Jun 23
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhlexico-grammar
Q1. WHAT ARE THE EXPERIENTIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FACT THAT THE COMPLEMENT OF A PREPOSITION (MINOR PREDICATOR) CAN OFTEN BE RAISED TO SUBJECT?
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 296-7):
… the Complement of a preposition can often emerge to function as Subject … This pattern suggests that Complements of prepositions, despite being embedded in an element that has a circumstantial function, are still felt to be participating, even if at a distance, in the process expressed by the clause.
Q2. HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH THESE TWO TYPES OF PARTICIPATION?
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 261):
We can make a contrast, then, between direct and indirect participants, using ‘indirect participant’ to refer to the status of a nominal group that is inside a prepositional phrase …
Q3. HOW DO WE DISTINGUISH INDIRECT PARTICIPANTS FROM CIRCUMSTANCES?
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 278):
Wherever there is systematic alternation between a prepositional phrase and a nominal group, as in all the instances in Participant functions realised by prepositional phrases, the element in question is interpreted as a participant.
Q4. WHAT IS THE FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DIRECT AND INDIRECT PARTICIPANTS?
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 295-6):
… the choice of ‘plus or minus preposition’ with Agent, Beneficiary and Range … serves a textual function. … The principle is as follows. If a participant other than the Medium is in a place of prominence in the message, it tends to take a preposition (ie to be construed as ‘indirect’ participant); otherwise it does not. Prominence in the message means functioning either (i) as marked Theme (ie Theme but not Subject) or (ii) as ‘late news’ — that is, occurring after some other participant, or circumstance, that already follows the Process. In other words, prominence comes from occurring either earlier or later than expected in the clause; and it is this that is being reinforced by the presence of the preposition. The preposition has become a signal of special status in the message.
Jun 22
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhgeneral observations
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 117):
Semantics has nothing to do with truth; it is concerned with consensus about validity, and consensus is negotiated in dialogue.
Jun 22
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhlexico-grammar
(1) WHAT DOES THE TEXTBOOK SAY?
Complement
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 122-3):
A Complement is an element within the Residue that has the potential of being Subject but is not; in other words, it is an element that has the potential for being given the interpersonally elevated status of modal responsibility — something that can be the nub of the argument.
Adjunct
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 123):
An Adjunct is an element that has not got the potential of being Subject; that is, it cannot be elevated to the interpersonal status of modal responsibility.
(2) EXAMPLES
(a) Consider the following clause:
Maureen gave David the book.
Q1. Can ‘David’ be raised to Subject?
A. Yes, as follows: David was given the book by Maureen.
Conclusion: ‘David’ is Complement.
Q2. Can ‘the book’ be raised to Subject?
A. Yes, as follows: The book was given to David by Maureen.
Conclusion: ‘the book’ is Complement.
(b) Consider the following clause:
Maureen gave the book to David.
Q1. Can ‘to David’ be raised to Subject?
A. No. *To David was given the book by Maureen.
Conclusion: ‘to David’ is Adjunct.
(c) Consider the following clause:
The book was given to David by Maureen.
Q1. Can ‘to David’ be raised to Subject?
A. No. *To David was given the book by Maureen.
Conclusion: ‘to David’ is Adjunct.
Q2. Can ‘by Maureen’ be raised to Subject?
A. No. *By Maureen gave the book to David.
Conclusion: ‘by Maureen’ is Adjunct.
Jun 17
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhgeneral observations
Affiliation is based on extension (association).
Individuation is based on elaboration (and ascription).
Jun 04
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhinstantiation
Even leaving aside ascription as the organising principle of the cline of instantiation, the relation between a reading and a text is not the same as the relation between a text and system.
A ‘reading’ is metaphorical for Senser sensing Phenomenon.
So, unpacked, a ‘reading’ includes a reader, the reading process and the text that is being read.
So, variant ‘readings’ of one text include variant readers and/or variant reading processes.
The cline of instantiation, on the other hand, is merely a relation between (variant) texts and the system of which each is an instance. It does not include readers or the reading process.
Variation in readers and the reading process are distinct dimensions from the cline of instantiation, and, since they involve actual texts, these dimensions of variation intersect the cline of instantiation at the instance pole.
May 29
eldoneducation and academia, epistemology, systems and logical typing context, knowledge, system
excerpts from the introduction to
System and Structure: Essays in Communication and Exchange.
Second edition
ANTHONY WILDEN 1972 & 1980
INTRODUCTION • XXIX
The reader will already have noted that, if there is one constantly recurring question for a critical and ecosystemic viewpoint, it is the real and material question of context. Obviously, the academic discourse, as well as the dissenting academic discourse, has signification only in terms of the real context in which it occurs. As has been pointed out, the systemic characteristics of this context, with its recognized and unrecognized codings of goals, are ultimately dependent on particular types of socioeconomic organization in history.
One hypothesis of these essays is that the assumption or goal of ‘pure’ knowledge is an outworn rationalization. ALL KNOWLEDGE is INSTRUMENTAL. In the terms of modem communications theory, information (coded variety) is everywhere, but knowledge can occur only within the ecosystemic context of a goalseeking adaptive system peopled by goalseeking [individuals] required to ask how the knowledge has been coded and filtered; and what it is being used for, and for whom.
Thus one of the contexts of knowledge is the temporal context: past, present, and future. But the ideology of pure or objective knowledge to which the academic is expected to owe allegiance – besides protecting teachers and researchers from questions about the actual use value of their work – cannot deal adequately with time and place. It is an absolutist, non-contextual, non-temporal morality akin to that of a fundamentalist religion.
This is a fundamentalism that depends first on the misconstruction of closure and context; second on the correlative lack of understanding that contexts have levels; and third on its inability to deal with the real questions of logical typing in biological and social systems.
For example, the necessary abstraction of a system from its context in order that it may be studied – which should of course be accompanied by an overt attempt to avoid decontextualization by understanding the potentially paradoxical effects of such an abstraction – is quite commonly used, implicitly, to justify the pretended and actual abstraction or isolation of researchers from THEIR many contexts: from their socioeconomic status in a heterarchy of academic privilege, for example; from their actual functions in a system of liberal indoctrination; and from their spoken and unspoken commitments to ideological and political views – all of which the student may expect to find in one transformation or another in their work and in their teaching.
[…] We used to be warned by people who called themselves the ‘Old Left’ in the 1960s not to ‘politicize’ the university – a warning that made little sense to those of us newly arrived in the academic propaganda machine.
As has been pointed out in part, context, whether in theory or praxis, is a question of punctuation or closure – both AT a given level of relationship and, more importantly, BETWEEN levels of relationship.
Moreover, besides its historically peculiar attempts at closure from its real context and indeed from and between many of its own parts, the scientific discourse appears to have been composed by the inhabitants of Flatland (Abbott, 1884). We know that the discourse displays a dogged incapacity to deal adequately with system-environment relations (both practical and theoretical), even when they are considered on a single plane. But this incapacity becomes almost insignificant when understood within the context of the extraordinary ingenuity with which the scientific discourse persistently fails to recognize the realities of LEVELS OF RELATION and of RELATIONS BETWEEN LEVELS in open systems, in their environments, and, above all, between system and environment.
More
May 27
eldonmode and modalities affordances, inter-modal tension
[my first essay-post, a model post, a filibuster, a gem]
Materiality is the main factor relating to the differences in affordances between screen and page.
Reading online is becoming quite common in academia and elsewhere, and is actually required for many research projects, especially so for distance students but also for students attending university alike . Dissertations submitted for marking at many universities are done electronically and sent to markers in PDF form. Amazon has been offering books in Kindle format for some time. Yet paper-based books continue to be published and sold.
‘Materiality’ here pertains to the discrete object which is the tactile and separate artefact having printed text and diagrams on the surface of separate pages. It is distinct from the published or written or graphic work which can be saved in a file in a computer and edited in some form. Although laptops and computer hardware in general are artefacts and material objects that can be transported, their affordances lie in the amount or quantity of files and texts which can be stored on the one hard drive. At the time of writing these are still somewhat heavy and unwieldy so that they are difficult to read in bed or put in one’s pocket for example. However, even with advances in technology that allow small lightweight personal readers such as Kindle and the iPad to be manufactured and thus easily transported, there are still differences in the affordances of each modality that lend the book and paper magazine their continuing allure.
Apple released what they called their iSlate, a small transportable mobile phone enhanced reader – and one might also guess (or hope) that it will become further enhanced with the capabilities that Han earlier introduced (2006) in a video-recorded lecture, that is to say, touch screen interfacing (see netdynam post to view this TED creation, and several others more recent in related comments to the post/video ).
However, this writer believes that there will still be a market for the traditional, materially-based paper-dependent, leafy object called book. That is because people like me actually prefer to use books over reading or looking at the same things on a screen, and because of a concurrent belief that the human unit is in itself a material object, bounded by skin, phenotype, and yea, genotype which prevents us from evolving into a form which makes the reading of copy on a screen more pleasurable and as convenient as flipping the pages of a book. I had a recent discussion with media know-all Frank Rapport on the reasons for my preferences for hard copy over the word on the screen, and how it is that I plump for materiality. This in turn motivated a clarification of the nature of such preferences, and a devising of a taxonomy of the differences in affordances that the hard copy offers in comparison to a screen version of the same copy. Of course, each modality has its own affordances, and there is precious little that can be argued for or against either in terms of objective differences. But, as a starting point, I have proposed a set of categories for discussing these differences.
In this sense, then, the “Materiality” of the printed page may be said to afford ease of the following four features:
-Transportability
-Scannability
-Inscriptability
-Eye-easability
I now address each of these affordances in turn and expand on the reasons for my preference of the book over the screen.
–Transportability.
Nothing beats the ease of slipping a book into one’s pocket or bag. I generally go about with a notebook and pencil in order to jot things down when travelling. These items weigh much less than a laptop, and since I can afford only one laptop, there will not be (at the present time at least) a dedicated miniature one purchased especially for fitting into a handbag or shoulder-bag for many people, including myself. Already the bag is chock-a-block with many objects vying to be misplaced, and there are those who are quick to point out that at least a mobile phone is not amongst my own loseable items in my bag. Of course, the loss of a book is sad, but generally they are easily replace-able. It is not so easy to replace the laptop – or the enhanced mobile phone either for that matter – and certainly the more one transports things hither and yon, the higher the possibility for loss. Weight and wieldy-ness issues also mean that books win hands down when one wants to adopt a lying down position, and thus there are plenty of books stacked up bedside, but no laptop.
–Scannability
This affordance pertains to the ease with which one can scan through a whole book, or the leaves thereof. All of the pages of the whole book are there in one place and the position of various sections may be remembered or marked for ease of retrieval. One is able to flip through the book and scan for various elements, such as chapter headings, diagrams, plates, and so on. One is also quickly able to see a page at a time in toto, and this affordance is one of the most useful pertaining to the materiality of books – as distinct from the need to scroll, by whatever means, to take in all the words on a page, or to having a very large computer screen so that all a page can be seen with the letters big enough to read comfortably. While the new hand-held readers are made in a portrait-style format so that the whole page can be easily accommodated, the letters are still nevertheless rather small. This is a feature also related to the matter of ‘eye-easability’ addressed further below. Jumping from one page to another is also possible on the screen, but this is not the same as being able to flip through the book and recognise the page number, or know how far along or back the searched-for feature appears in the book itself. Search facilities notwithstanding, a book can be searched by visual means which is sometimes more profitable – and more conveniently efficient – than using a computational engine.
–Inscriptability
By ‘inscriptability’ I refer to the ability one has to write directly into the leaves of a book. With PDF files, one is able to insert comments on the fly or make editing comments below the text on the screen, but these need to be ‘inserted’ by means of directions to the software and typing in the comments. The ease of finding comments is also differently arranged. Once inscribed, a visual search can be performed on the book with ease. This is not the same with a computerised file, due to the affordances related to scannability mentioned above. Paper tags are also possible with the leaves of a book, and this overlapping of text, and the affordance of being able to visually see the tags without even opening the book is one of its conveniences.
–Eye-easability
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly is eye-easability. Everyone knows that editing can be done much more efficiently with hard copy. Typos and other mistakes one did not notice on the screen become glaringly obvious on the printed page. This is likely to do with dpi, or pixels per square (inch/centimetre). In this regard, the printed page again wins out, and this at least can be measured and compared – the screen’s resolution is no match for that of the page, and thus, reading is easier and the eye does not become as tired as quickly when reading a book or printed matter. When Apple produces a back-lit reading tablet that not only is lightweight, can be read-writable and have as a high a resolution as a printed page, then my preferences may change and books relegated to museums along the way.
May 25
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhinstantiation
Instantiation is a relation between the system and an instance.
As such, it is not a relation between one instance and another.
The system is “re-instantiated” with every text.
Systemic features “co-instantiated” in a text are related syntagmatically.
May 20
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhrealisation
By definition, a semiotic system has at least two levels of symbolic abstraction.
By definition, a symbol is something that means something other than itself.
Here is what I take to be the logical error.
The claim is that because content is paradigmatic and expression is syntagmatic,
there is only one stratum (& by this logic there is only one axis).
This is like saying
all my squares are blue and all my triangles are red,
therefore there is only one shape (and only one colour).
If content conflates with paradigm and expression conflates with syntagm, then:
content/paradigm is realised by expression/syntagm.
This conflates
content is realised by expression
and
paradigm is realised by syntagm.
There are still 2 strata and 2 axes in this conflation.
May 07
ChRIS CLÉiRIGhlexico-grammar
DATA
The guitar lends itself well to playing pentatonic scales.
ANALYSIS
(1) What does the text book say? Take a trinocular perspective.
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 31):
We cannot expect to understand the grammar just by looking at it from
its own level; we also look into it ‘from above’ and ‘from below’,
taking a trinocular perspective. But since the view from these
different angles is often conflicting, the description will inevitably
be a form of compromise.
SO
(2) THE VIEW ‘FROM ABOVE’: MEANING
QUESTION: What type of clause is it in terms of the experiential
meaning being realised?
ANSWER: In terms of the meaning it is realising, the clause is an
‘attributive relational’.
REASON: An entity (guitar) has some class attributed to it (the class
of things good for playing pentatonic scales)
EVIDENCE:
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 219):
In the ‘attributive’ mode, an entity has some class ascribed or
attributed to it.
(3) THE VIEW ‘FROM ROUND ABOUT’: WORDING (clause rank)
QUESTION: What type of clause is it in terms of lexicogrammatical
paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations?
ANSWER: In terms of the wording realising the meaning, the clause is ‘material’.
REASON: The clause structure includes a Recipient (‘playing pentatonic
scales’) of the lending process, and the Recipient is a participant
restricted to ‘material’ clauses.
EVIDENCE:
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 191):
Recipients occur only in ‘transitive transformative’ clauses of the
‘extending’ type; and within that category, they occur with those
clauses that denote a transfer of the possession of goods. …
(4) THE VIEW ‘FROM BELOW’: WORDING (group/phrase rank)
QUESTION: What type of clause is it in terms of how it is realised at
the rank below?
ANSWER: ‘Material’ is not excluded by the probe for unmarked present
tense of the verbal group.
REASON: The unmarked ‘present in present’ tense is used for specific
doings and happenings, whereas the marked ‘simple present’ tense is
used for generalised or habitual doings, such as construed by this
clause.
EVIDENCE:
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 179-80):
The unmarked tense selection is the present–in–present (eg is doing)
rather than the simple present (eg does) … The present–in–present
serves to narrow down the present from the extended now of habits and
‘general truths’ that is characteristic of the simple present with
‘material’ clauses …
(5) CONCLUSION
The clause is a ‘material’ realisation of an ‘attributive’ relation,
and so an instance of grammatical metaphor. The structural analysis
is as follows:
The guitar: Actor
lends: Process: material
itself: Goal
well: Manner: quality
to [[playing pentatonic scales]]: Recipient
(6) FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
FIRST OBSERVATION: the role of Actor is filled by an inanimate
(guitar) rather than animate entity
COMMENT: This is at odds with the notion of Actor as the source of
energy for a material process.
EVIDENCE:
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 179):
… ‘material’ clauses are clauses of doing–&–happening: a ‘material’
clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events as taking
place through some input of energy. … the source of the energy
bringing about the change is typically a participant — the Actor …
The Actor is the one who does the deed — that is, the one that brings
about the change.
SECOND OBSERVATION: the role of Recipient is filled by a ‘macrothing’
(an Act) rather than a ‘simple thing’, conscious or non-conscious.
COMMENT: This is at odds with the notion of Recipient as the one to
whom goods are given.
EVIDENCE:
Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 191):
The Recipient is the one that goods are given to …
Older Entries Newer Entries
RSS
Recent Comments