Tuesday, 24 March 2015

David Rose Misrepresenting Lexicogrammar As Discourse Semantics: Interpersonal Metafunction

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

[see grammatical analysis here.]




Now from discourse semantics… 
4. interpersonally 
‘America’ and ‘We the People’ are modally responsible


Blogger Comments:

[1] The notion of the Subject as the modally responsible element is from the grammar, not discourse semantics.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 59):
A clause has meaning as an exchange, a transaction between speaker and listener; the Subject is the warranty of the exchange.  It is the element the speaker makes responsible for the validity of what he is saying.
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 194):
Thus while a Goal readily becomes Subject … it is unusual to make a Scope element ‘modally responsible’ in this way …

Monday, 23 March 2015

David Rose Misrepresenting Lexicogrammar As Discourse Semantics: Textual Metafunction

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

[see grammatical analysis here.]




Now from discourse semantics… 
3. textually 
‘America’ and ‘We the People’ are parallel Themes, implying synonymy, implied again graphologically with Caps 
‘these moments’ classifies the event (as a national emergency?)


Blogger Comments

[1] 'America' is not Theme.  The first clause has a marked Theme At these moments, which also New, as indicated by the comma marking it off as an information unit.  This is grammar, not discourse semantics.

[2] The fact that two elements are both Themes of their respective clauses does not imply synonymy. Rather, the textual resources of cohesion — in this instance lexical cohesion: synonymy — and Theme can create texture by the way they work together.  This is grammar, not discourse semantics.

[3] The event is the 2009 inauguration of an American president, not a national emergency — a serious misreading of the text, as well as the theory.

Sunday, 22 March 2015

David Rose Misrepresenting Lexicogrammar As Discourse Semantics: "Ideational" Metafunction

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

[see grammatical analysis here.]




Now from discourse semantics… 
2. ideationally 
‘America’ and ‘those in high office’ and ‘We the People’ are lexically related as whole to its parts 
‘those in high office’ and ‘We the People’ are converse roles, redounding with the counterexpectancy 

Blogger Comments:

[1] In terms of metafunction, lexical relations are textual, not experiential.  (Rose presumably means 'experiential' rather than 'ideational', since he had previously discussed what he believes to be the logical metafunction).  The reason they are textual rather than experiential is that the experiential metafunction is concerned with the construal of experience, whereas the textual metafunction is 'meta' to the other metafunctions, in the sense that it is concerned with their packaging as information.  Here the focus is on relations between pieces of information, and so textual.  In the grammatics, lexical relations are a means of cohesion, the non-structural component of the textual metafunction.

[2] In terms of metafunction, relations between ‘those in high office’ and ‘We the People’ are textual, and 'counterexpectancy' is interpersonal — whatever the "redounding".

Saturday, 21 March 2015

David Rose Misrepresenting Lexicogrammar As Discourse Semantics: Logical Metafunction

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.

[see grammatical analysis here.]




Now from discourse semantics… 
1. logically 
‘because’ as preposition or conjunction are alternative realisations of reason (so 2 equal factors) 
‘not simply…but’ realises counterexpectancy (not just 1 factor) 

Blogger Comments:

[1] The prepositional phrase realising the circumstance of Cause: reason because of the skill or vision of those in high office and the dependent clause of cause: reason because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents are two grammatical means of construing cause: reason.  The insights come from the grammatics, not from a 'discourse semantics'.

[2] In terms of the metafunctions, 'counterexpectancy' is interpersonal, not logical.  That is, 'counterexpectancy' is not a feature of logico-semantic relations, expansion or projection, nor of interdependency (taxis).  In the grammar, it is a feature in the system of mood Adjuncts (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 128).

Friday, 20 March 2015

David Rose On Stratal Tension And Discourse Semantics

David Rose wrote to sys-func and Sysfling on 18 March 2015 at 09:15:
This is what stratal tension means… why we need a stratified model of grammar and discourse semantics...







Blogger Comment:

'Stratal tension' refers to instances of grammatical metaphor.  Grammatical metaphor was Halliday's principal motivation for stratifying the content plane into semantics and lexicogrammar.  The intrusion of the word 'discourse' before 'semantics' is redundant and potentially misleading.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237):
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. If the congruent form 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.

Thursday, 19 March 2015

David Rose On Register As "Axiologised Field"

Now from register (axiologised field)
The task for functional grammarians is not simply to classify types of grammatical features, as you say, it is 'to figure out the implications both for theory and for descriptions’. I’m not sure a 'form/function’ contrast is adequate for this task. Rather we need to tease out functions at the strata of grammar, discourse semantics, and register, treating each as a layer of meaning, as Firth foresaw

 Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL, and in the field of linguistics generally, registers are functional varieties of language (not context).  In SFL, field is the ideational dimension of context (not language) — context is realised by language.

Registers are varying subpotentials of language that realise situation types (varying subpotentials of  cultural context).

Field refers to 'what is going on' — in the cultural context — when people are 'languaging': speaking, listening, writing and reading.  For example, it is 'what is going on', in terms of the culture, when you are reading this.

Axiology is the philosophical study of (mainly) two kinds of values: ethics and aesthetics.  The term was first used by Paul Lapie, in 1902, and Eduard von Hartmann, in 1908.  [Cf. judgement and appreciation in the interpersonal system of attitude in Appraisal Theory.]


[2] Firth didn't foresee register as a contextual stratum in SFL.  Firth was a first-rate thinker who valued intellectual rigour very highly.

Thursday, 5 February 2015

David Rose On Projection

How many projections?
Tony Abbott won't deny that Julie Bishop declined his request for a commitment not to challenge.



One but it projects an exchange, realised lexically in a single clause
Tony Abbott won't deny that
A1 Julie Bishop declined
A2 his request
A1 for a commitment
A1 not to challenge
Even the projecting ‘deny' implies a K2/K1 exchange

How to render as congruent grammar?

Blogger Comment:

The clause that Julie Bishop declined his request for a commitment not to challenge is not a ranking clause that is projected by the clause Tony Abbott won't deny.  Instead, as Bob Hong had already suggested, it is a pre-projected fact, and so is embedded as a constituent, Verbiage, in a clause simplex.  See analysis here.

Reasoning:

(a) The clause can be rendered as Tony Abbott won't deny the fact that Julie Bishop declined his request for a commitment not to challenge.

(b) The clause that Julie Bishop declined his request for a commitment not to challenge is not projected into semiotic existence by the clause Tony Abbott won't deny.

For the projection distinction between hypotaxis and embedding, see here.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

David Rose On 'Systemic Intonation Work'

On November 10 2014, Gerard O'Grady wrote to the sysfling list:
I'm looking for references for systemic intonation work on languages other than English. Please note I am not looking for references on intonation on languages other than English in other frameworks.


I believe a key work is... Cléirigh, C. 1998. The Genesis Of Phonic Texture. Ph.D. Thesis. Sydney University

Blogger Comment:

 The thesis contains no investigation of the intonation of any language in any framework.

Saturday, 8 November 2014

Beatriz Quiroz On Notational Conventions And The Rank Scale

Beatriz Quiroz wrote on 5 November 2014 to sys-func:
I think another issue adding to the confusion in relation to theoretical vs descriptive categories in SFL is the rather loose use of notational conventions for descriptive categories. While (type of) processes (material, relational, etc.) refer to experiencial classes of clause (and they are thus expected to be written in lowercase), labels such as Actor, Process, Phenomenon (or more generic Participant, Circumstance) are elements in functional configurations of structure (and they should be written with initial uppercase). Too often in English descriptions and SFL literature such conventions are overriden, causing serious misundertandings. […]

Of course, the discussion on theoretical categories such a as class, rank, function and structure leads us in turn to the question of whether the theoretical notion of rank-scale and its general bias towards constituency relations (at least in most SFL English descriptions) is indeed productive when looking at languages other than English. There is also very little discussion in SFL on this issue, although Fawcett 2000a, 2000b, 2000c does challenge the idea of a rank scale in English accounts (from the point of view of the Cardiff model), and Martin 1996 deconstructs the constituency bias in relation to the theoretical notion of structure (inspired by Halliday, 1979).

Blogger Comments:

[1] The notational convention in SFL is to use lower case for the terms 'participant' and 'circumstance', since these are classes to which elements of function structure (Actor, Location etc.) belong.

[2] The rank scale isn't "biased" towards constituency; it is a theoretical means of construing language in terms of constituency — but one that goes beyond mere constituency, since it builds the function-form relation into the hierarchy, with function structures of a higher rank realised by syntagms at the lower rank.  That is, the rank scale embodies not just composition, a type of extension, but also elaboration (and symbolic identity) through the realisation (intensive identifying) relation between ranks.

As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 146) make clear:
… in systemic-functional work, elaborating interpretations tend to be taken further than in many other approaches: this means emphasising realisation, delicacy and identities across metafunctions to supplement the traditional emphasis on constituency and composition.
The theoretical utility of the rank scale includes not only modelling the compositional relation from clause to morpheme, but also, for example, distinguishing embedding from taxis, and, most importantly, the unpacking of grammatical metaphor.

Friday, 7 November 2014

Mick O'Donnell On Transitivity Criteria


Mick O'Donnell wrote on 31 October 2014 to sysfling:
It all comes down to which criteria you put as primary in defining process types: the notional or the grammatical. You [David Banks] are saying meaning is first (processes of communication) and grammar (projection) second. 
Others put grammar first, dealing with verbs which project on one side, then splitting these into verbal and mental subsets. 
I argue elsewhere that the lack of clarity as to the priority between the notional and grammatical criteria is the reason behind much of the different classification decisions made within our community.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Transitivity criteria do not boil down to the opposition between 'notional' and 'grammatical'; the relevant theoretical dimension is stratification.  As already clarified here — where O'Donnell advocates following the 'grammatical principles that Halliday established' — SFL was theorised by taking a trinocular perspective, which means also looking at the grammar 'from above' (what meaning is being realised) and 'from below' (how the wording is realised) — as well as 'from roundabout' (the level of grammar). As Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 31) make clear:
We cannot expect to understand the grammar just by looking at it from its own level; we also look into it ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, taking a trinocular perspective. But since the view from these different angles is often conflicting, the description will inevitably be a form of compromise
[2] A functional grammar gives priority to the 'view from above' — that's what makes it functional rather than formal, since function (Value) is realised by form (Token).  As Halliday & Matthiessen (ibid.) clarify:
Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning — it is a ‘semanticky’ kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself.

The motivation for this priority is explained by Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 6) as follows:
But to show that a grammar is a theory of experience we use a functional, semantically motivated grammatics, since this allows us to seek explanations of the form of the grammar in terms of the functions to which language is adapted. 

Thursday, 6 November 2014

David Rose Confusing Rank With Delicacy And Realisation With Instantiation


David Rose wrote at 01:14 on 31/10/14 to the sys-func and sysfling email lists:
1. Isn't part of the notional problem a confusion of word rank lexical items with clause rank grammatical functions? E.g. a quoting verbal/mental process may be instantiated by a verb denoting behaviour, but does that make the clause a behavioural process? 
Is this a classification of lexical verbs or of clause rank process types? What does this mean for the "lexis = delicate grammar" hypothesis? 
2. What is the epistemological value of the behavioural process category? Some posts such as Yaegan's point to the value for students of distinguishing 'blurred' categories in text analysis, although Mick points to the cost in pedagogic labour. Other posts suggest its value for negotiating authority in the field, by defining the criteria for the category (or its absence). Is part of its value a relatively safe theoretical cul de sac for a good SFL argument?

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL terms, Rose's nominal group 'word rank lexical items' confuses two distinct theoretical dimensions: the rank scale and delicacy.  This is because it conflates the grammatical (word rank) with the lexical (lexical item).  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568):
The folk notion of the “word” is really a conflation of two different abstractions, one lexical [lexical item] and one grammatical [word rank].
[2] The relation between a clause rank Process and a word rank verb is realisation (via group rank), not instantiation.  Higher rank functions are realised by lower rank forms.  Instantiation is the relation between the system as potential and a specimen of the system in an actual text.

[3] Deploying Functional Grammar (Martin, Matthiessen & Painter 2010) advises treating such quoting clauses as behavioural, despite the grammatical reactances; see discussion here.

[4] Epistemology is branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity.

Tuesday, 4 November 2014

David Banks On The "Non-Existence" Of Behavioural Processes

David Banks wrote at 18:27 on October 30 2014 to sysfling:
The simple (but brutal, and with all due respect to all the other contributors) is that there are no distinguishing criteria because behavourial process does not exist. What is usually discussed under this heading is a rag-bag of unrelated phenomena that do not form a coherent category. The phenomena in question are better dealt with at a more delicate level than that of process types. My article on this question is forthcoming in a book edited by Donna Miller and Paul Bayley.

Blogger Comments:

 [1] Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 135-6) provide some grammatical reactances which distinguish behavioural from other process types and which thus identify what they have in common:
  • Like material clauses (but unlike mental clauses) the unmarked present tense in behavioural clauses is present-in-present (he is watching) rather than the simple present (he watches).
  • Behavioural clauses include conscious processing construed as active behaviour (watching listening, pondering, meditating) rather than just passive sensing (seeing, hearing, believing).
  • Like the Senser in a mental clause, the ‘Behaver’ in a behavioural one is endowed with consciousness; whereas in other respects behavioural clauses are more like material ones.
  • Like material clauses (but unlike mental ones), behavioural clauses can be probed with doWhat are you doing? — I’m meditating but not I’m believing.
  • Behavioural clauses normally do not project, or project only in highly restricted ways (contrast mental: cognitive David believed —> the moon was a balloon with behavioural: David was meditating —> the moon was a balloon;
  • Behavioural clauses can not accept a ‘fact’ serving as Phenomenon (mental: David saw that the others had already left but not behavioural: David watched that the others had already left).
Criteria for distinguishing process types are listed in Table 5(45) in Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 301).

[2] The existence, or not, of metalinguistic distinctions depends on whether or not they are projected into semiotic existence as ideas and locutions by linguists.  This depends, in the short-term, on whether or not they prove useful, and in the long term, on whether they are consistent with the other distinctions on which they depend.

[3] As Halliday & Matthiessen make clear:
  • '‘behavioural’ process clauses are not so much a distinct type of process, but rather a cluster of small subtypes blending the material and the mental into a continuum' (2004: 255), and
  • 'these can be interpreted as a subtype of material processes or as a borderline category between material and mental' (1999: 136).

Sunday, 2 November 2014

Jim Martin On Phrasal Verbs As Behavioural

Jim Martin wrote on 30 October 2014 to sysfling:
My rule of thumb, when worrying if a phrasal verb is behavioural or mental/verbal, is that it is behavioural.





Blogger Comment:

As a caveat to this rule of thumb, it's worth noting some of the phrasal verbs that commonly serve as mental (or verbal) processes:
  • figure out
  • find out
  • get over
  • give away
  • hold onto
  • look forward to
  • look into
  • look up
  • look up to
  • make up
  • mix up
  • put up with
  • sort out

Sample clauses featuring these verbs can be viewed here.
An alphabetical list of more than 1,000 phrasal verbs can be found here.

Friday, 31 October 2014

Jim Martin On Behavioural & Verbal Processes

Jim Martin wrote 30 October 2014 to sys-func & sysfling:
It is hard to get beyond notional reasoning here. 
One possibility is to try to restrict the behavioural category to 'embodied physical' manifestations of mental or verbal processing, giving minimal pairs such as look/see, listen/hear, smile/like, shudder/fear, ponder/think… etc. This would seem to fit with what Mick reports from Thompson below, and with a suggestion in the Deploying Functional Grammar workbook. 
As a reactance, although in general behaviourals don't project (better to say 'don't report'), and this helps distinguish them from mentals and verbals, many can quote, in 'narrative' discourse, especially when following a quoted locution or idea… to describe the manner in which something is said or thought.
'I better get out of her', he shuddered.
'I think so', she smiled.
'You're wrong', they accused. 
But not:
*'They've arrived', he listened.
*'She's responsible', they gossiped. 
The 'accused' example above raises the classification of clauses of judgement as verbals in IFG (with a Target function) even though they take present in present tense and can't report.
I'm accusing you of forgetting.
Not
*I accuse you that you forgot.
Another issue.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 135-6) provide some useful grammatical reactances of behavioural processes which can be viewed here.

[2] "To restrict the behavioural category to 'embodied physical' manifestations of mental or verbal processing" would ignore the fact that the processes of physiological behaviours pattern grammatically like the processes of psychological behaviours; eg the Medium is endowed with consciousness, as in mental clauses, but the unmarked present tense is 'present-in-present', as in material clauses, and the Range is restricted to behaviours, unlike the Range in material clauses.

[3] The treatment of behavioural processes in Deploying Functional Grammar is problematic, as argued here.

[4] In such cases of quoting, the effect is to attach a behavioural feature to a verbal or mental process.  That such cases are verbal or mental, and not behavioural, is shown by the unmarked present tense, the simple present — the same as verbal and mental — in contradistinction to behavioural and material processes; eg
'I don't understand' he frowns.
not
'I don't understand' he is frowning. 

[5] 'She's responsible', they gossiped seems fine enough, especially with the tonic on she's (or with the more obviously judgemental irresponsible as Attribute).

[6] If we consider a less unlikely clause, we see that the unmarked present tense for these targeting verbal processes is indeed the simple present, like other verbal processes:
you flatter/insult me
not the present-in-present of behavioural processes:
you are flattering/insulting me
[7] Projection is not a prerequisite for verbal clauses, any more than it is for mental clauses (emotion, perception).  The verbal clauses that take a Target are those in which the order of saying is activity, rather than semiosis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 302), which locates them topologically nearer the behavioural (and material) processes.

Thursday, 30 October 2014

Shooshi Dreyfus On Behavioural Processes

Shooshi Dreyfus wrote on 30 October 2014 to sysfling:
I think this is the sensate Subject that I recall Carmel Cloran talking about. So to summarise (and add):
  • Is the Doer a sensate being?
  • Does it seem like a mental (or verbal) process but can't project eg speak and listen
  • Is it a process of physiological or psychological behaviour (both conscious and unconscious) eg cough, sneeze etc (but not think Mick – isn't think mental, cos can project)

Blogger Comment:

This exemplifies the widespread and persistent error of classifying verbs in terms of process types.  The same verb can serve as different process types, because the Process is a function of the clause.  For example, the verb breathe can serve as  Process in a behavioural clause, as in she breathed a sigh of relief, where the Range of the clause, a sigh of relief, is a Behaviour, and it can serve as Process in a material clause, as in they breathe oxygen, where the Range of the clause, oxygen, is not a Behaviour, but the Scope of the breathing process.  See related analyses here.

Sysfling Discussion Of Behavioural Processes

The following links might be helpful:

Behavioural Processes: Grammatical Reactances

Behavioural Processes

Some Phrasal Verbs Serving As Mental (Or Verbal) Process

Behavioural Processes

Behavioural & Material Processes

Behavioural Processes

Monday, 30 June 2014

Robin Fawcett On Why Hypotaxis Is Unnecessary


Robin Fawcett wrote to the sysfling list on 30 June 2014 at 09:57:
Just consider the concept of Hypotaxis" for a moment. It models a relationship between, let us say, two clauses, such that one clause is said to be "dependent" on another, but without functioning as an element of it - so without "filling`' it, in Cardiff Grammar terms.

An IFG analysis of "She knows his name" would show that "his name" is a nominal group that fills a Complement/Phenomenon, whereas an analysis of "She knows that he is called Peter" would show "that he is called Peter" as a clause that would be said to be "dependent on" the "main" clause but without filling an element of it. But that misses out a central aspect of the functional analysis. i.e. that "that he is called Peter"Is a Phenomenon in the Process of "someone knowing something". Moreover, this analysis asks us to accept that "She knows" is a main clause. I find that a rather unpersuasive position to take, because we recognize it - don't we? - as an incomplete clause that requires its Complement/ Phenomenon to complete it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In the case of mental projection, the distinction between embedded clauses and dependent clauses is a very useful and important one.  It is the distinction between a pre-projected fact (embedded clause) and a reported idea (dependent clause).  It is the distinction between a metaphenomenon that is the Range or Agent of the mental Process (embedded clause) and a metaphenomenon that is projected into semiotic existence by the mental Process.  See sample analyses here, and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 441-482).

However, contrary to claim made by Fawcett, an IFG analysis of She knows that he is called Peter would not
"show "that he is called Peter" as a clause that would be said to be "dependent on" the "main" clause but without filling an element of it".  
The clause that he is called Peter is here an embedded fact, not a dependent clause — She knows (the fact) that he is called Peter — and as such, functions as the Phenomenon of the clause, thereby "filling an element" or "completing the clause" in Fawcett's terms.  See analysis  here.  Cf agnate receptive clause: (the fact) that he is called Peter is known by/to her; agnate theme predication clause: it is (the fact) that he is called Peter that she knows.

In other words, Fawcett has misunderstood and misrepresented the IFG analysis of this clause and then "argued" against his own misunderstanding/misrepresentation in favour of the default SFL analysis.

[2] Unlike Halliday & Matthiessen (2004), Fawcett provides no actual reasoned grammatical argumentation for his unintentional agreement with them, merely:
… the central aspect of the functional analysis …
I find that a rather unpersuasive position to take …
… we recognise it — don't we? — as …
This might be compared to what Fawcett wrote on the Sysfling list at 02:32:43 (GMT) on 9/1/12:
Not all readers will be comfortable with my next point, which is that I suggest that contributions to sysfling that relate to how a given piece of text should be analysed should be expressed in the framework of the assumption that we are scientists of language, i.e. scholars who are seeking, using scientific methods appropriate to our subject of investigation, to understand the nature of language. But this means that we should regard it as inadequate to simply say "I would analyse Text X as follows: ....", without giving reasons for preferring that analysis to others that might be proposed.

Wednesday, 25 June 2014

David Rose On Theme

David Rose wrote to the Sysfling list on 24 June 2014 at 21:07:
If theme is a clause rank system, whose textual function is point of departure for a message, and a message is realised by a finite ranking clause +/- dependent clauses, and an unmarked Theme is realised (in English) by the Subject of a clause, then a prepositional phrase or dependent clause preceding the Subject of the primary clause functions textually as a marked Theme of the message (if the duke gives anything to my aunt, it'll be that teapot; from the duke, my aunt received a teapot). An embedded (downranked) clause may function as Subject (what the duke gave my aunt was that teapot). (IFG editions notwithstanding:)

Blogger Comment:

Themes may be unmarked or marked, but not both; i.e. marked^unmarked is not a structural configuration of (topical) Theme.  When a marked Theme — Adjunct or Complement — is chosen in a declarative clause, the Subject does not function as (unmarked) Theme.  For example:

from the duke
my aunt
received
a teapot
Adjunct
Subject
Finite/Predicator
Complement
Theme
Rheme