Hi Bronwyn
Heavens! The use of set of lists like that is precisely the sort of attitude
that Ed was criticising. Lists of words as such are not valuable in school
education.
I am reminded of something Brian Gray used to say many years ago when he was
working with Aboriginal kids in Alice Springs and other places. They were kids
whose homes normally had no reading materials of any kind, so that constitutes
a challenge not known to kids from literate households. He was clear that when
he chose selected reading books to use with the kids (apart from those he had
jointly constructed with them out of shared discussion) the books should have
words unfamiliar to the kids. I am not sure he had a theoretical position at
the time to explain this. But the fact was that in reading the books to, and
with, the kids, they were enabled to understand and learn them because of the
context created for them in the books, the nature of which needed to be
mediated by the teacher of course.
It is this kind of understanding that should inform the teaching of reading.
I would love to see your paper, Bronwyn, when you finish
Fran
From: <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of <bronwynparkin18@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply to: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 at 10:39 am
To: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank
Indeed. Thanks for this discussion. I’m currently writing a PETAA Paper on Oral
Language for primary school teachers. There is a gulf between the current
discussion in this sys-func list and the American influenced perspectives on
language and literacy development being taken up by Australian schools. They
distinguish between Vocabulary, Oral language and Comprehension as separate and
siloed entities for planning and teaching. One current popular pedagogic
strategy is to create a word wall featuring lists of vocabulary. To use Jim
Martin’s term, vocabulary development is like making word salad.
To further widen the gulf, many schools/jurisdictions are now supposedly
simplifying vocabulary teaching by making use of Beck and McKeown’s 1985 work,
dividing vocabulary into 3 tiers: Tier 1 is the ‘most basic words: cat, mother,
go, red, chocolate’, words on which we shouldn’t waste direct instruction. Tier
3 words are low frequency or ‘apply to specific domains’. The examples they
give include ‘nebula, resistivity and tidal pool’ which would not be of ‘high
utility for most learners’. Rather, they recommend teaching 8-10 words of Tier
2 vocabulary each week: words of general utility for mature language users:
e.g. unique, convenient, retort, influence, ponder and procrastinate’. So
remember that: you can teach procrastinate, but not tidal pool.
Now back to building the bridge across the gulf.
From: sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf
Of Edward McDonald
Sent: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 9:06 AM
To: sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank
Over to you, Fran 😂
On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 9:20 AM Frances Christie <fchr3976@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Yes and the implications for language teaching are so far reaching that it does
overturn much conventional wisdom about pedagogy.
Ho hum—where to begin?
Fran
From: <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Ed McDonald
<laomaa63@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply to: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wednesday, 14 December 2022 at 9:14 am
To: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank
Thanks Fran - it's quite a simple concept really but with huge implications -
and as I said for me it resonates with the realities of language learning and
teaching and translating and interpreting - but since when have the
philosophers ever listened to the language teachers or translators? And because
of course the whole process plays out in such a socially embedded way -
philosophers don't like THAT, far too messy for their tidy conceptual systems
ha ha.
Ed
On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 9:05 AM Frances Christie <fchr3976@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hi Ed
I like this.
Fran
From: <sys-func-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> on behalf of Ed McDonald
<laomaa63@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply to: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, 13 December 2022 at 10:49 am
To: <sys-func@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [sys-func] Re: Word: Lexical Item vs Grammatical Rank
Ha ha thanks to David for "tagging" me as the default "Saussurean"! I would go
even further than either you or Chris and say simply this: there are NO such
things as "words" - or "sounds" or "meanings" for that matter. We're misled by
the lexicogrammar of our metalanguage into seeing such things are "entities",
whereas, as Chris in effect pointed out, they're really "intersections" of a
whole array of overlapping features. This is how I've framed the issue for my
editing clients:
There are no such things as “meanings”, only *contrasts* in meaning; there are
no such things as “words”, only alternative *choices* of wording. This is the
hard truth about using a language that fluent users know "instinctively” but
many learners - and teachers! - seem to try and avoid: you can’t know what a
word means unless you know the other possible alternative choices in that
context. And because each contrast in meaning, through the appropriate choice
in wording, derives from and leads on to further choices, the process of
writing, like that of reading, is one of negotiating future choices in the
light of past ones, the key at every point being to anticipate what your reader
will be expecting.
Such a relational point of view is very hard to keep in mind - so much of
modern linguistics and philosophy of language rejects it outright - but if we
look at how language actually functions - text in context - then for me it's
the only perspective that makes sense.
best to all
Ed
On Tue, Dec 13, 2022 at 9:02 AM Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I suspect that one of the difficulties posed by Halliday's distinction between
word as lexical item and word as rank unit
is that we don't actually have access to the most delicate grammatical features
that specify each lexical item.
But maybe an analogy from phonology could provide a more concrete (if less
familiar) illustration.
Imagine the phoneme as both 'most delicate phonology' and as a rank unit.
As most delicate phonology, a phoneme is the synthetic realisation of the most
delicate phonological features,
as exemplified by the phoneme /b/ being the synthetic realisation of the
features [voiced, bilabial, stop].
As a rank unit, a phoneme is a constituent of a higher rank unit, the syllable,
and different classes of phoneme, e.g. consonant vs vowel, realise different
elements of syllable structure.
ChRIS
On Mon, 12 Dec 2022 at 23:35, 데이브드켈로그_교수_영어교육과 <dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris (and scholars):
I think that to say that two views of the word are "conflated" is the same as
saying that what is empirically linked is conceptually distinct, or can be made
so by analysis.
But analyses differ. Vygotsky, for example, speaks of "smysl", which is always
textual, and "znachenie" which is stable and relatively independent of the
text. Voloshinov talks about "tema" which is constantly changing and
"znachenie" which is more fixed and monumental. Ed will doubtless want to bring
in "sens" and "signification" from Saussure.
What is really new and different about Halliday and Matthiessen's analysis of
this distinction is
a) it is part of a very general "trinocular" method (the lexeme is the word
construed "from below" phonologically/orthographically and the word rank is the
same word inflected "from above" by clause grammar),
b) it is nevertheless supported empirically (by the dictionary and the
thesaurus on the one hand and the grammar book on the other), and
c) it allows the analyst see that lexis and grammar are empirically locations
on a nice long continuum, so that at any moment in the analysis we can put
Humpty together again. Reconflation?
dk
2022년 12월 12일 (월) 오전 6:01, Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx>님이 작성:
Dear Scholars,
The following might be helpful to anyone who is not entirely clear about the
distinction between word as lexical item and word as unit on the rank scale.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568-9):
The folk notion of the "word" is really a conflation of two different
abstractions, one lexical and one grammatical.
(i) Vocabulary (lexis): the word as lexical item, or "lexeme". This is
construed as an isolate, a 'thing' that can be counted and sorted in
(alphabetical) order. People "look for" words, they "put thoughts into" them,
"put them into" or "take them out of another's mouth", and nowadays they keep
collections of words on their shelves or in their computers in the form of
dictionaries. Specialist knowledge is thought of as a matter of terminology.
The taxonomic organisation of vocabulary is less exposed: it is made explicit
in Roget's Thesaurus, but is only implicit in a standard dictionary. Lexical
taxonomy was the first area of language to be systematically studied by
anthropologists, when they began to explore cultural knowledge as it is
embodied in folk taxonomies of plants, animals, diseases and the like.
(ii) Grammar: the word as one of the ranks in the grammatical system. This is,
not surprisingly, where Western linguistic theory as we know it today began in
classical times, with the study of words varying in form according to their
case, number, aspect, person etc.. Word-based systems such as these do provide
a way in to studying grammatical semantics: but the meanings they construe are
always more complex than the categories that appear as formal variants, and
grammarians have had to become aware of covert patterns.
--
dr chris cléirigh
The mathematics is not there till we put it there.
— Arthur Eddington
====================================
My SFL Sites
Deploying Functional Grammar
English Text: System And Structure
Factoring Out Structure
Informing Thoughts
Lexis As Most Local Context
Making Sense Of Meaning
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage
Sys-Func
Sysfling
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Systemic Functional Linguistics Community Collegiality
The Cardiff Grammar
The Thought Occurs…
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
Thoughts That Didn't Occur…
What Lies Beneath
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
====================================
--
David Kellogg
Sangmyung University
New Publication with Song Seon-mi in Early Years: "Un-naming names: Using
Vygotsky’s language games and Halliday’s grammar to study how children learn
how names are made and unmade"
Some free e-prints available at:
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/2C9HCKGJEYNVEKUGHYKV/full?target=10.1080/09575146.2020.1853682
--
dr chris cléirigh
Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature;
it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
– Werner Heisenberg
====================================
My SFL Sites
Deploying Functional Grammar
English Text: System And Structure
Factoring Out Structure
Informing Thoughts
Lexis As Most Local Context
Making Sense Of Meaning
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage
Sys-Func
Sysfling
Systemic Functional Linguistics
Systemic Functional Linguistics Community Collegiality
The Cardiff Grammar
The Thought Occurs…
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
Thoughts That Didn't Occur…
What Lies Beneath
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
====================================
