"The Meaning Potential Of A Lexeme Is Construed"

Fontaine (2017: 14-5): 

Lexis can be seen, rather than most delicate grammar, as most local context. Perhaps in some respects this is saying the same thing. As Halliday (1991:274) states, “the context for the meaning potential – for language as a system – is the context of culture. How do you construe this potential, and how do you use it when you’ve got it? You build it up, and you act it out, in the form of text”. The meaning potential of a lexeme is construed, it is built up by its use and more specifically by its use in context. The meaning of a lexical item comes from its local context (lexeme), its collocations and the constructions or patterns (lexico-grammar) in which it appears.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in no respects is this saying the same thing. 'Lexis as most delicate grammar' means that lexical items are the synthetic realisations of the most delicate lexicogrammatical systems. Fontaine's 'lexis as most local context' is her misunderstanding of the instantiation relation between potential and instance.

[2] To be clear, Halliday (1991: 274) is concerned with the construal of higher level context by lower level language in the instantiation of language during logogenesis.

	potential		instance
context	culture	instantiated as	situation
	construed by		construed by
language	system	instantiated as	text

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, lexical item as potential (Fontaine's "lexeme") and lexical item as instance are not two different things; they are the same thing seen from different points of view. That is, as potential or instance, a lexical item is the synthetic realisation of the most delicate lexicogrammatical features, just as the phoneme /k/, as potential or instance, is the synthetic realisation of the features [voiceless, velar, stop].

Fontaine's description of the lexical item as potential ("the meaning potential of a lexeme") misunderstands the preceding Halliday quote, and misapplies it to lexis, confusing stratification ("construed") with instantiation ("use"):

potential		instance
lexeme
	construed by
		lexical item

It can be seen that this misunderstanding locates the lexeme and lexical item on different strata.

Fontaine's description of the lexical item, as instance, attributes the meaning it realises to

• its local context (lexeme),
• its collocations, and
• the constructions or patterns (lexico-grammar) in which it appears.

That is, the meaning of lexical item, as instance, is said to derive from 

• its potential (inexplicably termed its 'local context'),
• its syntagmatic relations, and
• the grammatical function of the word as rank scale unit.

By introducing all these misunderstandings in the final section termed 'Concluding remarks', Fontaine gives the false impression that these bare assertions have been supported by reasoned argumentation in the body of the paper.