Sunday 24 September 2017

Multiple Misrepresentations Of Halliday In A Footnote

Fawcett (2010: 35n):
Halliday often writes in a way that implies that the reason why human languages are more complex than many other semiotic systems is that grammar 'intervenes' between meanings and phonological and graphological forms (e.g., Halliday 1996:29), whereas it does not in simpler systems (such as a traffic light system). One difficulty about this view is that he also sees the grammar as having its own 'meaning potential' inside it, and this gives us a model in which the 'meanings' of the higher semantic level are detached, as it were, from their realisations in forms, such that they have to be mapped first onto the meanings within the grammar (or 'lexicogrammar', as Halliday prefers to call it). I take a different view, as this book shows, in that I regard the level of meanings within the 'lexicogrammar' as the key level of linguistically-realised meaning, such that it is realised in any one of (1) syntax, (2) intonation or punctuation (depending on the medium of discourse) and (3) items(Notice that it is only one of these, namely items, to which the supposed 'third level' of segmental phonology/graphology is relevant, and this fact raises serious questions about its traditional status as a 'level of language'.) In my approach, therefore, any 'higher' meaning — such as those that Halliday includes under the umbrella concept of 'grammatical metaphor'is to be accounted for by one or other of several different concepts. See Fawcett (1993) for a brief indication of some of these, and Fawcett & Huang (in preparation) for a much fuller picture. Many of the concepts introduced in this footnote will be amplified in later parts of this book.

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[1] Halliday does not imply this, he is quite explicit about it. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 25):
The ‘content’ expands into two, a lexicogrammar and a semantics (cf. Halliday, 1984a; Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999). This is what allows the meaning potential of a language to expand, more or less indefinitely.
The stratification of content makes grammatical metaphor possible, and it this, chiefly, that 'allows the meaning potential of a language to expand, more or less indefinitely'.  This is why the inability of Fawcett's model to account for grammatical metaphor is such a serious shortcoming.

[2] This is a bizarre misunderstanding.  For Halliday, the system of language is meaning potential — the potential to make meaning (semogenesis).   Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 48, 76, 601):
Language has evolved as a fully systemic semiotic system: it is possible to posit and describe the overall meaning potential for a given language, interpreting this meaning potential as an aggregate of registerial subpotentials. … 
The functional categories provide an interpretation of grammatical structure in terms of the overall meaning potential of the language. … 
Logogenesis pertains to the entire meaning potential of a language – all the strata and all the metafunctions.

[3] This misunderstands stratification.  Meanings are modelled as a higher level of abstraction than the forms of wording.  There are no "meanings within the grammar"; the wordings of grammar realise the meanings of semantics.

[4] Halliday "prefers" the term lexicogrammar because the stratum encompasses both lexis and grammar, related systemically along the scale of delicacy.

[5] This is not a different view to Halliday's; it is merely different from Fawcett's misunderstanding of Halliday.  Halliday sees lexicogrammar as the dynamo of language, and as the source of the type of meanings that differentiate language from other (bi-stratal) semiotic systems.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22):
Grammar is the central processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created …
[6] This misrepresents the SFL hierarchy of stratification, which distinguishes meaning (semantics) from wording (lexicogrammar) as different levels of symbolic abstraction.  Grammatical functions (wordings) are congruent (agree) with semantic functions (meanings) in the absence of grammatical metaphor.

[7] This blurs the distinction between two distinct realisation relations in SFL theory.  On the one hand, grammatical functions are realised in the grammatical forms of the rank below; e.g. clause functions are realised by groups ± phrases.  On the other hand, the realisation of grammar in phonology or graphology is an interstratal relation.

[8] This confuses realisation with delicacy.  In SFL theory, lexical items are the synthesis of the most delicate features of the systems of lexicogrammar.  They do not "realise" grammatical functions because lexis and grammar are of the same level of symbolic abstraction (wording).

[9] Here Fawcett presents his own misunderstanding of the place of lexis in SFL theory as a challenge to modelling some of the systems of the expression plane as a lower level of symbolic abstraction than lexicogrammar.

[10] This misrepresents Halliday's notion grammatical metaphor, which is not 'higher meaning', but an incongruent realisation of meaning (semantics) in wording (lexicogrammar).  Grammatical metaphor is an integral part of semogenesis, and the inability of Fawcett's model to account for it is a very serious shortcoming indeed.

[11] The promised concepts to account for grammatical metaphor are said to be in:
Fawcett, Robin, 1993. "Language as program: a reassessment of the nature of descriptive linguistics". Language Sciences 14.4. 623-57. 
Fawcett, Robin, & Huang, Guowen, in preparation. Explaining Enhanced Theme (the 'Cleft' Construction): a Test Case for Systemic Functional Linguistics - and Every Theory of Language. London: Continuum. 
The latter publication is still, apparently, "in preparation" in 2017, but there is:
Huang, G.-W. (2003). Enhanced theme in English: Its structures and functions. Taiyuan: Shangxi Education Publishing House.
However, the abstract of Fawcett (1993), at least, makes no mention of grammatical metaphor:
The purpose of this paper is to challenge one of the basic tenets of linguistics. The traditional view is that it is the business of linguists to describe language and languages—and/or to theorise about it and them. It is essentially a view of language as an object. While I remain solidly based in linguistics, I draw here on my experience in natural language processing (i.e. of putting English in computers as part of a model of a communicating mind) as I advocate the view that it is more insightful to view language not as object, but as procedure, as process, as program. Note that ‘program’ has no final ‘me’ to signify the sense of ‘computer program’. 
I invite you to come with me on an exploration of what is involved when someone produces (‘generates’) a sentence, to show why I advocate a model of language that is not static, but dynamic. The model is also, I shall argue, essentially generative (in the sense of ‘productive’) rather than interpretive. Thus a program whose essential design is as it is to enable it to run in one direction—i.e. to turn meanings into sounds—is consulted as the person trying to understand a text attempts the converse task. This is not just ‘to turn sound into meaning’, but to turn the performer's sounds back into the performer's meanings. Hence the logical priority of generation over interpretation. 
In this new view of language as program, it is no longer possible to draw a clear line between the material of linguistics and the algorithms that determine how we choose between linguistic options; one needs a more complete framework, which is inevitably also more complex, e.g. as described here.

[12] If any of the "concepts introduced in this footnote" are "amplified in later parts of this book", each will be noted on this blog, and cross-referenced to this post.

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