rose of the fact. 

David Rose On Homophoric Reference, Contact And Instantiation

David Rose wrote to SYSFLING on 24 Jun 2024, at 19:35:

Homophoric reference is characteristic of contraction, instantiating close contact, discussed in English Text, eg from p531... 

... 

Leaving homophoric ‘the’ unsaid instantiates even closer contact.

and again at 21:27:

This little quote from Working with Discourse Ch 9 encapsulates it...

Contraction refers to the amount of work it takes to exchange meanings, and the idea that the better you know someone the less explicitness it takes... Technically speaking, the less information a homophoric reference contains, the tighter the community it constructs and the more people it excludes.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the instance under discussion is:

in the scene where the couple realise they are being stalked by the iconic masked killers, they get into the car trying to escape and the guy says:

[1] To be clear, if the speaker had said the car won't start, the reference would be exophoric to the car they are sitting in, not homophoric (self-specifying). But he could also have used other Deictics, such as our or my, which do not serve as reference items.

[2] To be clear, the proposed relation here would be realisation, not instantiation, since this is concerned with the relation between context and language. Instantiation is the relation between potential and instance.

[3] Rose's claim here is that the reason why the Deictic could be omitted in this instance is because of the amount of contact between the interlocutors, husband and wife. This suggests that if the speaker's addressee, sitting beside him in the car, had been a hitchhiker he had just met, and he had said simply car won't start, the addressee would need to have the referent clarified, with something like which car?

Yaegan Doran On The Metafunctions In Mathematical And Chemical Symbolism

Yaegan Doran wrote to Sysfling on 25 August 2023 at 7:09:

… we should be wary of metafunctions being considered a basic theoretical parameter for the description of semiotic resources in general.

A basic argument I put in a paper once was:

‘If we take metafunctionality to be the one of the broadest means by which these traditions [SFL/Social Semiotics] conceptualize the intrinsic functionality of semiotic resources, by simply assuming metafunctions across semiosis, we run the risk of homogenizing descriptions and making everything look like the first resource to be comprehensively described (i.e. English). That is, we risk watering down the specific functionality of each resource.’

Rather, following people working in language description at the time, I tried to tease these issues out for mathematical symbolism in the attached paper (and in more detail in my 2018 book Discourse of Physics), by attempting to ‘derive’ metafunctionality from axis (following Martin’s 2013 book on axis). Maths, I figured (with years of excellent help from many), would prove a useful point of contrast to language by virtue of regular common-sense comparisons that considered it to ‘be’ language/a language. But despite its comparability to language, I could find no evidence in the internal systemic/structural organisation of mathematical symbolism for an interpersonal component, and it was really pushing it to interpret an experiential component. But I tried to suggest that there was a major component comparable to the logical in language and a smaller independent one comparable to the textual. Nonetheless, I do think it much closer to language in this regard than most other resources, and so if even it struggles to fill out the full metafunctional complement, we should not assume it across the board (though metafunction is of course still a useful way in for analysis/application that is less concerned with descriptive/theoretical development – which I also tried to emphasise in the attached paper).

Along similar lines, Yu Zhigang followed this up by looking at the range of symbolism used in chemistry and concluded similarly – that the logical dominated, that there was little evidence for an interpersonal, that there was an even smaller textual component than maths, but there was in fact something comparable to an experiential. But he went a little further, and noted that some structuring principles that we often associate with interpersonal meaning in language – i.e. prosodic structure – occurred in various chemical symbolisms, but seemed to have become ‘ideationalised’ in that they were used to realise meaning related to field, not tenor.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is not just an argument against the metafunctional dimension of the theory, but against any dimension of the theory, and so against the theory itself, since in this view, using a theory that was devised for English, SFL, runs 'the risk of homogenising descriptions and making everything look like the first resource to be comprehensively described'. The same argument could be made against generalising Newton's theory of gravitation from falling apples to orbiting heavenly bodies, since it runs 'the risk of homogenising descriptions and making everything look like the first resource to be comprehensively described'. 

[2] To be clear, the metafunctions cannot be derived from axis, even if axis is properly understood. This is not least because they are independent dimensions, with different scopes, and organised according to different principles. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20, 32):

That is, the local distinction between the paradigmatic and syntagmatic orders of axis entails nothing about the global distinctions between construing experience as meaning, enacting intersubjective relations as meaning, and creating text from the two.

For some of the theoretical misunderstandings of axis in Martin (2013), see the review here.

[3] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, mathematics is a contextual semiotic that is realised in language (e.g. algebraic equations) and a pictorial semiotic (e.g. geometric diagrams). The proof that equations, for example, are language is that, unlike non-language, they can be read aloud. This is because what is projected by saying, locutions, constitutes the lexicogrammatical stratum, and language is the only semiotic system with a stratified content plane. This is why bi-stratal systems, like pictorial semiotics, cannot be read aloud.

[4] To be clear, this is the logical fallacy known as the Argument from ignorance:

Argument from ignorance (from Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false.

Here Doran has misconstrued absence of evidence as evidence of absence. The evidence for the interpersonal metafunction in mathematical symbolism is manifold. For example, mathematical symbolism is language, so it enacts interpersonal meaning. As language, the equation E = mc² is a proposition realised by a declarative clause that can argued as valid or not whether it is expressed this way or as energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. If there were no interpersonal meaning in mathematical symbolism, then mathematicians would not be able to argue for or against their validity.

[5] To be clear, mathematical symbolism is deployed in many sciences precisely because it construes experience as meaning. As language, a mathematical equation is a figure of being realised by an intensive identifying relational clause, and the solving of an equation is the iterated elaboration of the clause until one or more unknown Tokens is decoded by reference to a Value.

[6] To be clear, the logical metafunction is concerned with the logico-semantic relations of expansion and projection, so it requires experiential meanings to relate logically to one another. Every equation is an intensive identifying clause that construes an elaborating logical relation between a Token and a Value, and the solving of an equation entails a clause complex in which all clauses are logically related through elaboration. The logical relation of extension, for example, is manifested in processes of addition and subtraction.

[7] To be clear, none of the metafunctions is independent of the others. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532-3):

These three "metafunctions" are interdependent; no one could be developed except in the context of the other two. When we talk of the clause as a mapping of these three dimensions of meaning into a single complex grammatical structure, we seem to imply that each somehow "exists" independently; but they do not. 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. Such a semiotic system is called a language.

More specifically, the textual metafunction requires the other metafunctions, since its function is to operationalise them. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 7-8, 398):

The textual metafunction is an enabling one; it is concerned with organising ideational and interpersonal meaning as discourse — as meaning that is contextualised and shared. … 

The function of the textual metafunction is thus an enabling one with respect to the rest; it takes over the semiotic resources brought into being by the other two metafunctions and as it were operationalises them…

Every mathematical equation is organised in terms of Theme and information; see [4] above.

[8] To be clear, given the explanatory power of the metafunctions, it would be more prudent to assume that they are a dimension of a semiotic system until it is proved otherwise. As explained above in [4], Doran mistook his inability to identify the metafunctions in mathematical symbolism for evidence that they are not a dimension of its systems. 

[9] To be clear, Yu Zhigang is Doran's collaborator, rather than a scholar working independently of Doran. More importantly, what is said above about mathematical symbolism also applies to chemical symbolism. For example:

∞

See also Yaegan Doran Failing To Recognise The Interpersonal Metafunction In Mathematics.

Lise Fontaine On The Distinction Between Complement And Adjunct

Lise Fontaine wrote to Sysfling on 16 August 2023 at 10:59:

Ed is making a very important point here and one that is often overlooked. I think linguistics generally has seen a lot of damage from imposed boundaries around ideas. Even a distinction between Complement and Adjunct is not always clear, especially as concerns spatial reference. There is great benefit in being open-minded about accounts and not being afraid to be wrong sometimes.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. The distinction between Complement and Adjunct is clear on theoretical criteria. Difficulty only arises when the theory is not understood.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 153, 154, 155):

A Complement is an element within the Residue that has the potential of being Subject but is not; … Any nominal group not functioning as Subject will be a Complement (with the exception of certain circumstantial Adjuncts of Extent realised by nominal groups without the preposition for, e.g. 180 miles in he sailed 180 miles north on the Company’s armed schooner); and this includes nominal groups of one type which could not function as Subject as they stand, namely those with adjective as Head …

An Adjunct is an element that has not got the potential of being Subject; … (As noted above, certain circumstantial Adjuncts of Extent may be realised by nominal groups without the preposition for; contrast he had walked for miles with he had walked four miles.)

Fontaine's difficulty arises from taking the Formalist view 'from below' (forms: nominal group vs prepositional phrase) instead of the Functionalist view 'from above' (functions: Complement vs Adjunct). That is, the view 'from below' decodes forms by reference to functions, whereas the view 'from above' encodes functions by reference to forms. In other words, the view 'from below' begins with expressions and asks what they mean, whereas the view 'from above' begins with meanings and asks how they are expressed.

[2] To be clear, here Fontaine again engages in her promotion of the culture of anti-intellectualism (see here), reframing it as open-mindedness. Being afraid of being wrong is vitally important for producing high quality work, whether in academic publications or school exams. Ethically, not being afraid of being wrong is a licence to tell lies.

David Rose On ChatGPT Recognising Canonical Structure

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 1 Apr at 10:12:

I’m just looking for the limits of GPT and whatever it is that ‘context’ is supposed be...

These are each instances of a pedagogic register type in which a learner solicits knowledge.

GPT recognises the canonical structure, even when it’s initiated with a statement...

		speech function	exch role	register phase	interact
Mario	Your self is merely semiotic.	statement	K2	propose class	solicit knowledge
GPT	That is correct.	answer	K1	evaluate	approve
	As an AI language model, my "self" or programmed understanding of my existence and capabilities is based purely on symbols and algorithms.	statement	K1	elaborate class	impart knowledge

Keep in mind that these are just labels for structures. We give them functional labels because that’s the relation we interpret between ranks and strata. But GPT doesn't have to interpret them as ‘functions’... just predict appropriate structures in response.

and later that day at 22:01:

But note that GPT is also negotiating affiliation with Mario... positioning itself outside of human communities... no doubt ‘trained’ by its developers.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, ChatGPT produces texts from the lexical collocation frequencies in a reservoir of instances, not from an individuated repertoire of systems that are realised as structures. On this basis, ChatGPT is not an individuated meaner.

[2] To be clear, by 'context' Rose means Martin's misunderstanding of register as a stratum of context. So here Rose is presenting a text (language) as an instance of a type of context, despite context being opposed to language in Martin's stratification model.

[3] To be clear, importantly, it is not ChatGPT that recognises 'the canonical structure' but Rose. See [1] above.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'acknowledgement' is the expected response to a statement (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 137).

[5] To be clear, ChatGPT does not 'predict structures', because that is not how it operates; see [1] above.

[6] To be clear, ChatGPT is not 'negotiating affiliation', because ChatGPT is not an individuated meaner; see [1] above.

David Rose On The Reluctance To Divorce Language From Consciousness

David Rose wrote to Sysfling on 26 Mar 2023, 14:02:

A more general anxiety about relations between language and personhood exists in our own community. …

But SFL would not have progressed without separating out the systems from their uses and users.

One way our anxiety is expressed is a reluctance to divorce language from consciousness. Yet consciousness is a property of individual persons but language systems are a property of communities. They exist before, after and without the individual persons who use them.

By systems we mean both potential and actual – system and text. Instantiation is a relation between texts and systems, irrespective of persons.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday makes a useful distinction between 'person' as a social individual and 'meaner' (language user) as a socio-semiotic individual. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 610):

The human individual is at once a biological "individual", a social "individual" and a socio-semiotic "individual":

as a biological "individual", s/he is an organism, born into a biological population as a member of the human species.

as a social "individual", s/he is a person, bom into a social group as a member of society. "Person" is a complex construct; it can be characterised as a constellation of social roles or personae entering into social networks … .

as a socio-semiotic "individual", s/he is a meaner, born into a meaning group as a member of a speech community. "Meaner" is also a complex construct. 

[2] To be clear, this "progress" in SFL is Martin's confused model of individuation and affiliation (critiqued here). Martin et al (2013):

[3] To be clear, for neuroscientist Edelman (e.g 1992), it is language that distinguishes higher-order consciousness from the primary consciousness that humans share with many other species. For Halliday (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999), the theory of experience that has evolved in language equates the content plane of language with the content of consciousness. Ideationally, consciousness is the interior symbolic processing of sensing, and the exterior symbolic processing of saying, which create content through projection, and interpersonally, consciousness is the self enacted as meaner: as an interactant in exchanges.

[4] To be clear, on the SFL model, the collective nature of language entails that human consciousness is also collective. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 609):

Edelman's interpretation of higher-order consciousness referred to above suggests that this form of consciousness (unlike primary consciousness) is constituted in language. Language is a socio-semiotic system, so it follows that higher-order consciousness is constituted socio-semiotically; and since socio-semiotic systems are collective, it follows that higher-order consciousness must also be collective. Collective consciousness is an attribute of human social groups — the members of a given culture. But we need to distinguish between the consciousness of a social group and the consciousness of a species, whose collective construal of experience is codified in the structure of the brain. All human populations have the same brain, and to that extent all construe experience in the same way. But humans live in social groups, and their local environments vary one from the other; to that extent, different groups construe experience in different ways. The significance of this for us is that language is the resource for both: both what is common to the species as a whole, and what is specific to the given culture. In the way these two components are construed in the grammar, we cannot tell them apart. But it is the role of language in the construction of experience as meaning — as shared activity and collaboratively constructed resource — that gives substance to the concept of collective consciousness as an attribute of the human condition.

Moreover, here Rose even contradicts the models that he is promoting. In Martin's models, a language user (persona) is an individuation of a culture, and their meaning potential (repertoire) is an individuation of the meaning potential of the community (reservoir).

[5] Clearly, languages do not exist without the individual persons who use them, as demonstrated by the phenomenon of 'language death'.

[6] This misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, 'system' refers to potential, and 'text' to the instance of that potential.

[7] This is not misleading, because it is true.

David Rose On Interpersonal Meaning As "Embodied In Feelings"

David Rose replied to Graham Lock on Sysfling on 23 Mar 2023, at 22:29:

What I find amazing in all your questions is that the machine has astounding control over interpersonal meanings. Astounding because I’ve always assumed that interpersonal meanings are embodied in feelings. The machine is showing us that interpersonal values are just as abstract as other meanings. That they’re learnt.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, on the one hand, interpersonal meanings cannot be reduced to "embodied in feelings". For example, the propositions one and one make two and the car is in the backyard are clearly not "embodied in feeling". On the other hand, 'feelings' are construed ideationally as well as enacted interpersonally. For example, the clause he felt happy is a construal of experience as ideational meaning.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, interpersonal meanings are of the same level of abstraction as ideational meanings: semantics.

[3] To be clear, the 'straw man' notion that interpersonal meanings are not learnt is nonsensical. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 532-3):

These three "metafunctions" are interdependent; no one could be developed except in the context of the other two. When we talk of the clause as a mapping of these three dimensions of meaning into a single complex grammatical structure, we seem to imply that each somehow "exists" independently; but they do not. 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. Such a semiotic system is called a language.

David Rose On The Need For (Discourse) Semantics As A Separate Stratum

David Rose replied to Mick O'Donnell on sys-func on 12/7/22 at 21:36:

Re your earlier comment about ‘the need for Semantics as a separate stratum’... I think that takes us back to two first principles...

One is that features in systems are no more substantial than the probabilities of their realising structures being re-instantiated... more so for more general and less so for more delicate features.

The other is that the content planes of lg and other modalities have evolved to semioticise social relations, for which semiosis is a necessary condition. So the social and semiotic are two sides of the same coin.

The semiotic systems of most species are reproduced genetically. In some species these are augmented by learnt systems, i.e. culturally reproduced.

Lg evolved in humans in tandem with the complexity of our social relations. It required on one hand sufficient flexibility to manage variability in our ancestors’ sociality, and on the other a mechanism for replication fidelity to ensure its reproduction across multiple generations (on the model of genetic reproduction).

The tension between these selection pressures produced a bifurcation in lg’s content plane, still recapitulated in the transition from protolg to mother tongue in infants.

On one hand, LG systems provided the replication fidelity for reproduction over deep time (analogous with the reproductive role of DNA). Their features cement untold millions of re-instantiations, more so at higher ranks. One result is their more general features remain common across lgs (as humans share 85% of our DNA with mice, 60% with insects, and 50% with plants). It is probably also why grammatical systems encode such stable models of experience and exchange.

While stability is essential for cultural reproduction, it is insufficient for negotiating unfolding contingencies in human social relations. That is the task for which DS systems evolved (analogous with the role of RNA in managing intracellular functions).

Both LG and DS systems are necessary for human semiosis on phylogenetic and logogenetic timescales, but their functions are complementary. The fact that we are still trying to model the semantic stratum on what we known of LG systems is, I think, an accident of history. From 2500 years of grammatics, cryptogrammatics has struggled to emerge in the last 80, and DS systems are another order of covert reactances.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237) identify grammatical metaphor as the primary motivation for a semantic stratum:

If the congruent pattern had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.

[2] To be clear, features in systems are defined by their relations to other features, and each has a probability of being instantiated, varying for register, and actualised as frequencies in texts.

[3] It is undoubtedly true that semiosis is a necessary condition for semiotising social relations.

[4] To be clear, not all semiotic systems are social semiotic systems, as demonstrated by perceptual semiotic systems, which are somatic, not social. 

[5] This is a bare assertion, unsupported by evidence. The difficulty here lies in being able to distinguish, in Halliday's terms, systems that involve the exchange of value (social systems) from systems that involve the exchange of symbolic value (semiotic systems).

[6] To be clear, it is language that enabled the enactment of social relations to complexify beyond those of the other chimpanzees.

[7] To be clear, if it were these factors that produced the stratification of the content plane, then they should have done so for all species' protolanguages, not just human protolanguage.

[8] This is a false analogy, since it correlates generality with proportion (%).

[9] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, it misunderstands evolution: systems do not evolve in order to perform tasks (purpose); they evolve because they successfully perform tasks (reason). On the other hand, it is the grammar (MOOD) that construes the semantics (SPEECH FUNCTION) that makes symbolic negotiation possible.

[10] This a false analogy, since RNA is at the same level of abstraction as intra-cellular functions, whereas semantics is a higher level of symbolic abstraction than lexicogrammar.

[11] To be clear, the sense in which semantics and grammar are complementary is as complementary perspectives on the same phenomenon, the content plane of language, varying in terms of symbolic abstraction. With regard to the ideational metafunction, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237) write:

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning.

[12] This is misleading. On the one hand, it is the grammar that construes the semantics. On the other, the false implication is that Martin's discourse semantic systems are not 'modelled in terms of what we know of lexicogrammatical systems'. To be clear, Martin's discourse semantic systems derive from non-structural textual grammar (cohesion) and from SPEECH FUNCTION, which is construed by the interpersonal grammar of MOOD and KEY. Evidence here.

David Rose Misrepresenting Hasan's System As A Synthesis Of Martin's Systems

David Rose replied to Mick O'Donnell on sys-func on 12/7/22 at 9:14:

What differs between the MESSAGE features in Figure 24.4 below and the mood features that realise them is their systemic valeur. The valeur of MOOD features is shaped by similarities and contrasts in the mood structures that realise them, exemplified in Table 24.4.

The valeur of message features is shaped by three factors as far as I can see. System G features by their position in exchange structures: verify/enquire etc. System F features by appraisal: precise/tentative; by field: specify/explain; again by exchange structure: prompted/unprompted; and again by field: global/particular...

In sum, the MESSAGE system attempts to synthesise the complementarity of two discourse semantic systems, NEGOTIATION and APPRAISAL. …

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the critical distinction between the semantic features of the SPEECH FUNCTION system and the lexicogrammatical features of the MOOD system is that each system of features is located at a different level of symbolic abstraction.

[2] This is misleading. To be clear, the valeur of each MOOD system feature is its relations to other features in the system; see, for example, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 96, 509). This misrepresentation of 'valeur' serves as a pretext for the misrepresentations that follow.

[3] To be clear, the valeur of each of Hasan's SPEECH FUNCTION system features is its relations to the other features in the system, and as such, they are not "shaped by" other systems such as APPRAISAL or FIELD, the latter being Martin's misunderstanding of ideational semantics as register misunderstood as context.

[4] This is very misleading indeed, because it misrepresents Hasan's (earlier) system as an attempt to synthesise Martin's (later) systems, one of which, NEGOTIATION, is Martin's rebranding of SPEECH FUNCTION.

David Rose Misrepresenting Speech Function

David Rose wrote to sys-func on 11/7/22 at 22:00:

As the systems below show, the grammatico-semantic model assumes a bijective or one-to-one relation between LG features and semantic features. What differs is the intrastratal relations between the features. The semantic networks appear to re-systemicise the LG systems.

Crucially, the names given to the semantic features imply moves in unfolding exchanges. They are therefore potentially complementary with the exchange systems first proposed by Margaret Berry and further developed in ET as the discourse semantic system of NEGOTIATION. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misleading, because it is not true. As Table 24.4 details, the semantic feature 'alternative' has multiple systemic lexicogrammatical realisations.

 

[2] To be clear, a semantic network represents a higher level of symbolic abstraction than a lexicogrammatical network.

[3] The implication here is misleading. To be clear, Halliday's system of SPEECH FUNCTION, part of which Hasan (1983) develops in Figure 24.4, has always been concerned with 'moves in unfolding exchanges'. The title of the chapter on mood in IFG, has always been 'clause as exchange'.

[4] This is very misleading indeed. The original work is by Halliday and Hasan. The reason why the work of Berry and Martin is "complementary" is that both are based on the original work. Rose's wording falsely suggests that they are parallel independent developments. For a close examination of Martin's system of NEGOTIATION, see here (English Text) and here (Working With Discourse).

David Rose On Jim Martin's Coupling/Co-instantiation

David Rose replied to Ed McDonald on SYSFLING on 24 Aug 2020 at 13:36:

Ed McDonald:

2. The idea of co-instantiaton is also an interesting one:

My gloss for coupling, defined by Martin et al. (2013, p. 469) as ‘the co-selection of linguistic resources across ranks, metafunctions, strata, and modalities which are not specified by system/structure cycles’.

Systems at each stratum make distinct contributions…eg variations in tone and mood couple to instantiate variations in speech function

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's definition of 'coupling' is invalid, because system/structure cycles do not specify any co-selection of paradigmatic features ("linguistic resources"). To explain:-

The process of instantiation is the selection of paradigmatic features and the activation of realisation statements which specify how systemic options are realised along the syntagmatic axis, whether structural or cohesive. System/structure cycles are the iteration of this realisation relation between axes during logogenesis, the unfolding of text. On this basis, system/structure cycles do not specify which features are (co-)selected; feature (co-)selection is the paradigmatic dimension of system/structure cycles.

[2] To be clear, this confuses instantiation with realisation. Instantiations of "variations in speech function" are the speech function features that are selected during logogenesis. The relation between speech function and mood, and between mood and tone, is realisation, since these three systems are located on three different strata: semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology.

However, strictly speaking, the system of TONE does not realise the system of MOOD, but the system of KEY, which is associated with the system of MOOD (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 168). It is the combination of KEY and MOOD that realises SPEECH FUNCTION.

Jim Martin On 'In Particular'

After Annabelle Lukin wrote to sys-func and sysfling on 16 Nov 2018 at 09:06:

Can anyone help me out? …

8(1) The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.

… What kind of Adjunct is "in particular"??

Jim Martin responded on sysfling on 16 Nov 2018 at 19:19:

How about appraisal:graduation:focus:sharpen... as part of a paradigm:

in particular when
particularly when
just when
only when
when

• The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes in particular when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.
• The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes particularly when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.
• The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes.

The linking conjunction when would then need to be expanded as a hypotactic complex... beta (in particular) alpha (when)

Blogger Comment:

[1] The reason why the conjunctive Adjunct in particular does not realise 'appraisal: graduation: focus: sharpen' is that, in this instance, there is no appraisal to 'graduate: focus: sharpen'.  For many more of Martin's misunderstandings of Appraisal Theory, see here.

(On the other hand, Martin (1992: 211) rebrands the conjunctive function of in particular as comparative: similarity: reformulation: rework: generality: local: particularise.)

[2] The reason why in particular does not modify when is that in particular — like a conjunctive Adjunct (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 158), but unlike a modifier in a conjunction group (not a hypotactic complex) — can be postponed to the end of the clause as an Afterthought:

The Court shall have jurisdiction in respect of war crimes — when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes, in particular.

See also analysis here. 

David Rose On Congruent Relations Between Semantics And Grammatical Classes Across Languages

David Rose replied to Waleed Othman on sysfling on 6 June 2018 at 11:58:

Useful discussion in 

Halliday, M.A.K. (1988). On the Ineffability of Grammatical Categories. James D. Benson, Michael J.Cummings and William S. Greaves (eds.) Linguistics in a Systemic Perspective. (CILT39). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 27-51.

Otherwise, yes, linguists seem to assume grammatical classes across languages, that are defined semantically to some extent. Eg attached figure (Rose & Martin 2012) could apply to all the languages I know of.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday (1988) says nothing about the relation between semantic categories and grammatical classes across different languages (the subject of Othman's query).  Instead, it is concerned, on the one hand, with explaining why functional grammatical categories, such as Subject, cannot be theorised by decoding them from above (by reference to what they realise) and, on the other hand, with identifying ways around the problem, which in SFL, means encoding them from below (by reference to what realises them).

[2] To be clear, this figure is intended to represent relations between discourse semantic categories and grammatical classes.  Each of the five realisation relations can be examined in turn.

• Attitude realised by adjective.  The problem here is that the congruent realisation of attitude is not limited to the word class 'adjective', as demonstrated, for example, by the attitudinal potential of 'idiot' (noun), 'stupidly' (adverb), and 'deceive' (verb).

• Entity realised by nominal group.  The problem here is that, in the discourse semantic model, the term 'entity' is not a general category, but only features as a subtype of Range (Martin 1992: 309-11; Martin & Rose 2007: 96).  For Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 177), the experiential semantic element congruently realised by the nominal group is 'participant'.

• Event realised by verbal group.  The problem here is that, in the discourse semantic model, the term 'event' is grammatical, not discourse semantic (Martin 1992: 325; Martin & Rose 2007: 97).

• Figure realised by clause. This is true, but misleading, because the term 'figure', and its congruent relation with the clause, do not derive from Martin's (1992) discourse semantic model, but from the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).

• Activity sequence realised by clause complex.  In the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 49), it is the sequence that is congruently realised as a clause complex.  In Martin (1992: 321-5), activity sequences are located in field, the ideational dimension of context misconstrued as register.  In Martin & Rose (2007: 76), activity sequences are reinterpreted as discourse semantic: as an experiential system, IDEATION, Martin's misunderstanding and rebranding of Halliday's textual system of lexical cohesion, inter alia.  For the theoretical inconsistencies in activity sequences in Martin (1992), see here; for theoretical inconsistencies in IDEATION in Martin (1992), see here.

David Rose On Coordination And Proposition

David Rose replied to Tom Bartlett on sysfling on 11 May 2018 at 16:15:

Coordination is a grammatical term, for relations between grammatical units. Proposition is a discourse semantic term, for messages exchanging information.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, the traditional category of 'coordination' is interpreted as the logico-semantic relation of paratactic extension.  Logico-semantic relations obtain at the level of semantics (meaning) and are realised at the level of lexicogrammar (wording).

[2] To be clear, in SFL theory, 'proposition' is 'the semantic function of a clause in the exchange of information' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 139).  The intrusion of the word 'discourse' reflects the fact that Martin (1992) rebranded Halliday's interpersonal semantic system as a 'discourse semantic' system.  ('Message' is a semantic unit of the textual metafunction.)

John Bateman On The Interpersonal Metafunction In Mathematics

John Bateman wrote to sysfling on 24 February 2017 at 10:10 in reply to the query 'To what degree is TENOR important in mathematical discourse?':

one of the well known kinds of proofs for more advanced mathematics is 'proof by intimidation': sounds pretty interpersonal to me! :-) 

And as soon as you move down to educational contexts, you'll want to be hitting your tenor variables right. Since all metafunctions in less-grammaticised semiotic modes are in any case discourse interpretations, I'm sure you'll be able to find something... 

I'd be with Yaegan though in doubting that the technical resources employed in mathematics have any inherent interpersonal organisation, although certain variations,

'x(1-y)' compared to 'x times (1 - y)'

may move in that direction. But is that what you meant?

Blogger Comments:

[1] The use of the word 'down' here — from genre to tenor — indicates that Bateman is using Martin's (1992) model* in which genre and register are misconstrued as context strata instead of functional varieties of language (a point on the cline of instantiation).  For some of the many theoretical misunderstandings on which Martin's model is based, see the arguments here.

[2] The use of the word 'discourse' here — instead of 'semantics' or 'meaning' — indicates that Bateman is using Martin's (1992) model* of discourse semantics.  For some of the many theoretical misunderstandings on which Martin's model is based, see the arguments here.

[3] The typical mathematical equation is a proposition realised by a declarative clause, and structured as Subject^Finite/Predicator^Complement, whether realised in the graphology peculiar to the field of mathematics or in the unspecialised graphology (or phonology) of an individual language.  A sample structural analysis can be viewed here.  Proposals realised by imperative clauses are also used, and take the form exemplified by let x =3.

[4] The variation here is textual (mode), not interpersonal (tenor).

∞

* Postscript: A critical examination of Bateman's review of Martin (1992) will be the subject of a new blog: Thoughts That Didn't Occur.  At first glance, it appears that Bateman has failed to notice any of the 2000+ theoretical inconsistencies in Martin's work (identified here).