"It Is Not Yet Clear That System Networks Are Appropriate For The Analyst Or The Understander"

Fontaine (2017: 14):

There is often a conflict for the analyst when trying to determine what the speaker has done with language and how the model used by the analyst can fit the instances of language being analysed. The speaker is generating language, while the analyst is parsing language, and doing so for very different reasons. In psycholinguistics, the problem of viewing these two processes (production vs understanding) as separate process is referred to by Pickering and Garrod (2013:347) as “the ‘cognitive sandwich’, a perspective that is incompatible both with the demands of communication and with extensive data indicating that production and comprehension are tightly interwoven”. Reconciling the role of language producer and language understander is important for many reasons, not least of which is the development of a better tool for text analysis. Since it is not yet clear that the system networks are appropriate for the analyst or for the understander, as noted by Tucker (2009:424) above, this development is needed for those using the framework for analysis.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this passage is irrelevant and unconnected to all that has been previously written in this paper.

[1] To be clear, there is no conflict here, because the theory is a model of the language that is used in both speaking and analysing. The different purposes of the speaker and analyst have no impact on the language of the speaker that the analyst is "parsing".

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, system networks are as "appropriate" for the "understander" and the analyst as they are for the speaker. In logogenesis, the speaker produces an instance of the system, a text, and the "understander" and the analyst relate the instance to the system. Halliday (2008: 192):

The system and the text are not two different phenomena: what we call the “system” of a language is equivalent to its “text potential”. Analysing discourse means, first and foremost, relating the text to the potential that lies behind it.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 384):

If we look at logogenesis from the point of view of the system (rather than from the point of view of each instance), we can see that logogenesis builds up a version of the system that is particular to the text being generated: the speaker/writer uses this changing system as a resource in creating the text; and the listener/reader has to reconstruct something like that system in the process of interpreting the text — with the changing system as a resource for the process of interpretation. We can call this an instantial system.

[3] Trivially, this was not noted above.

"The Need For Flexibility In Lexical Representation"

Fontaine (2017: 10):

In other functional approaches, the need for flexibility in lexical representation is being identified. For example, more flexible lexical representations and flexible lexicon (García Velasco, 2016), flexible word classes (Rijkhoff and van Lier, 2013) and fluid grammar (Steels and De Beule, 2006 and Steels, 2011). Indeed, cognitive models also suggest the need for a more flexible grammar. Pickering and Garrod (2004:21) state that their model of interactive alignment “challenges linguists to come up with a more flexible account of grammar capable of capturing linguistic constraints on linked sentence fragments”. While a detailed look at flexible models is beyond the scope of this paper, these approaches have influenced my thinking on this topic. In the next section I will argue for a loosening of semantics in terms of lexical representation to allow for the meaning potential (Hanks, 2013) of a lexeme instantiated by a lexical item.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the needs of theories that do not share the same theoretical assumptions and method of inquiry are not evidence of the needs of SFL Theory. The need for this type of flexibility in such approaches stems from viewing language 'from below' (from the expression of meaning) rather than 'from above' (from the meaning that is expressed) — the latter being the perspective taken in SFL Theory.

[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] As will be seen in the examination of the next section, this loosening of semantics — despite the location of lexical items on the lexicogrammatical stratum — involves viewing language 'from below', such that a single form is the expression of different meanings. This is the opposite perspective of the  view 'from above' in SFL Theory, which takes meaning as the point of departure, and inquires as to how it is expressed lexically.

[4] To be clear, unknown to Fontaine, the instantiation relation between a lexical item as potential and as instance is already part of the architecture of SFL Theory, and it is a relation that obtains on the lexicogrammatical stratum, not the semantic stratum.