Hi all,
Just a reminder about this afternoon’s Friday seminar. Details below.
Yaegan
From: Yaegan Doran <yaegan.doran@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, 30 August 2021 at 9:44 am
To: "sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"asflanet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <asflanet@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Friday Seminar
Hello all!
This week’s Sydney Friday seminar is from me, 4pm Sydney time Friday 3rd
September.
With lockdown happening at the moment in Sydney, we’ll be online, but hopefully
toward the end of semester we will be able to come together face to face again.
The link is: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/84093744071
All welcome. Below is the abstract and the schedule for the semester.
Yaegan
Factoring out structure: Nuclearity, linearity and iteration
Yaegan Doran
Like much of its framework, SFL offers a very elaborate model of structure. Its
metafunctional distribution of periodic, prosodic and particulate structures is
well known, with numerous distinctions within each type (Halliday 1979).
Focusing on particulate structures, Halliday distinguishes between multivariate
and univariate structures, and within univariate structures, between hypotactic
and paratactic structures (Halliday 1965, Halliday and Matthiessen 2014), while
Martin (1996) conceptualises particulate structures as involving orbital and
serial relations (Martin 1996). Similarly, relations in discourse are
alternatively conceptualised from the perspective of grammar as non-structural
(Halliday and Hasan 1976) or from discourse semantics as involving co-variate
structures (Martin 1992, adapted from Lemke 1985). Many of these types of
structure are sharply distinct, while others have significant overlap.
Together, they account for a wide range of linguistic phenomena and do a good
job at describing the patternings that occur across regions of language.
However as SFL has expanded its descriptive framework into a wider range of
languages, it has been clear that there are grammatical constructions that are
not quite accounted for. Building upon this work, this talk offers a
generalised model of particulate structure, developed with Jim Martin, that
aims to cover a wider range of grammatical patterns. This model does not start
with types of structure, but rather with three sets of factors that can be
combined relatively freely: whether the structures involves a nucleus and
subordinate satellites (nuclearity), whether there is linear interdependency
between the elements in the structure (linearity), and whether the relations
can occur more than once (iteration). These factors generate a wider set of
structures than so far acknowledged explicitly in SFL. Together, they offer a
means of seeing both the differences between types of structure already
acknowledged, as well as variation within them. They also generate structures
that account for phenomena not yet considered structurally in SFL to date. The
goal of this talk is build more explicitness in SFL’s model of structure as it
continues its descriptive expansion and in doing so, help clarify issues that
have often been left aside in SFL grammatical description. Where possible, the
model will be exemplified through English but I will bring in other languages
as need be.
References
Halliday, M.A.K. (1965) Types of Structure. In M.A.K Halliday & J.R Martin
(eds) (1981) Readings in Systemic Linguistics. London: Batsford. 29-41.
Halliday, M.A.K (1979) Modes of meaning and modes of expression: types of
grammatical structure, and their determination by different semantic functions.
In D.J Allerton, E. Carney, D, Holcroft (eds) Function and Context in
Linguistic Analysis: Essays offered to William Haas. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. 57-79.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Hasan, R. (1976) Cohesion in English. London: Routledge.
Halliday, M.A.K. and Matthiessen, C.M.I.M (2014) Halliday’s Introduction to
Functional Grammar. London: Routledge.
Lemke, J.L. (1985) Ideology, intertextuality and the notion of register. In
J.D. Benson & W.S. Greaves (eds) Systemic Perspectives on Discourse, Vol. 1.
Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. 275-294
Martin, J.R. (1992) English Text: System and Structure. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Martin, J.R. (1996) Types of structure: Deconstructing notions of constituency
in clause and text. In E.H. Hovy and D.R. Scott (eds) Computational and
Conversational Discourse: Burning Issues – An Interdisciplinary Account.
Heidelberg: Springer. 39-66.
Date
Presenter
Topic
13th August
Jim Martin
Construing entities: types of structure
20th August
Ed McDonald
Back to the future: Descriptive adequacy in Halliday’s The Language of the
Chinese "Secret History of the Mongols"
27th August
Dragana Stosic
An axial perspective on Serbian nominal groups
3rd September
Yaegan Doran
Factoring out structure: Nuclearity, linearity and iteration
10th September
Geoff Williams
Semantic variation theory as appliable linguistics: Exploring contexts for
melanoma treatment.
17th September
Helen Caple & Ping Tian
Analysing the representation of diversity in early childhood picture books:
Challenges for multimodal discourse analysis
24th September
Mary Macken-Horarik
Building a knowledge structure in school English: Troubles and (potential)
triumphs
Mid-semester break
(ASFLA)
8th October
Sally Humphrey & Dragana Stosic
Towards a social semiotic perspective on Health Literacy
15th October
Xiaoqin Wu
Articulating social discourse and enacting spatial pedagogy: A multifaceted
understanding of rhythm and space
22nd October
Anna Crane
Interpersonal meaning in Gija: contributing understandings to revitalisation
programs
29th October
Bev Derewianka
Recontextualising a pedagogical grammar from theory to classroom practice
5th November
Alison Moore
#Recover South Coast: social media in bushfire recovery
12th November
Thu Ngo
Functions of film sounds from the systemic functional semiotics perspective
Y. J. DORAN
THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
