[sys-func] Re: Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)

  • From: "David Rose" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> ("david.rose")
  • To: "sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2022 01:19:54 +0000

Can I also admire how neatly his 1961 model synthesises his three major 20C 
influences...
1. Firth’s ‘linguistic levels’ – phonetics, phonology, grammar, lexis, 
semantics, context
2. Hjelmslev’s form and substance
- expression form -> phonetics
- expression substance -> phonology
- content form -> lexicogrammar
- content substance -> semantics
3. Malinowski’s contexts of ‘situation’ and ‘culture’.
These are precisely the categories arranged as strata in CMIMM’s 2004 diagram 
in IFG below.
It’s a neat hypothesis that points both back to prior authorities, and forward 
to empirical research (which we’ve all been doing ever since).
David

From: sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf 
of David Rose <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, 14 June 2022 at 9:58 am
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)
Thanks Chris
It’s illuminating to follow the path of his model. He does in fact explain why 
he avoided ‘semantics’ in 1961...

‘Context* is an interlevel, since it relates language to something that is not 
language; it is an interlevel because it is not with the nonlanguage activity 
itself that linguistics is concerned but with the relation of this to language 
form.’
‘*The reason why "context" is preferred to "semantics" as the name of this 
interlevel is that "semantics” is too closely tied to one particular method of 
statement, the conceptual method… The linguistic statement of context attempts 
to relate language form to (abstractions from) other (i.e. extratextual) 
observables.’
[1961 Categories of the Theory of Grammar]

Despite the empirical developments you mention, in metafunctions and axis, his 
stratal model remained essentially identical for the next 40 years... 1961 
‘situation’ becomes ‘context’ and 1961 ‘context’ becomes ‘semantics’... 
semantics remains an ‘interlevel’ between lexicogrammar and ‘extra-textual’ 
context.

The symmetry of the model was appealing and persuasive, with (lexico)grammar at 
the centre. In 1961, phonology was also an ‘interlevel’ with phonetics. By 
2004, phonetics becomes the ‘interlevel’, to maintain the symmetry...
[cid:image001.png@01D87FD2.8F255D80]
[2004 On Grammar as the Driving Force from Primary to Higher-Order 
Consciousness]

This is the same model drawn by CMIMM in IFG3/4, as co-tangential circles.
[cid:image002.png@01D87FD3.2853D7C0]

As ‘context’ is modelled as an asemiotic ‘extra-textual’, ‘eco-social 
environment’, this model is incommensurable with semiotic models such as JRM’s 
1992 description of register and genre as connotative semiotics.
David


From: sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf 
of Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, 13 June 2022 at 9:33 am
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961)
Dear Colleagues,

The following might be useful to anyone who is unaware of the extent to which 
Halliday's first theory, Scale & Category Grammar (1961),
is different from the theory that replaced it, Systemic Functional Grammar. Its 
stratal organisation is given by Halliday (2002 [1961]: 39) as:

[cid:ii_l3zlmhrw0]

It can be seen that Scale & Category Grammar has no semantic level,
and in fact, the words 'semantic' and 'semantics' do not feature at all in this 
paper.
'Context' is defined as 'an interlevel relating form to extratextual features' 
(ibid.).
The theory does not include system networks, nor metafunctions,
and the elements of clause structure are simply Subject, Predicator, Complement 
and Adjunct.
The theory also does not distinguish realisation from instantiation,
the word 'exponence' being used to cover both of the later concepts.

--

chEers,

dr chris cléirigh
We have now sunk to a depth
at which restatement of the obvious
is the first duty of intelligent men.
 — George Orwell

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