Dear Colleagues,
The following explanations might be helpful for anyone keen to understand
what Halliday means by 'the ineffability of grammatical categories'.
Halliday (2002 [1984]: 303, 306-7):
*The meaning of a typical grammatical category thus has no counterpart in
our conscious representation of things.* There can be no exact paraphrase
of Subject or Actor or Theme – because there is no language-independent
clustering of phenomena in our experience to which they correspond. If
there was, we should not need the linguistic category to create one. If
language was a purely passive partner, ‘expressing’ a ‘reality’ that was
already there, its categories would be eminently glossable. But it is not.
Language is an active participant in the semogenic process. Language
creates reality – and therefore its categories of content cannot be
defined, since we could define them only by relating them to some
pre-existing model of experience, and there is no model of experience until
the linguistic categories are there to model it. The only meaning of
Subject is the meaning that has evolved along with the category itself. …
But a language is an evolved system; and evolved systems rest on *principles
that are ineffable – because they do not correspond to any consciously
accessible categorisation of our experience*. Only the relatively trivial
meanings of a natural language are likely to be reducible to (meta-)words.
Fundamental semantic concepts, like those underlying Subject, or Theme,
Actor, New, definite, present, finite, mass, habitual, locative, are, in an
entirely positive way, ineffable.
--
dr chris cléirigh
*Education: teaching how to think*
*Indoctrination: teaching what to believe *
====================================
My Linguistics Sites
Factoring Out Structure <https://yaegandoran.blogspot.com/>
Martin's Discourse Semantics, Register & Genre
<http://discourse-semantics.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
<http://workingwithdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
The Cardiff Grammar <http://cardiff-grammar.blogspot.com.au/> (凌遲
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingchi>)
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
<http://thoughts-that-cross-my-mind.blogspot.com.au/>
The Thought Occurs <http://thethoughtoccurs.blogspot.com.au/>…
Thoughts That Didn't Occur <http://master-bateman.blogspot.com.au/>…
Informing Thoughts <http://informingthoughts.blogspot.com.au/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics <http://systemictheory.blogspot.com/>
Sysfling <http://sysfling.blogspot.com.au/>
Sys-Func <http://sys-func.blogspot.com.au/>
Attitude In Systemic Functional Linguistics
<http://attitude-in-sfl.blogspot.com.au/>
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage <https://sflparalanguage.blogspot.com/>
Lexis As Most Local Context <https://lexisasmostlocalcontext.blogspot.com/>
Making Sense Of Meaning <https://meta-sfl-theory.blogspot.com/>
====================================
