Grammar and the Construal of Experience Introduction A language is a system for creating meaning; and its meaning potential has evolved around three

Grammar and the Construal of Experience

Introduction

A language is a system for creating meaning; and its meaning potential has evolved around three motifs: the metafunctions of ideational, interpersonal and textual, with the ideantional comprising an experiential component and a logical component.

Introduction

Grammar is closely related to human experience. It can bring about the distinctively human construction of reality and makes it possible for us to reflect on this construction. When distinguishing grammar and grammatics, Halliday (2000:222) regards grammar as “a resource for meaning”, “a theory of human experience”, “something to think with”.

Introduction

When we say the grammar is a theory of human experience, we are in fact looking at the ideational metafunction of language.

The act of construing experience takes place below the level of our awareness and attention. Yet, when we focus our attention, we become aware language’s potential for referring to perceptual phenomena.

IntroductionIntroduction

According to Halliday (1998:186), what the grammar does, in its ideational guise, is to transform human experience into meaning. It construes a universe of things and relations, modeling the immensely complex interaction between the human organism and its environment.

IntroductionA grammar is a resource for meaning, the critical functioning semiotic by means of which we pursue our everyday life. It therefore embodies a theory of everyday life; otherwise it could not function in this way. A grammar is a theory of human experience. Like any other theory, a grammar is something to think with. It is through grammar that we make sense out of our experience, both the world we live in (what we experience as taking place “out there”) and of the world that lives in us (what we experience as taking place “in here”, inside our own consciousness)… Halliday (2000:222)

MeaningMeaning

Meaning has been a major concern in linguistics and philosophy. Scholars have investigated the generation and function of meaning in daily life and paid their attention the complicated relationship between language, experience and thinking, and the role of human cognitive in the production of meaning.

Meaning

The human cognitive system is usually considered as consisting of perception, feeling, categorization, abstraction and reasoning. Since the 1920s, the study of meaning has focused on the relation of human cognition with meaning, and stressed the role of human experience, perception and the process of catergorization, as well as their realization in lexicogrammar.

Meaning

There are two main traditions in Western thinking about meaning (Halliday, 1977):

The logico-philosophical tradition which sees language as a system of rules

The rhetorical-ethnographic tradition which sees language as resource

Meaning

The study of meaning usually regards the semantic organization as part of ideational organization. Since the 1950s, a link has been established between the logical-philosophical tradition, which sees language as a system of rules, and cognitive science. In the States, there exist two approaches to cognitive semantics: the East Coast approach and the West Coast approach.

Meaning

The East Coast is represented by Jackendoff, who has developed a generative type of cognitive semantics called conceptual semantics (Jackendoff, 1988:81-82).

MeaningMeaning

The West Coast approach is represented by Lackoff ， Langacker ， Fauconnier ， Chafe ， Talmy. They widen the scope of study to include metaphor (Lackoff & Johnson), the organization of meaning (Chafe), lexicalization (Talmy), mental space (Fauconnier), and the relationship of language to cognition and perception (Langacker). This approach is “more closely related with the rhetorical and ethnographic tradition” and “relevant to the organization of the ideation base” (Halliday & Matthiessen, 1999:425).

MeaningMeaningThe study of meaning in SFG can be said to be of the rhetorical and ethnographic tradition. SFG holds a stratal perspective on meaning and pays attention to the process of construal of experience in natural texts. The system of meaning can be approached along several lines: (1) intral-stratal (focusing on the organization of meaning itself); (2) inter-stratal (focusing on the stratal interfaces of the semantic stratum, how meaning relates to both context and lexicogrammar) and (3) extra-stratal (focusing on how semantics relate to non-semiotic systems).

Systemic Functional GrammarSystemic Functional Grammar

SFG deals with the paradigmatic organization of the meaning potential and gives particular attention to the way meaning relates to context, focusing on the relationship between differences in contextual settings of field, tenor and mode and on registerial variation in meaning.


From a stratal point of view, these different approaches are complementary perspectives on meaning; they focus on different aspects of the stratum of semantics – its internal organization or its interfaces to linguistic, conceptual or physical systems. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (1999:439), they could all be put together into one internally consistent theory of meaning.


Based on the assumption that lexicogrammar is not autonomous but natural in relation to semantics, Halliday and Matthiessen (1999), in their book Construing Experience Through Meaning: A language-based approach to cognition, deal especially with the concept of ideation base.


According to Halliday & Matthiessen (1999:428) look at the projected world as a semantic construction, and foreground the interpersonal perspective: meaning is construed through the collaborated efforts of both the speaker and the listener. SFG considers the construal of experience as an intersubjective process. It is both semiotic and social. The semantic system is shared and meanings are exchanged.


Halliday & Matthiessen （ 1999 ） adopt a constructivist view and look at the knowledge base as the ideation base. According to this view, it is the grammar itself that construes experience, that constructs for us our world of events and objects. To Halliday and Matthiessen (1999:48), the most general experiential category is a phenomenon. The phenomenon of experience are of three order of complexity: element ( 成分 ), figure ( 图形 ) and sequence ( 序列 ).


phenomenon

sequence figure element


Figures are said to consist of elements and sequences are said to consist of figures. Figures form sequence through interdependency relations. A sequence is a series of related figures. Thus, sequences are differentiated according to the kinds of relations figures can enter into. Sequences are organized by interdependency relations of expansion ( 扩展 ) and projection ( 投射 ), and are expandable.


Add the remaining ingredients, stir to coat the chicken well and continue until a thick sauce has formed and the chicken is tender. (sequence:expansion:adding)(figures: add the remaining ingredients, stir to coat the chicken well and continue until a thick sauce has formed and the chicken is tender.) (elements: add, the remaining ingredients, stir, coat, the chicken, well, continue, a thick sauce, formed, the chicken, is, tender)


A figure is a representation of experience in the form of a configuration, consisting of a process, participants taking part in the process and associated circumstances. Each part is in a specific relation to the figure as a whole, e.g

Rain (participant:actor) will fall (process:material) in the North West (circumstance: location).


In knowledge representation, a configuration is typically represented as a concept frame with a number of roles. Elements fill the roles of figures. For instance, participant roles are filled by participants (things or qualities), circumstances roles by circumstances (times, places, causes, etc.). The typical realization of sequences, figures and elements can be shown in the following figure.

SFG


Halliday & Matthiessen （ 1999:66-68 ） present the ideation base as a resource for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us. This ideation base has two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realized in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realized in lexicogrammatical ones.

Systemic Functional Grammar

Since the content systems are stratified into semantics and lexicogrammar, we are in a stronger position to construe knowledge into meaning (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999:429). Halliday & Matthiessen (1999:426, 417) prefer to interpret “conceptual organization” as meaning that is created by various semiotic systems, among which language is the primary one.

Systemic Functional Grammar

SFG is not restricted to the ideational metafunction. In the systemic-functional approach, the metafunctinal scope involves all three metafunctions: semantics means ideational, interpersonal and textual semantics.

Since language is seen as functioning in context, the basic unit of semantic is the text (Halliday & Hasan, 1976).

Theme-Rheme

Halliday (2000) gives a ‘headache’ example of how experience is construed in grammar. In English, when people are feeling down, they may say “I have a headache”. According to Halliday, the grammar construes a kind of thing, called an ache and uses a part of the body to classify this thing, setting up a taxonomy of aches including stomachache, backache and so on.

Theme-Rheme

The grammar then establishes a configuration of possession between the ache and some conscious thing (in this case the speaker I). The speaker becomes the owner of one specimen of that complex class of things. However, this is not a prototypical form of possession; the possessor does not want the thing possessed but cannot get rid of it.

Theme-Rheme

The grammar can easily construct the clause my head aches or my head’s aching but does not favour them. In this kind of clause, the aching is a process, a state of being, rather than a thing, and the entity involved in that state of being is my head rather than me. However, it is not the prototypical way to construe experience in English.

Theme-Rheme

As we know in English, there is a particular meaning associated with being the first element in the clause. What is put first by the speaker is the theme of the coming message. The “Theme + Rheme” structure is regarded as a prominent feature of English, appearing not only in the clause but also as a “fractal” pattern in both smaller and larger structures – inside word groups, both nominal and verbal and extend over a nexus of clauses (Halliday, 2000:223).

Theme-Rheme

Thus, in my head aches, my head is Theme and is something is the speaker wants to elaborate on. Yet, the speaker is the one that is suffering, so the theme of the clause should more appropriately be ‘me’. The grammar meets this requirement by making ‘me’ the subject. The ‘ache’ becomes a thing separated from myself, something that I possess, with my head identified as its location: I have an ache in my head.

Theme-Rheme

If my head is used as a classifier, the ache and its location become a single complex thing: I have a headache.

I have an ache in my head. I have a headache.

Theme-Rheme

This pattern has generally become the prototypical form for construing bodily qualities and states. People tend to say she has long hair, he has a sore throat, rather than her hair is long, his throat is sore. putting the person rather than the body part into the thematic role.

Theme-Rheme

Similar phenomenon can be found in Chinese:

我头疼。（我的头疼。）他胃疼。（我的胃疼。）她头发长，耳朵短，鼻梁歪，眼睛凸，难看死了。

Theme-Rheme

Thus, we can find that Chinese prefers to use ‘I’ as Theme, construing I as Sufferer. The ways of construing experience in the grammar is crucially related to perspective. When people say my head aches or my head is aching, the clause makes aching an external rather than an internal phenomenon. “This is rather less self-centered; it is no longer a fact about me, and my inner self, but an external fact about my head” (Halliday, 2000:225).

Transitivity

The grammar can also makes a clear distinction between the two fundamental modes of human experience: what we experience as taking place in the world outside of ourselves and what we experience as processes of our own consciousness (mental process). In English, the mental processes differ from material process in various respects.

Transitivity

I like the bike.The bike pleases me. I am fixing the bike now. Halliday (2000:226-227) characterized them as follows: (1)mental processes have a less exact present time(2) mental processes presume a conscious being taking part

(3) mental processes do not fall within the scope of doing

Transitivity

(4) mental processes can project (they can construe any meaning as taking place in someone’s consciousness)

(5) mental processes are bi-directional. (Processes of consciousness can be construed with the conscious participant, the Sensor, either as object or as active Subject).

TransitivityTransitivity

The scene frightens me.

Phenomenon Mental process Sensor

TransitivityTransitivity

I fear the scene.

Sensor Mental process phenomenon

Transitivity

Historically, in earlier English, the grammatical Subject in affecting processes of the external kind (those experienced as happening out there) had been prototypically been the active participant, whether human or not. A missile is the natural Subject in the following clause:

A missile pierced the doctor’s chest.

Transitivity

It remained Subject even if the narrative required the thing acted upon to function as Theme: The doctor’s chest a missile pierced. The Actor remained as Subject even when displaced from initial position in the clause.

Later, the bond between Subject and Actor was replaced by the modern pattern of Subject as Theme: The doctor’s chest was pierced by a missile.

Transitivity

This change invokes the frequent use of passive verbs. Subsequently, relative prominence is given to the structure of the message – which part is the theme and which part is the new information.

TransitivityHalliday (2000:231) regards lexicogrammar as not arbitrary in its construction of meaning. Human’s relationship to his environment is complex and many faceted, and there are indefinitely many ways of construing experience in wording. One thing we should note is that “the grammar is unable to reduce some aspect of experience to a single construction and so introduces two distinctive perspectives, two construals which are mutually contradictory and yet depend on each other to provide a theory of daily life.”

Transitivity

Some domain of experience is being construed both as two phenomena and as two points of view on the one phenomenon. Transitivity and ergativity are two perspectives on the one same phenomenon. In transitivity, one participant acts and the action may extend to another participant, while in ergativity, one participant permits the process to eventuate and the event may be brought about by another participant.

Transitivity

For example,

What is she sewing?

She’s sewing her old jacket.

In this example, she is the doer and the jacket is the goal.

Transitivity

The machine snapped it.Yes? Who made the machine snap it?I did, of course.What made you make the machine snap it?My own impatience, I suppose. (Halliday, 2000:232)

In this example, there is a Medium (the entity through which is actualized) and an Agent (as an external cause).

Grammatical Metaphor and Nominalization

Grammatical metaphor is not simply an alternative realization of the same meaning, but a distinct construing of experience. Grammatical Metaphor is said to be predominantly a ‘nominalizing’ tendency (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999:429). Nominalization makes a participant more abstract.


For example,The engine failed. (the engine is set up as a thing)Engine failure (it seems as if it were deconstructed into a mere characteristic of some other thing, a way of classifying failure into its various contrasting kinds, such as power failure, heart failure, crop failure. Thus, nominalization turns all phenomena into the most classifiable form. The categories of experience become blurred, detached from ordinary experience. As a result of nominalization, an element takes a new semantic feature.


Failure is both process and thing: It is process construed as a thing. To be exact, it is a phenomenon construed as a process and reconstrued as a thing. Because it has been nominalized, and the prototypical meaning of a noun is a thing, it also has a semantic status as something that participates in processes.


As mentioned previously, SFG gives particular attention to the way meaning relates to context, focusing on the relationship between differences in contextual settings of field, tenor and mode and on registerial variation in meaning. As we also note, lexicogrammar is not arbitrary in its construction of meaning. Human’s relationship to his environment is complex and many faceted, and there are indefinitely many ways of construing experience in wording.


Nominalization is an important lexicogrammatical resource and plays an indispensable role in helping construing experience. However, the use of nominalization is subject to registerial variation.

The frequent use of nominalization lies in the fact that when representing experience and phenomenon. The speaker tends to view it as an object.


Nominalization is a key feature of scientific English and other formal registers, because these registers need to involve many abstract concepts.In daily life, we may say “In the Midwest, the farmers grew more grain this year than they did last year.” Yet, an economist, from the viewpoint of the increase or decrease of crop output, may say “In the Midwest, this year’s increase in grain output was greater than last year’s.”


Biber et al (1999) gives a list of the distribution of nominal elements in news reports, academic texts, novels and conversations.

News reports （ 80 ％） , academic texts（ 75 ％） , novels （ 70 ％） and conversations （ 55 ％）

Grammatical Metaphor and Grammatical Metaphor and NominalizationNominalization


They fail to show the relation of nominalizations to the formality of registers, because their nominal elements include pronouns and other nominal groups.In order to show the way nominalizations help to construe experience in different registers, we choose three text types: simplified readings, scientific texts and legal texts (50 pages each) and analyze the distribution of nominalizations in these texts.


Clause is taken to be a basic unit for our analysis. Clauses analyzed include embedded clause, minor clause, reported clause, non-finite clause, elliptical clause.

The statistical result is as follows:



The table shows that there is a large number of nominalizations in legal texts, and that there fewer nominalizations in simplified readings.



Simplified readings are written for young children or English beginners, aiming to provide them with simple English. Further, the texts chosen are the simplified versions of novels, in which there are lots of descriptions of actions and states. They share the features of ordinary colloquial language, e.g.


His fingers were as cold as ice; his lips burned like fire, but Virginia went with him as he led here across the darkening room. At the end of the room, he stopped, and said some words that she could not understand. She saw the wall slowly opening up like a mist, and there was a great black cave mouth in front of her. A bitter cold wind pulled at them, and in a moment the wall had closed behind them, and the Treasure room was empty. (The Canterville Ghost, p.34)


In scientific texts, actions are often described as things, and processes as phenomenon. Further, the conscious actors are usually not mentioned. Thus, there are lots of nominalizations that represent abstract concepts.

In the following examples, we can nominalizations like annealing, recovery, recrystallisation, reduction, strength, ductility, malleability, deformation.


Annealing at low temperatures has little effect as it only promotes recovery of the crystal lattice on the atomic scale and does not result in recrystallisation. In fact, during recovery there may even be a slight reduction in the impact strength. This is usually regarded as the opposite of ductility and malleability. It is the property of a material that shows little or no plastic deformation before fracture when a force is applied.


Legal texts have the densest distribution of nominalizations, because legal texts are required to be formal and experience has to be construed formally. Furthermore, the rigidity of texts and the accuracy of concepts and definitions contribute to the higher density of nominalizations in legal texts, e.g.


The committee is agreed that subordinated term debt instruments have significant deficiencies as constituents of capital in view of their fixed maturity and inability to absorb losses except in liquidation. These deficiencies justify an additional restriction on the amount of such debt capital which eligible for inclusion within the capital base.

Thank you!

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Grammar and the Construal of Experience Introduction A language is a system for creating meaning; and its meaning potential has evolved around three