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Figure 9 - from "Language as Evolving: Introductory Notes to Some Aspects of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics"

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arrow_backSo EICUPTETE SS LUNI UM BG ©, LCUNILENE SS CNET UM GIL LUNI RUM GE UNM LOUTH ig UUUME MANGUM Se. Halliday claims that ‘the ontogenesis of language is at the same time the ontogenesis of learning’ (Halliday 1993:93). Language learning is not a matter of ‘learning sounds and words’ nor ‘learning how to name and refer (Halliday, 1995: 7), but rather a process of ‘learning how to mean’. Whatever socio-cultural environmen children are brought up in, when learning to speak, children are engaged into a three-phase socio-semioti: process. This starts from birth onwards. This leads me to talk about the second major theme related to languag ontogenesis development and the three facets that inhere to it: learning language, learning through language anc learning about language. 6.2.1 Learning Language: Learning language is on-going social semiotic interactive process of construal and construing and in which th child, from birth onwards is actively involved. The SFL theory of Halliday refuses to see the child as an isolatec individual and language as a ready made product to be picked up, ‘a commodity’, to quote Halliday (1979: 8 are roughly matched in the progression of the contexts in which meanings are exchanged... first the home, the neighbourhood, then the primary school, then the secondary school. And this is, of course not a coincidence, because these contexts are the social institutions that have evolved to exploit the development sequence in the child potential to mean. To sum up, one can track the ontogenesis development of language as progressing from a ‘not referring’ proto language to a ‘referential’ language, then almost at once, from ‘proper’ to ‘common’ reference that is from ‘individual’ reference to ‘class’ reference, then from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’ reference, and finally from ‘congruent’ to ‘metaphorical’ reference, i.e., from ‘actual’ to ‘virtual’ reference (Halliday, 2010). Thess ontogenesis developmental phases of language

So EICUPTETE SS LUNI UM BG ©, LCUNILENE SS CNET UM GIL LUNI RUM GE UNM LOUTH ig UUUME MANGUM Se. Halliday claims that ‘the ontogenesis of language is at the same time the ontogenesis of learning’ (Halliday 1993:93). Language learning is not a matter of ‘learning sounds and words’ nor ‘learning how to name and refer (Halliday, 1995: 7), but rather a process of ‘learning how to mean’. Whatever socio-cultural environmen children are brought up in, when learning to speak, children are engaged into a three-phase socio-semioti: process. This starts from birth onwards. This leads me to talk about the second major theme related to languag ontogenesis development and the three facets that inhere to it: learning language, learning through language anc learning about language. 6.2.1 Learning Language: Learning language is on-going social semiotic interactive process of construal and construing and in which th child, from birth onwards is actively involved. The SFL theory of Halliday refuses to see the child as an isolatec individual and language as a ready made product to be picked up, ‘a commodity’, to quote Halliday (1979: 8 are roughly matched in the progression of the contexts in which meanings are exchanged... first the home, the neighbourhood, then the primary school, then the secondary school. And this is, of course not a coincidence, because these contexts are the social institutions that have evolved to exploit the development sequence in the child potential to mean. To sum up, one can track the ontogenesis development of language as progressing from a ‘not referring’ proto language to a ‘referential’ language, then almost at once, from ‘proper’ to ‘common’ reference that is from ‘individual’ reference to ‘class’ reference, then from ‘concrete’ to ‘abstract’ reference, and finally from ‘congruent’ to ‘metaphorical’ reference, i.e., from ‘actual’ to ‘virtual’ reference (Halliday, 2010). Thess ontogenesis developmental phases of language

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eT eee Oe eee NE SO EE aE A clause in any language is organised in a way that allows it to fit in with and contribute to the flow of discourse; i.e., fulfils its metafunction of message. In English this is achieved by assigning to one part of it the status of ‘theme’. This combines with another part to form the message of the clause. ‘Theme’ is what constitutes the starting point/ block of the message, that which appears first in the clause. ‘It is that which locates and orients the clause within its context’ (Ibid: 89). By stating one part of the message in initial position the addresser/speaker indicates to the addressee/ hearer that this is the prominent part of it and on which the latter has to rely and process the message. The second part of the clause, what is to come after the ‘Theme’ is referred to, according to the Prague School tradition, ‘Rheme’. The clause, therefore, consists of a ‘Theme’; what is eminent, in its initial position ... that what is thematic prominent, and a ‘Rheme’ that what comes next and is thematic non-prominent. To illustrate this point the following instance will do:
We are now left with the third participant: ‘gift’. This is the participant that is affected by the action of offering. We call this ‘Goal’. So, a detailed semantic description of ‘they offered their kid a gift? would be as follow: as A lia I Obviously, ‘they’ and ‘football’ are the participants. ‘Played’ is the process. If we can identify ‘They’ as being the actor, we are not so sure about the second participant, ‘football’ as it does not in one of the cases that we have dealt with. ‘Football’ is here neither a ‘Recipient’ nor a ‘Goal’. So, what is then? ‘Football’ in this situation is unaffected by the action of playing. Participants like this are referred to as ‘Scope’. ene aaa naa la cee In the remainder of this heading, I will concentrate on describing these processes and their associated configurations of participant roles. A. Material Processes: These are processes that describe actions that are concrete and tangible. They are all related to ‘doing’. They are all concerned with our experience of the material world. To identify a Material Process, one needs to ask the question: What did x do? As in the previous example: ‘They offered their kid a nice gift’, to identify the Material Process type, one asks the question: What did they do? ... They offered their kid a gift. Therefore, material processes are about actions and theses require necessarily an ‘actor’ or a ‘participant’. I said earlier that a clause might contain more than one participant as in: ‘They offered their kid a gift’. ‘They’, ‘kid’ and ‘gift’ are all participants. However, only one is doing the action and can be referred to as the ‘actor’: ‘they’. So how about the two remaining participants? For sure, they cannot be called actors too. ‘ their kid’ is, in this instance, the receiver of the ‘gift’. Participants of this kind are called ‘ recipients’. In order to identify the recipient, we need to ask the question: what did x do to y?.
Table 3
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We are now left with two kinds of participants of material processes : ‘attribute’ and ‘Client’. The former, as its name suggests, has to do with a quality ascribed or attributed to an entity, the latter refers to the beneficiary of the action. For whom/which the action occurs. Let’s illustrate this with an example, the following will do: They naginted the ronnm hblye for their kid
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D. Existential processes: Existential Process clauses are those referring to existence containing only one Participant. They are usually used with ‘be’ and introduced with an empty ‘there’. They never occur in the progressive form.
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Language as Evolving: Introductory Notes to Some Aspects of Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to give a brief introduction of Systemic Functional Linguistics to people new to this theory of linguistic description by shedding light on some of its aspects, chief among these the insights that this theory gives on language learning and its contribution to the field of education in general and pedagogy in particular. Written in an accessible style, this paper tries, to the utmost, to simplify when possible, the theory by avoiding the use of all the metalanguage and technical jargons that theorists display in their writings. It thus requires no prior knowledge or readings, as it uses no indexical references to other theories of linguistic descriptions or other sources but the ones that they inform this paper. 1. Introduction One alternative way of dealing with language description would be from a functionalist perspective. The concern herein is on how language is organised to achieve the social functions it is meant to serve (Widdowson, 1996). The focus is thus on language as a social phenomenon. MAK Halliday talks about 'language as social semiotics', i.e. as a system of set signs (meanings) socially motivated that are used to express our beliefs, cultures and communion needs. Language, in systemic functional perspective, is regarded as a semiotic tool/resource that interacts with the eco-social environment for making and exchanging meaning. Halliday's systemic functional description is meant to answer the question of how language works. Halliday views language as a meaning –making resource i.e., language as 'meaning-potential'. To learn a language is to learn how to mean (Halliday, 1975). Indeed, we are creatures who mean. Linguistics is then seen as the study of meaning in society. But what is meant, first, by the expression: systemic functional description of language? Functional is used in opposition to formal so far as it considers language as 'a practical means of expressing meaning rather than as an abstract set of relations' (Flowerdew, 2013:11). Grammar, in Systemic Functional Linguistics (henceforth SFL), and lexis are two poles of the same continuum that combine together so that to construe meaning. This combination is referred to as ' lexicogrammar'. In other words, SFL is concerned with how language is used. This functionality, according to Halliday (1985) lies on 'three distinct aspects of its interpretation of: text, system and structure' (ibid: xiii). Language has evolved through time with the evolution of the human species so that to cope with its needs. It is, hence, organized as such. What is of interest is the way language has been fashioned to meet our social needs. The Systemic Functional model of linguistic description should, hence, reflect the essential social nature of language. Its design has to represent the social purposes/ functions language has evolved to fulfil. To serve these functions language is organised around two kinds of meanings: the ideational and the interpersonal. A third metafunctional component, the textual, is said to bestow relevance on the first two. All elements of language are then explained by reference to these functions. I will return to this issue later. This tripartite structure, as Widdowson (2004:26) refers to, and around which the model is built, accounts for how language is intrinsically fashioned so that to mean. Systemic contrasts with systematic and refers to the range of multiple options that the language producer has at his disposal so that to realise meanings. This range of choices is set paradigmatically and concerns the elements that can be substituted for each other in a particular context. A systemic grammar differs from other functional grammars (and from all formal grammars) in that it is paradigmatic: a system is a paradigmatic set of alternative features, of which one must be chosen if the entry condition is satisfied. ((Emphasis in the original) (Halliday, 2003 [1992]: 209) Therefore, choice-from within the semantic system networks-is the primary organizing element of the linguistic resources of the language system. This 'system network formalizes the idea that language is a potential from which choices can be made in particular environments (Taverniers, 2002:30) (Emphasis in the original). A

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