Hi David:
Your instincts are spot on, and you don't need to dismiss them as a
species of "philosophical idealism". In fact I would push them even
further, based on that fundamental distinction between theoretical and
descriptive categories that most linguists outside SFL seem to believe
doesn't exist. What *I* don't believe exists are "universals", skewered by
Halliday as "descriptive categories that are said to be present in every
language".
Halliday makes it very clear, in that paper I keep coming back to, "Systemic
Grammar and the Concept of a “Science of Language”, that all such
comparisons across languages should be in terms of systems, not structural
elements: so not the incoherent approach of the West Coast Functionalists,
like Edward L. Keenan's influential 1976 paper “Towards a Universal Definition
of Subject”, which sets up "Subject" as some sort of Platonic "ideal form",
which exists to only a partial and variable extent in any one language.
In fact, until I read a conference paper by Zhang Delu about
(interpersonal) Subject in Chinese, I was perfectly happy to do without
that category altogether for the description of China: modal responsibility
is established in all sorts of ways in the Chinese clause, but the presence
of an explicit (interpersonal) Subject is by no means the default option,
and there is NOTHING, in my opinion, close enough to the familiar English
Finite to warrant using that category for describing the interpersonal
grammar of Chinese. So let's not argue at the level of clause functions:
let's start from the system of Mood, and see how we can map out the
systemic features and their structural realizations.
As for word, again I have absolutely no problem in saying that as an
analytical unit it's much harder to define in Chinese than in English, and
that's not simply just because the writing system doesn't recognize it. In
fact, if I may be immodest, let me refer you to Chapter 4, Identifying
Syntactic Units, of my Meaningful Arrangement (Equinox 2008) which is an
absolute reductio ad absurdum, you may well think, of the principle that
nothing should be taken for granted in grammatical analysis; at least, to
rephrase Ockham's Razor, *Categoriae non sunt transferendae praeter
necessitatem* 'Categories should not be transferred beyond necessity". For
those with sufficient interest - or patience - I've copied the relevant
conclusions from pp 51-53 for your reference: the analysis is based on a
text about a farmer, a rabbit, and a tree stump that retells an old
philosophical tale summarised in the proverb 守株待兔 *shou zhu dai tu*
'staking out a tree stump waiting for a rabbit' whose message is more or
less the equivalent of the English "Don't count your chickens before
they're hatched".
best to all
Ed
From these problems, we can see that the distinction between morpheme and
word in Chinese is by no means a straightforward one. More broadly, the
conclusion that can be drawn from the discussion above is that the unit we
need to recognize for syntactic analysis, what was referred to above
as the *syntactic
word*, is by no means something that is given in advance. These basic
syntactic units need to be worked out afresh for each language, and will
normally involve some sort of descriptive compromise between different
criteria, such as those of independence, commutability and identity
suggested above. In fact, for Chinese it makes most sense to recognize a
*cline* between morpheme and word which covers at least five different
degrees of closeness between morphemes functioning in syntactic structures:
1. *c**ó**ngqi**á**n* ‘formerly’, *t**ù**.zi* ‘rabbit’: this the
greatest degree of closeness, such morpheme combinations always function as
a single unit, and can be written orthographically as a single word.
2. *ti**á**n.li <http://n.li>* ‘in the field’, *sh**ù**.shang* ‘on the
tree’, *y**ì**zh**ī *(*t**ù**.zi*) ‘one [animal classifier] (rabbit) ’, *y*
*ì**k**ē* (*sh**ù*) ‘one [plant classifier] (tree) ’: this is the next
greatest degree of closeness; the second element cannot be separated from
the first, but it can be substituted with greater or lesser changes in
meaning, e.g. *ti**á**n l**ĭ.**bian’r* ‘inside the field’, *sh**ù **sh**à*
*ng.mian’r* ‘on (or ‘above’) the tree’, *y**ì**m**é**n k**è* ‘one class (as
subject)’ versus *y**ì**ji**é** k**è* ‘one class (as period)’: these can
also be written as a single orthographic word.
3. *z**à**i l**á**i* ‘again come’, *k**ĕ **hu**ā**ngw**ú* ‘really
desolate’, *b**ă* *t**ù**.zi* ‘(took) the rabbit’: these represent the next
degree of closeness; as with the previous subset the first elements here
cannot appear by themselves, but on the other hand they are clearly
distinct in meaning – and as we will see in the next chapter, in syntactic
function – from the following words to which they are attached: they can
therefore be written as separate orthographic words.
4. *f**à**ng-xia *‘put down’, *sh**í**-qilai* ‘pick up’: these
represent the next degree of closeness, and can be separated by a limited
number of grammatical elements, such as the completed aspect particle *le*,
e.g. (*y**ĭ.**jing*)* f**à**ng.le-xia* ‘(already) put down’; or in some
cases by a noun, as in the text example *d**à**i-hui ji**ā **-qu* ‘take
back home go’ where the noun *ji**ā *‘home’ comes in the middle of the verb
*d**à**i-hui-qu* ‘take back go (i.e. away from speaker)’: they can be
joined orthographically by hyphens.
5. *zh**ò**ng+d**ì* ‘plant ground’ or another example not in the text
* sh**ē**ng+q**ì* ‘get angry’ (literally ‘produce steam’!): these represent
the weakest degree of closeness; on the one hand, their particular meaning
tends to be dependent on their combination – *d**ì* as ‘field, ground’ not
‘floor’ – but they may be separated by a number of different elements: e.g.
*zh**ò**ng.le y**ì**ti**ā**n d**ì* ‘planted one day ground – i.e. spent a
whole day working in the fields’, *sh**ē**ng w**ŏ**.de q**ì* ‘get my angry
– get angry with me’: these can be joined orthographically by a plus sign,
to suggest they are the addition of two separate elements.
This may seem to be an enormous amount of trouble simply to identify a unit
that most English-speakers would take for granted in their own language.
However, not only does this show that nothing can be assumed as given in
syntactic analysis, it also shows that such units must be explicitly
identified, according to sets of specific – if sometimes conflicting –
criteria. Just assuming the existence of a unit of syntactic word in a
language – something many descriptions do without argument – incorporates a
whole lot of unexamined assumptions into the analysis.
On Mon, Oct 10, 2022 at 10:37 PM 데이브드켈로그_교수_영어교육과 <dkellogg60@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
For the lexical item and the grammatical rank to be conflated in this way,
there has to be some empirically defined "word" onto which they can both be
mapped.
In English, but not in other languages, that would be the orthographically
defined word; the prosodic definition of the word is much more complex,
since it involves tonic and tone groups. But in Chinese this way of
defining words isn't possible (as Halliday remarks, Chinese has well
defined syllables but poorly defined words, while English is the other way
around). In Korean, what is orthographically defined (that is, the
stretches of language bracketed by spaces) is not the word but the
group/phrase. Professor Kim Mira did manage to persuade me that Korean
"words" exist, but they aren't orthographically marked: you can't see them
unless you know the whole system of Korean particles and can recognize them
(just as you can't reliably recognize Spanish or French verbs unless you
can conjugate).
I think the "word" is just one example of a much more general principle.
That is, languages can have structural parallels of something that exists
in English without being equivalent. So for example, the Chinese "Subject"
does assume modal responsibility for the Chinese clause but it is much more
dispensible than an English Subject, and the Chinese Subject won't form tag
questions or consort with the Finite the way its English cousin does. So I
am hard put to say that the Chinese Subject is part of the Mood in the same
way that the English Subject is. Chinese poetry doesn't rhyme the way that
English poetry does (that would be too easy), and the metrical patterns are
based on tone rather than on patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Chinese novels, and even Chinese literary language generally, has a
metrical feel to it that English utterly lacks, because of the Chinese
fondness for four syllable units in antithetical couplets.
Instead of seeing the word, the Subject, the poem or the novel as being
universal, or even language-specific structural "equivalents", I like to
think that there is some more abstract function that has realizations which
are sometimes parallel and more often not, of which each is an imperfect
language specific instantiation. But I suppose that is a species of
philosophical idealism, and I should try not to think that way.
dk
2022년 10월 10일 (월) 오전 6:55, Dr ChRIS CLÉiRIGh <c.cleirigh@xxxxxxxxx>님이 작성:
Dear Scholars,
The following might prove useful for anyone who is not entirely clear on
the distinction between 'word as lexical item' and 'word as grammatical
rank'.
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
*Language fits over experience like a straight-jacket.*
— William Golding
====================================
Some Of My Sites
Informing Thoughts <http://informingthoughts.blogspot.com.au/>
Making Sense Of Meaning <https://meta-sfl-theory.blogspot.com/>
Towards A Linguistic Science Of Sciences
<https://linguistic-science-of-sciences.blogspot.com/>
The Life Of Meaning <https://the-life-of-meaning.blogspot.com/>
Rainbow Lorikeet Semiosis <https://rainbowlorikeetsemiosis.blogspot.com/>
Science And Sciencibility <https://sciencibility.blogspot.com/>
A Senser Sensing <https://mental-projection.blogspot.com/>
Thinking Outside The Agora
<https://thinkingoutsidetheagora.blogspot.com/>
Subverting The Genre <https://subverting-the-genre.blogspot.com/>
Humour ~ Only <https://humour-only.blogspot.com/>
====================================
--
Sangmyung University
David Kellogg
New Publication with Nikolai Veresov (in English):
L. S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works, Volume 3
Pedology of the Adolescent I: Pedology in the Transitional Age
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-19-2972-4
Downloadable pdfs at:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm:978-981-19-2972-4/1
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bbm:978-981-19-2972-4/1
