"Lexical Meaning Is Seen As Primarily Collocational"

Fontaine (2017: 12):

At this point, I would like to refer to a lexicological approach to lexical analysis as described by Hanks (2013), which has two main advantages in my view. The first is that it makes clear the distinction between the lexeme as meaning potential and the lexical item as instance. The second is that lexical meaning is seen as primarily collocational and in this sense seems very much in line with what Halliday was proposing in his 1961 paper.

In the remainder of this section, Hanks’ (2013) approach to pattern analysis is adapted within SFL, drawing on the discussion of context given above and illustrated with a brief example to demonstrate how this might work.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the distinction between potential and instance applies to all strata, and so, to lexical items and the lexicogrammatical features that they realise. Fontaine is clearly unaware of this.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, collocation is concerned with relations on the syntagmatic axis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 59), whereas the theoretical priority of SFL Theory is the paradigmatic axis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 49).

[3] To be clear, even in his first theory, Scale and Category Grammar which, following Firth, gave equal weight to system and structure, Halliday (2002 [1961]: 60) identified both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions of lexis, lexical sets and collocation, as theoretically necessary:

What are needed are theoretical categories for the formal description of lexis. It seems that two fundamental categories are needed, which we may call collocation and set.

Mistaking Grammatical Rank Units For Lexical Items

Fontaine (2017: 10-1):

The main reason for being be concerned with lexical representation relates to the role of lexical classification in descriptions of lexicogrammatical structure. It is generally agreed that structural units tend to take shape around ‘head’ items. For example, in analysis, we distinguish the nominal group from the verbal group in terms of the class of item functioning as the head element of the unit. The label of the lexical item (e.g. noun or verb) is not so important (cf. Fawcett, 2000). Nevertheless, the classification of lexis and of units on the rank scale runs through grammatical description and indeed many key concepts in SFL theory, such as grammatical metaphor (see Taverniers, 2017). 

The example given in (1) provides an instance of ‘smack dab’ that is infrequent since it is instantiated here as a nominal but whether it is a single lexical item or not is a good question and so is whether or not its class or categorisation is important (see discussion of transcategorisation in Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999). Knowing its etymology helps in part, the OED lists it as an adverb (“smack dab” adv. 2016) but as speakers we know something about its frequency too. It is by far more frequently instantiated as in (2). If categorisation or class of unit are important to the theory, as I think they are, then a more developed description of lexical representation is needed since the nature of the lexical item as instantiated form has serious impact on the theoretical model.

(1) in the course of 2 years I’ve gotten used to living in the equivalent of a medium-sized house right in the smack dab of Central London 

(2) that puts your street address smack dab in the middle of the map

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here again Fontaine confuses the word as lexical item with word as a grammatical unit on the rank scale: nouns and verbs as grammatical classes and constituents of nominal and verbal groups.

[2] As previously explained, the notion of lexical representation in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with SFL Theory and, as Edelman (1989: 228) argues, inconsistent with 'the known facts of human biology and brain science'.

[3] To be clear, this is a use of smack dab by someone who mistakenly thinks it means 'middle' instead of 'precisely'.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, such questions are answered by taking a paradigmatic perspective. In this example, smack dab is agnate with middle, which would make it a lexical item — though one that is unlikely to be used by native speakers of English.

[5] To be clear, this is the grammatical class of smack dab, not its etymology.

"Some Issues That Need To Be Resolved"

Fontaine (2017: 10):

There are some issues that need to be resolved if we want to claim as Hasan does that realisation mediates between networks and structures (Hasan, 1996:74) since as concerns lexis, this suggests that a single lexical item is “the expression of a set of choices made in the system network” (Halliday, 1972/2013:8). The close connection of delicacy and paradigmatic arrangement can only take us so far; e.g. if lexical meaning is in part at least in its collocational associations or frames, it is difficult to think of lexical meaning as having paradigmatic relations. Even the definition of word and lexical item or the distinction between lexical/content words and grammatical/function words are areas which are not yet fully explained in terms of lexical representation.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, there are no theoretical "issues that need to be resolved" here. As will be seen below, the "issues" only arise from Fontaine's lack of familiarity with SFL Theory.

[2] To be clear, this is not merely Hasan's claim, but a statement of the architecture of SFL Theory. The relation between the paradigmatic axis (system) and the syntagmatic axis (structure) is realisation; that is, they are different levels of symbolic abstraction: structure (Token) realises system (Value).

[3] To be clear, the Hasan quote on grammar does not "suggest" the Halliday quote on lexis. Hasan is concerned with the realisation relation between grammatical systems and grammatical structures, such as those of clause rank, whereas Halliday is concerned with the realisation relation between the most delicate grammatical systems and lexical items (which are not structures).

[4] To be clear, the "close connection of delicacy and paradigmatic arrangement" is that delicacy is the ordering principle of paradigmatic order (system); see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20).

[5] To be clear, collocation is the syntagmatic dimension of lexical items, whereas paradigmatically, lexical items function in sets. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 61):

Paradigmatically, lexical items function in sets having shared semantic features and common patterns of collocation. … Typically, the semantic features that link the members of a lexical set are those of synonymy or antonymy, hyponymy and meronymy;

[6] To be clear, in addition to the paradigmatic relations between lexical items — synonymy etc. — each lexical item is specified by a bundle of paradigmatic features, just as, on the phonological stratum, the phoneme /k/ is specified by the feature bundle [voiceless, velar, stop].

[7] To be clear, these aspects "are not yet fully explained in terms of lexical representation" because the notion of lexical representation in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with SFL Theory and, according to Edelman (1989: 228), with 'the known facts of human biology and brain science'.

However, within SFL Theory, the distinction between word as grammatical unit and word as lexical item is clearly defined (see the previous quote from Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 568-9), as is the distinction between 'grammatical/function' words, and 'lexical/content' words. Unlike 'lexical' words, 'grammatical' words are those that 'function as the direct realisation of terms in grammatical systems' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 64).

Fontaine's Argument Against Lexis As Most Delicate Grammar

Fontaine (2017: 9-10):

As mentioned above, Martin points out the backgrounding of lexis in SFL, suggesting that this is related to an account of lexis as most delicate grammar. This view of lexis brings with it some degree of risk since it could result in treating lexis as taxonomically organised and this could lead to prioritising homophonous lexical relations rather than semantic ones. The reason for this is that if we take as a starting point Halliday's (1972/2013:8) view that “the output of any path through the network of systems is a structure”, the ‘most’ delicate system will lead directly to a lexical item (cf criticisms by Hunston and Francis, 2000 and Groom, 2005). This is a view of lexical representation which would be very difficult to accept for most lexicologists as it would predict that a lexeme with polysemes would need to be available at the terminal point of a variety of systems.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This misunderstands Martin's claim. To be clear, Martin claims that what has been backgrounded is Halliday's distinction between grammatical words and lexical items and a syntagmatic perspective on lexical items. Martin (2016:45):

Firth's interest in collocation (‘the company words keep’) has been developed in corpus linguistic research – chiefly by Sinclair and his colleagues (e.g. 1966; 1991) but less so in SFL where Halliday's early acknowledgement of the distinction between words and lexical items and the need for a syntagmatic perspective on expectancy relations among lexical items has tended to be backgrounded in relation to an interest in lexis as delicate grammar (the ‘grammarian's dream’, pursued by Hasan, and others).

See here for the misunderstandings in Martin's claim.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, paradigmatically, relations between lexical items can be represented as hyponymic and meronymic taxonomies. It is just such relations that are exploited in lexical cohesion.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. To classify lexical items in terms of how they are realised in phonology ("homophonous') is to take the view 'from below', which is the direct opposite of SFL Theory, which takes the view 'from above' (the meaning being realised in wording).

[4] This is a non-sequitur. The specification of grammatical structures and lexical items by lexicogrammatical systems does not entail classifying lexical items according to how they are realised in phonology.

[5] See here for the misunderstandings of Hunston and Francis (2000). (Fontaine does not outline the criticisms of Groom (2005).)

[6] To be clear, as [3] demonstrates, this is a view that is not consistent with SFL Theory, and as [4] demonstrates, this is a view that is not validated by Fontaine's argument. Moreover, the acceptability judgements of lexicologists are irrelevant to SFL Theory, unless they uncover inconsistency in the architecture of SFL Theory, or inabilities of the theory to account for data.

[7] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, Fontaine again takes the view 'from below', identifying lexemes as expressions of many meanings ("polysemes"), instead of the SFL view 'from above', where a lexeme is identified as the meaning that is expressed. On the other hand, the conclusion does not follow from the argument presented, as [3] and [4] demonstrate.

Halliday's "Call To Develop Work" On Lexical Representation

Fontaine (2017: 9):

The call to develop work in this area can be traced back to Halliday's 1961 paper, where he put forward the ground-breaking idea that “the ‘lexical item,’ is unrestricted grammatically; grammatical categories do not apply to it, and the abstraction of the item itself from a number of occurrences … depends on the formal, lexical relations into which it enters” (1961:277). At that time, he expected that “it should not be long before we find out much more about how language works at this level” (ibid.), since working out large scale frequencies of items in collocation would no longer be difficult. However, we have not yet seen this kind of detailed work, perhaps with the exception of Tucker (e.g. 1996).

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, Halliday (1961) — on Scale and Category Grammar, not Systemic Functional Grammar — is not a "call to develop work" in lexical representation. Rather, its stated purpose is demonstrate how 'to bring lexis in relation to grammar', which, importantly, involves distinguishing the lexical item from the word as grammatical unit. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 59-61):

8 Lexis
8.1 This section is intended merely to bring lexis into relation with grammar, not to discuss the theory of lexis as such. As has been pointed out (above, 3.3. and 6.3), there is no one / one correspondence in exponence between the item which enters into lexical relations and any one of the grammatical units. It is for this reason that the term lexical item is used in preference to word, “word” being reserved as the name for a grammatical unit, that unit whose exponents, more than those of any other unit, are lexical items. 

Not only may the lexical item be coextensive with more than one different grammatical unit; it may not be coextensive with any grammatical unit at all, and may indeed cut right across the rank hierarchy. Moreover, since the abstraction involved is quite different, what is for lexis “the same” lexical item (that is, different occurrences of the same formal item) may be a number of different grammatical items, so it is not true that one lexical item always has the same relation to the rank hierarchy. So that, in English, (i) a lexical item may be a morpheme, word or group (at least); (ii) a lexical item may be assigned to no rank, being for example more than a word but less than a whole group, or even both more and less than a word – part of one word plus the whole of another, sometimes discontinuously; and (iii) one and the same lexical item may in different occurrences cover any range of the possibilities under (i) and (ii). 

This does not mean that lexical items cannot be identified in grammar; it means that they are not identified by rank. They are identified, as has been suggested (above, 6.3), by their being unaccounted for in systems. But it is an additional, descriptive reason (additional, that is, to the theoretical one that lexical items lend themselves to different relations of abstraction) for keeping grammar and lexis apart. When the two have been described separately, the next stage is to relate them; and it is here that the complex relation between lexical item and grammatical unit must be accounted for. This is exactly parallel to what was said above (7.1) about grammar and phonology; and, of course, it applies equally to phonology and lexis, where, after separate description, is displayed the relationship between the lexical item and the categories of phonology. 

8.2 The task of lexis can be summed up, by illustration, as that it has to account for the likelihood of wingless green insects and for the, by contrast, unlikelihood of colourless green ideas. As in grammar, we shall expect language to work by contrasting “more likely” with “less likely” rather than “possible” with “impossible”; but, as has often been pointed out, this particular type of likelihood is not accounted for by grammar, at least not by grammar of the delicacy it has yet attained. It is, however, too often assumed that what cannot be stated grammatically cannot be stated formally: that what is not grammar is semantics, and here, some would add, linguistics gives up. But the view that the only formal linguistics is grammar might be described as a colourless green idea that sleeps furiously between the sheets of linguistic theory, preventing the bed from being made. What are needed are theoretical categories for the formal description of lexis. 

It seems that two fundamental categories are needed, which we may call collocation and set. The first basic distinction between these and the categories of grammar is that in lexis there are no scales of rank and exponence. There is no hierarchy of units; therefore no rank scale. There is only one degree of abstraction – a set is a set of formal items and a collocation is a collocation of formal items; therefore no exponence scale (exponence there is, of course, but it is a simple polarity). Only the scale of delicacy remains; sets and collocations can be more and less delicate. 

There is an analogy with the categories of grammar, an analogy due to the nature of language as activity. Collocation, like structure, accounts for a syntagmatic relation; set, like class and system, for a paradigmatic one. There the resemblance ends. 

Collocation is the syntagmatic association of lexical items, quantifiable, textually, as the probability that there will occur, at n removes (a distance of n lexical items) from an item x, the items a, b, c . . . Any given item thus enters into a range of collocation, the items with which it is collocated being ranged from more to less probable; and delicacy is increased by the raising of the value of n and by the taking account of the collocation of an item not only with one other but with two, three or more other items. Items can then be grouped together by range of collocation, according to their overlap of, so to speak, collocational spread. The paradigmatic grouping which is thereby arrived at is the set. The set does not form a closed system, but is an open grouping varying in delicacy from “having some (arbitrary minimum) collocation in common” to subsets progressively differentiated as the degree of collocational likeness set as defining criterion increases. 

In lexis, as in grammar, it is essential to distinguish between formal and contextual meaning. Once the formal description has identified the categories and the items, these can and must be treated contextually. The formal item of lexis, the lexical item, is unrestricted grammatically; grammatical categories do not apply to it, and the abstraction of the item itself from a number of occurrences (including, for example, the answer to the question whether one is to recognise one lexical item or more than one) depends on the formal, lexical relations into which it enters. The nature of these relations is such that formal statements in lexis require textual studies involving large-scale frequency counts: not of course of the frequency of single items, but of items in collocation. Since these are no longer difficult to undertake, it should not be long before we find out much more about how language works at this level.

"A Lexical Entry In The Lexicon"

Fontaine (2017: 7):

While the approaches to lexis mentioned above certainly offer important insights to our understanding of lexis and lexico-grammar, they generally do not discuss in detail issues related to lexical representation or provide an account of what might be needed in terms of a lexical entry in the lexicon. As Martin (2016:45) points out:

Firth's interest in collocation (‘the company words keep’) has been developed in corpus linguistic research – chiefly by Sinclair and his colleagues (e.g. 1966; 1991) but less so in SFL where Halliday's early acknowledgement of the distinction between words and lexical items and the need for a syntagmatic perspective on expectancy relations among lexical items has tended to be backgrounded in relation to an interest in lexis as delicate grammar (the ‘grammarian's dream’, pursued by Hasan, and others).

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, the notion of lexical representation in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with SFL Theory and, as the neuroscientist Edelman (1989: 228) points out, with 'the known facts of human biology and brain science'. The first of these inconsistencies, at least, accounts for the lack of discussion of such matters in SFL approaches to lexis.

[2] To be clear, the quote from Martin (2016) has no bearing on lexical representation or lexical entries in "the" lexicon; see further below.

[3] Martin's proposition can be analysed as follows:

Halliday's early acknowledgement of the distinction between words and lexical items and the need for a syntagmatic perspective on expectancy relations among lexical items	has	tended to be backgrounded	in relation to an interest in lexis as delicate grammar
Subject	Finite	Predicator	Adjunct
Mood		Residue

To be clear, neither (i) the 'distinction of words and lexical items' nor (ii) 'expectancy relations among lexical items' are "backgrounded in relation to" lexis as most delicate grammar, because both are aspects of 'lexis as most delicate grammar'.

Firstly, 'lexis as most delicate grammar' means that lexical items are theorised as the synthetic realisation of the most delicate lexicogrammatical features. Secondly, the 'distinction of words and lexical items' distinguishes this view of lexis from the word as a grammatical rank, where it is the entry condition to grammatical systems. Thirdly, 'expectancy relations between lexical items' is the syntagmatic dimension of 'lexis as most delicate grammar', collocation, which is exploited to create textual cohesion.

"On What Basis Is There A Lexical Tie Between Two Items" In Lexical Cohesion

Fontaine (2017: 6-7):

There are several research topics in SFL that do come close to a lexicological perspective. The first will be obvious to those familiar with the work. Cohesion in English (Halliday and Hasan, 1976) is the greatest contribution so far in terms of developing an approach to lexicology in SFL. This seminal work was ahead of its time when first published and remains an important source in any work related to cohesion. While it moved the field forward and was in many respects “ahead of its time” (Sanders and Maat, 2006:592), it does not address issues of concern to lexicologists. For example, on what basis is there a lexical tie between two items, i.e. what is the nature of the relationship? In some cases, lexical cohesion relies on an assumption that “a shared lexico-semantic relationship holds” (ibid.:591). This suggests that, for lexicologists, a more detailed account of lexical representation is needed for the SFL account of lexical relations to be more robust and usable in other approaches.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday & Hasan (1976) is not a contribution to developing an approach to lexicology in SFL Theory, since the theoretical assumptions that define lexicology as a field are inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions of SFL Theory.

[2] This is misleading, because the types of relations between lexical items in a cohesive tie are explicitly stated in Halliday & Hasan (1976: 288) as reiteration (repetition, synonym, superordinate, general word) or collocation:

Moreover, the model has since been made more explicit in terms of axis and logical and experiential relations. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644):

[3] On the contrary, what this suggests is that the cognitive linguists, Sanders and Maat, have a very superficial acquaintance with the work they regard as "ahead of its time". Moreover, as previously explained, the notion of 'lexical representation' in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with both SFL Theory and 'the known facts of human biology and brain science' (Edelman 1989).

"Frequency (Often Described As Probability In SFL)"

Fontaine (2017: 5-6):

According to Hasan (2009:169), “instantiation is the relationship between a potential and its instance, context of culture is the potential, i.e. the system, while context of situation is an instance of that potential”. The role of frequency (often described as probability in SFL) is important to the understanding of system and instantiation since it has a mediating role between system and instance. In theory, every instance perturbs the system to some degree or another, however (in)significant this may be. Plum (1998:31) states that the premise that “the realisation of context in text is probabilistic provides not only the key to making the hypothesis of the functional determination of text by its context testable but also provides a way of accounting for the variability found in text”. This is a now common view within SFL but it leads to viewing lexis or at least lexicogrammatical structure as deterministic. It is at some level difficult to reconcile this view with Halliday’s (1991:282) claim that “text and situation come into being together; so whatever kind of order we set up between them, it must be such that we can start from either end”. One way to view this relationship is to consider, as suggested by Tucker (2006:960), that “the full potential of language is reduced under the influence of the context of culture and the context of situation”, which maintains the relationship between meaning potential and instance.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, in SFL Theory, there is an important difference between probability and frequency. Probability quantifies the features of potential, whereas frequency quantifies the features of an instance. Frequencies of features instantiated as text eventually have the effect of changing their systemic probability of being instantiated.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, probabilistic instantiation is not deterministic, because it introduces a degree of uncertainty — and so indeterminacy — into the system–&–process. On the other hand, there is no deterministic relation between context and language, because the relation between them is realisation (elaborating identification), not cause (enhancing identification).

[3] To be clear, the Tucker quote is potentially misleading, because the "full potential of language" is not reduced under the influence of the context of culture, since the context of culture is the "full potential" of context which is realised by the "full potential" of language.

What is true is that less and less of the "full potential" (of culture and language) is instantiated as our perspective descends the cline of instantiation. That is, the potential of a register is less than the overall potential of a language, and the potential instantiated as text is less than the potential of its register.

However, contrary to Fontaine's claim, the Tucker quote has no bearing whatsoever on any supposed determinism in instantiation or lexis or grammatical structure.

"The Relationship Of Context And Language Through Instantiation"

Fontaine (2017: 5, 6):

The relationship of context and language through realisation and instantiation is shown in Fig. 2, taken from Halliday (1991).

Matthiessen (2015:34) explains that in Fig. 2, “situation type has the same location as context of culture (and context of situation) in terms of the hierarchy of stratification, but they are instead differentiated in terms of the cline of instantiation: context of culture is located at the potential pole, context of situation at the instance pole”.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, context and language are related by realisation, but not through instantiation, which is the relation between potential and instance, as Figure 2 illustrates.

[2] To be clear, this figure, adapted from Halliday, is potentially misleading, since it locates different perspectives of the same mid-point on the cline of instantiation as different locations on the cline of instantiation.

That is, cultural domain and situation type are not different points on the cline of instantiation, they are different perspectives on the same point: cultural domain takes the perspective of the potential pole of the cline of instantiation, whereas situation type takes the perspective of the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.

Likewise, register and text type are not different points on the cline of instantiation, they are different perspectives on the same point: register takes the perspective of the potential pole of the cline of instantiation, whereas text type takes the perspective of the instance pole of the cline of instantiation.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

Fontaine's Notion That Context of Culture "Captures" The Potential Of Language

Fontaine (2017: 5):

The difference between context of culture and context of situation according to Halliday (1991) is one of perspective; this difference is not meant to suggest different objects of study. Halliday (1991:276) explains this as follows:

These also are not two different things; they are the same thing seen from different points of view. A situation, as we are envisaging it, is simply an instance of culture; or, to put it the other way round, a culture is the potential behind all the different types of situation that occur. 

Context of culture differs in its relationship to language since it is not tied to a context of situation through text but rather captures its potential. According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014:32), “a given language is thus interpreted by reference to its semiotic habitat”.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the relation between these two perspectives, context of culture (potential) and context of situation (instance) is instantiation.

[2] The claim here seems to be:

• Context of culture differs from context of situation in its relationship to language 
• because 
• context of culture is not tied to a context of situation through text 
• but rather context of culture captures language's potential

To be clear, relations between context and language do not involve notions of "capturing" or "tying". Context is related to language stratally, by realisation, whereas culture and language (potential) are related to situation and text (instance) by instantiation.

[3] To be clear, as this quote makes explicit, the context ("habitat") of language is semiotic, not material.

Fontaine's Claim That Context Of Situation Is Effectively The Collection Of "Instances Of Text"

Fontaine (2017: 4-5):

Context itself is not ‘out there’ as in outside the speaker. While it might be considered to be outside the language system, it cannot be denied that whatever context is, it is connected to or can interact with the language system. Halliday (1991:281) explains the connection as follows:

How do you set about “creating” a context for language? You cannot do it by means of legislation, like decreeing that poems are to be written in praise of a national leader. The only way is for the text itself to create its own context of situation.

This suggests that textual, i.e. linguistic, features are meaningful and that context of situation is effectively the collection of instances of text. Halliday (1991:277) sees this context as “a theoretical construct for explaining how a text relates to the social processes within which it is located”. It is well established in SFL literature that this construct involves three variables or components, commonly termed Field, Tenor and Mode of Discourse, respectively as “the underlying social activity, the persons or “voices” involved in that activity, and the particular functions accorded to the text within it” (ibid.).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, context does not "interact" with language, because they are distinct levels of symbolic abstraction, not modules at the same level of abstraction. The "connection" between context and language is thus the relation between levels of symbolic abstraction: realisation.

[2] To be clear, the Halliday quote relates an instance of language (text) to an instance of context (situation). The point is that, because language realises context, an instance of language "creates" an instance of context.

[3] To be clear, the Halliday quote does not suggest that the linguistic features instantiated as text are meaningful; see [2] above. Since SFL Theory models language as meaning potential, this is a given.

[4] To be clear, the Halliday quote does not suggest that an instance of context (situation) is "the collection of instances of text"; see [2] above. On the one hand, the relation between context and language is realisation (elaborating identification), not composition (extending identification or ascription); see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 145-6). On the other hand, the wording "instances of text" misunderstands instantiation, according to which a text is an instance of language.

Fontaine's Claim That She Is Using Halliday's Model

Fontaine (2017: 4):

In this paper, the conceptualisation of context is taken primarily from Halliday (1991), see Hasan (2009) which examines the place of context in the SFL framework, including an excellent discussion of Halliday’s 1991 view of context and language.

The two aspects of context are explained by Halliday (1991: 271) as follows:

Language considered as a system – its lexical items and grammatical categories – is to be related to its context of culture; while instances of language in use – specific texts and their component parts – are to be related to their context of situation. Both these contexts are of course outside of language itself.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. By 'context' Halliday means the culture as semiotic system. Fontaine has already demonstrated (p3) that she misunderstands context as language, co-text, on the one hand, and as the material environment of a text, on the other. It is this claim that Fontaine is using Halliday's model that justifies critiquing her paper in terms of Halliday's model.

[2] To be clear, the two "aspects" of context are the two poles of the cline of instantiation on that stratum: potential (culture) and instance (situation).

Fontaine's Crucial Misunderstanding Of Halliday's Notion Of Context

Fontaine (2017: 3-4):

Putting lexicology into context 

There is a deliberate play on words in the heading for this section. One part of the meaning relates to the frame, PUT X INTO CONTEXT, which means that X is given with the textual and/or situational context in which it was produced, i.e. provides more information so that X can be better understood. There is another related expression to this one, TAKE X OUT OF CONTEXT, which means that X has been removed from the textual and/or situational context in which it was produced, i.e. information is missing which makes understanding flawed in some way. In these two everyday expressions, we get a sense of what context suggests to most people and that is meaning or at least meaningful information. Context is where we ‘get’ meaning but it is also a kind of meaning, or rather kinds of meanings. In SFL terms, context “is that which helps determine meaning. This includes the surrounding text and the surrounding circumstances whatever they may be” (Wegener, 2011:4–5). The concept of meaning within SFL stems from Firth (1957), who saw meaning as function in context. For Halliday meaning is best viewed as ‘choice’ (Halliday, 2013), which he sees as an extension of Saussur[e]an paradigmatic relations (Ibid.: 16).

Blogger Comments:

This misrepresents the SFL notion of context. To be clear, 

• context is the culture modelled as a semiotic system; it is modelled as a higher level of symbolic abstraction than language;
• the surrounding text, the co-text, is (an instance of) language, not context; and
• the surrounding circumstances of a text, in the sense of the material environment of a text, is the perceptual field of the speaker.

The context (and co-text) of a text and the environment of a text differ in terms of order of experience. The context of a text, a situation, is second-order (semiotic) experience, since it is construed by the language of a text that is projected by a speaker. The environment of a text, on the other hand, is first-order (material) experience. Where the semiotic context of a text is metaphenomenal, the material environment of a text is phenomenal.

"The Question Of Whether It Makes Sense To Talk About Lexical Meaning In SFL"

Fontaine (2017: 2-3):

In this paper, I will propose some ways in which lexis can be explored by examining the dimension of instantiation and considering how the SFL approach to context can be applied to lexis. The main aim of the paper is to develop a new approach to the study of lexis within SFL. Drawing substantially from Halliday (1991) and Hanks (2013), I will use the SFL approach to context to argue for the need for an analogous approach to lexicology.

The paper will be organised as follows. The next section will situate lexicology in relation to SFL and outline the view of context adopted for the purposes of this paper, moving towards questions related to lexis and lexical representation in particular. Section 3 examines the current status of lexicology within the SFL framework and it argues for the need for a flexible lexicon (García Velasco, 2016). Section 4 considers the relationship between the meaning potential (Hanks, 2013) of a lexeme and the meaning of a word in use. Finally, section 5 closes the paper by addressing the question of whether it makes sense to talk about lexical meaning in SFL. I suggest that the framework for representing context could be applied by analogy to lexical representation. In this view, lexis is seen, not as most delicate grammar, but as most local context.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is not a new approach, because the "SFL approach to context" — that is: modelling it as a cline of instantiation — already applies to lexis in SFL Theory. Because instantiation applies to all systems on all strata, it already applies to the lexicogrammatical systems that specify lexical items.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, lexical meaning is the semantic correlate of lexical items — each of which is specified by a bundle of the most delicate features of lexicogrammatical systems.

[3] To be clear, the instantiation dimension of lexis has no bearing on the notion of lexis as most delicate grammar, because instantiation is the relation between a system and its instance, whereas delicacy is the ordering principle of a system and its instance.

[4] To be clear, the instantiation dimension of lexis has no bearing on either context or "locality". On the one hand, in SFL Theory, lexis is located within language, on the stratum of lexicogrammar, whereas context is located outside language — it is the culture as semiotic system — at two levels of symbolic abstraction above lexicogrammar.

On the other hand, even if the notion of "most local context" made sense*, the instantiation relation between potential and instance has no bearing on "locality".

* One reason why most local context does not make sense in everyday registers is because it misconstrues a Classifier (local), which does not accept degrees of comparison or intensity, for an Epithet, which does; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 377). On the other hand, the theoretical notion of a 'most local domain' derives from Chomsky (1995) The Minimalist Program.

Delicacy

Fontaine (2017: 1):

For Halliday (1961:272), delicacy is “the scale of differentiation, or depth in detail” and it is clear from Hasan (1996) and also Martin (1992) that lexis as most delicate grammar is pursued along this dimension, which runs through the lexicogrammatical stratum and is generally represented as a system network of options. As Martin (1992:278) explains, “looked at from the perspective of grammar lexis is not different in kind but simply different in generality.” The least delicate options are extended in increasing differentiation within the network to the most delicate options.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, delicacy is the ordering principle of a system network: the arrangement of features from the most general to the most fine.

[2] To be clear, the Martin quote is invalid on two grounds. Firstly, it confuses delicacy with lexis. The difference in generality is the scale of delicacy of feature choices in system networks. Each lexical item, on the other hand, is the synthetic realisation of the most delicate features in the lexicogrammatical system — just as the phoneme /b/ is the synthetic realisation of the phonological features [voiced, bilabial, stop].

Secondly, grammar and lexis do differ in kind, both syntagmatically and paradigmatically; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 58-66). For example, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 59, 64):

On either of these two axes we can establish relationships of a lexical kind (collocations and sets) and of a grammatical kind (structures and systems). …