Sys-Func/Sysfling Discussion On Context, Stratification & Instantiation

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My critique of the recent Sys-Func/Sysfling discussion on context, stratification and instantiation can be found by clicking here.

What Is “In Between” The Two Faces Of The Sign?

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Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 613-4):

[To transcend the limits of protolanguage] you need a semiotic of a different kind, one that allows for a purely abstract level of representation “in between” the two faces of the sign.  To put this another way, the sign has to be deconstructed so that, instead of content interfacing directly with expression, the relationship is mediated by a systematic organisation of form (a lexicogrammar).  In other words, the semiotic has to become stratified.

That is, what is “in between” the two faces of a sign is a lexicogrammar.

Lexicogrammar And Semantics

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Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 26):

Thus when we move from the lexicogrammar into the semantics, as we are doing here, we are not simply relabelling everything in a new terminological guise.  We shall stress the fundamental relationship between (say) clause complex in the grammar and sequence in the semantics, precisely because the two originate as one: a theory of the logical relationships between processes.

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