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
<https://deployingfunctionalgrammar.blogspot.com/>
English Text: System And Structure
<http://discourse-semantics.blogspot.com.au/>
Factoring Out Structure <https://yaegandoran.blogspot.com/>
Informing Thoughts <http://informingthoughts.blogspot.com.au/>
Lexis As Most Local Context
<https://lexisasmostlocalcontext.blogspot.com/>
Making Sense Of Meaning <https://meta-sfl-theory.blogspot.com/>
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage <https://sflparalanguage.blogspot.com/>
Sys-Func <http://sys-func.blogspot.com.au/>
Sysfling <http://sysfling.blogspot.com.au/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics <http://systemictheory.blogspot.com/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics Community Collegiality
<https://attitude-in-sfl.blogspot.com/>
The Cardiff Grammar <http://cardiff-grammar.blogspot.com.au/>
The Thought Occurs <http://thethoughtoccurs.blogspot.com.au/>…
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
<http://thoughts-that-cross-my-mind.blogspot.com.au/>
Thoughts That Didn't Occur <http://master-bateman.blogspot.com.au/>…
What Lies Beneath <https://whatliesbeneathsfl.blogspot.com/>
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
<http://workingwithdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/>
====================================
--
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
<https://deployingfunctionalgrammar.blogspot.com/>
English Text: System And Structure
<http://discourse-semantics.blogspot.com.au/>
Factoring Out Structure <https://yaegandoran.blogspot.com/>
Informing Thoughts <http://informingthoughts.blogspot.com.au/>
Lexis As Most Local Context
<https://lexisasmostlocalcontext.blogspot.com/>
Making Sense Of Meaning <https://meta-sfl-theory.blogspot.com/>
Martin's Model Of Paralanguage <https://sflparalanguage.blogspot.com/>
Sys-Func <http://sys-func.blogspot.com.au/>
Sysfling <http://sysfling.blogspot.com.au/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics <http://systemictheory.blogspot.com/>
Systemic Functional Linguistics Community Collegiality
<https://attitude-in-sfl.blogspot.com/>
The Cardiff Grammar <http://cardiff-grammar.blogspot.com.au/>
The Thought Occurs <http://thethoughtoccurs.blogspot.com.au/>…
Thoughts That Cross My Mind
<http://thoughts-that-cross-my-mind.blogspot.com.au/>
Thoughts That Didn't Occur <http://master-bateman.blogspot.com.au/>…
What Lies Beneath <https://whatliesbeneathsfl.blogspot.com/>
Working With Discourse: Meaning Beyond The Clause
<http://workingwithdiscourse.blogspot.com.au/>
====================================
