The Cardiff Grammar:
What is it? and Why is it?
Robin P. Fawcett
Centre for Language and Communication Research
Cardiff University
1
Our starting point: the two questions in the lecture’s title:
1 What is it?
2 Why is it? – i.e.
Why does it exist as a separate entity within SFL?
Why – and how - did it come into existence?
We’ll take ‘Why is it?’ first. So...
Part 1 will try to answer ‘Why is it?’ and
Part 2 will begin to answer ‘What is it?’
because the answer to ‘why’ will explain quite a lot about
‘what’ the CG is.
But first, a brief, interim answer to ‘What is it?’
2
Gordon Tucker and I have given lectures and courses
introducing ‘the Cardiff Grammar’ in many counties.
A subtitle that I often use answers the question What is it?
neatly - but still inadequately:
Introduction to the Cardiff Grammar:
a cognitive-interactive version of
Systemic Functional Grammar for the 21st Century
The CG is just as systemic and just as functional as any of
the Sydney-based varieties of SFL.
3
Both the Cardiff Grammar (CG) the Sydney Grammar (SG) are
components of larger architectures of language and it use.
So within SFL there are:
two major models of language and its use:
the Sydney Model (SM) and the Cardiff Model (CM).
The CM differs in emphasis from the SM (or SMs) in several
ways – notably in
providing a cognitive-interactive framework for modelling
language and its use - while still
giving a major place to the socio-cultural aspects
(on which Halliday and most Sydney-based SF linguists focus).
Now: on to...
4
Part 1
Why - and how - did the Cardiff Grammar
(and so the Cardiff Model of language and its
use)
come into existence?
5
Purpose of Part 1
To describe the origins, development and current position of a
version of SFL that has been explicitly developed to meet the
demands to be expected in the 21st Century.
6
This is the story of how a few relatively minor differences
in the description of English developed - contrary to the
intentions of any member of the Cardiff Group - to become:
a distinct theory of language,
one with a bibliography of over 250 items, written by over two
dozen authors,
one about which introductory textbooks have been published in
English, Chinese and Spanish.
Why tell the story?
1
2
So you will understand more about this major phenomenon
that is emerging within SFL;
So you can decide whether or not it is something you want to
know more about - and to use - as many others already have;
7
3
4
To help you to decide whether to buy my Invitation to
Systemic Functional Linguistics through the Cardiff
Grammar (Fawcett 2008a);
To tell you how to get hold of other materials, (including
sections of forthcoming books –
so that you will be in a better position to decide
whether or not to use this version of SFL
as the basis of your work in linguistics / applied
linguistics - as others have already done.
But first let’s establish...
8
What do you want from a theory of language?
What I want:
1 a picture - a model - of what language is like,
one that enables me to feel that I understand
(i) what the various components of a language in use are,
(ii) how we use them to produce and understand texts,
(iii) what each major component is like inside, and
(iv) how they function together in human communication.
2 Its grammar must equip me to analyze text-sentences,
in terms of their functional syntax, their words, and their
intonation or punctuation - and the meanings of all of these.
3 It should be based in a soundly-based, scientific approach to
understanding language, taking account of recent advances in
the field.
9
6 It should have proved itself in rigorous testing, e.g.
(i) in large quantities of rigorously checked text analysis,
(ii) through being implemented in a computer,
and in other ways.
And that is what the theory of language to be presented here gives
to me - and to many others.
But note: it is the ‘Cardiff Model’ of language and its use - not
just a ‘grammar’.
10
1 How - and why - I chose to work in SFL
So - first, a little about myself (my CV!)
Born: Sedbergh, Yorkshire (like Halliday and his teacher, J.R Firth)
School: Bootham School, York
University of Oxford: Modern Languages
Institute of Education, University of London: PGCE in TESL
Then to Kenya:
1961
Kenya: Kapsabet Secondary School
1963
Kagumo College of Education
1965-70 Kenya Institute of Education:
Curriculum Development and Research Unit
My task: to develop a new primary English course.
What framework? What theory? (In 1965, note!)
Chomsky’s TGG? Halliday’s S&C? (only later -> SFG)
11
So I was first - and remain - a teacher
(later a researcher, and now a researcher and writer)
Then....
1971
University College London: PhD in Linguistics
Topic: to identify the best framework for use in language
teaching (Supervisors: Michael Halliday -> Dick Hudson).
1973
West Midlands College of Education, then to
University of Glamorgan (major corpus project, SF syntax)
c.1980 Emergence of the exciting new field of
Natural Language Generation (branch of CL)
1987
To Cardiff University
2000 Retired (!) Emeritus Professor
So what did I do 1987 - 2000?
12
2 SFL at Cardiff University
In 1987, within the
the Centre for Language and Communication Research
Gordon Tucker and I founded
the Computational Linguistics Unit (CLU).
Main research project: the COMMUNAL Project.
Over 0.5 million GBP, 1987-95 (2.5 million RMB)
Research goals
1
to build (components of) a computer system that would enable
humans to communicate with ‘artificial intelligences’ within
computers;
2
to use the ‘metaphor of the computer’ to increase our
understanding of human language;
3
To use SFL principles, and so to contribute to the further
development of SFL theory.
13
Members of the resident CLU team
Director: Robin Fawcett: overall model, lexicogrammar, syntax
Deputy Director: Gordon Tucker: lexis, lexicogrammar
Joan Wright (2 yrs) computing
Francis (Yunqing) Lin (6 yrs): computing, general theoretical
development, SFLF, discourse structure, etc.
David Young: morphology, lexicogrammar
Paul Tench: intonation
Victor Castel of the University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina
(since 2000): computing, genre, discourse, lexicogrammar
Over time, many other major research contributions from:
several PhD theses (Linguistics AND Computer Science): Tucker,
Huang, Neale, Ball, Weerasinghe, Day, Fontaine (and others)
14
Contributions from foreign visiting SFL scholars:
from Germany: Prof Erich Steiner (1 yr)
from Japan: Prof Masa-aki Tatsuki (Chair of JASFL) (1 yr)
Dr Hiroshi Funamoto (1 yr)
from Canada: Prof Michael Cummings ( 4 visits)
from Australia (then): Dr Mick O’Donnell (2 visits)
(both working on formalizing the visual representation of
system networks)
from China: Dr Zhou Xiaokang via Melbourne (1 mth)
Prof Huang Guowen, now of Sun Yat-sen University
(Chair of CFLA) (2 yrs)
Dr Yang Guowen, of the Chinese Academy of Social
Sciences, Beijing (1 yr)
15
Visiting scholars from abroad
Many, including
Michael Halliday (Australia)
Christian Matthiessen (Sweden-USA-Australia-Hong Kong)
Leading figures in NLG:
David McDonald (USA)
Ehud Reiter (Scotland)
And from China:
Prof Miao Xingwei of Shandong University (1 yr)
Assoc Prof Wang Hongyang of Ningbo University (1 yr)
Dr Li Li of Xiamen University (though based at Birmingham)
Prof He Wei of USTB, Beijing (1 yr)
Professor Zhang Delu of the Ocean University, Qingdao (3 mths).
... and many others
16
Hence my many visits to China
In 2008:
1
2
Teaching two MA courses at USTB
Using the Cardiff Grammar for text analysis
Current issues in Linguistic Theory from a SFL perspective
Visiting lectures at eight other universities.
In 2009:
3 USTB July-August 2009: SFL semantic analysis
In 2010:
4 Sun Yat-sen April-May:
5
USTB May: Symposium: SFG: the full model (SFG as a
generative grammar)
17
The CLU team’s activities
1
2
3
Research on (i) describing English (and later Chinese and
Japanese) and (ii) writing computer programs.
(More later on research methods, etc)
Teaching on
(i) two undergraduate BAs
(Language and Communication, English Language Studies
(Fawcett, Tucker, Tench, Young)
(ii) postgraduate MA in in Language and Communication
(Fawcett, Tucker, Tench)
(iii) postgraduate MScs in (a) Computer Science and
(b) Cognitive Science (Fawcett)
Supervising CG-related PhD theses and MSc dissertations
(Fawcett, Tucker, Tench, Young)
18
3 The products of 20 years of research
(a) Very large computer programs that
(i) generate sentences (Fawcett, Tucker, Lin, etc)
(ii) generate discourse structures (Fawcett, Davies, Lin)
(iii) plan the input to generation (Fawcett, Lin)
(iv) analyze (i.e. parse) sentences (Weerasinghe, Day, Fawcett)
(v) interpret a syntactic structure as a semantic structure
(O’Donoghue)
So ‘the Cardiff Grammar’ is just part of
‘the Cardiff Model of Language and its Use’
- an entire architecture (See the handout)
19
b) Publications on
(i) the computational work on lexicogrammar (which
includes semantics, in the Cardiff Model)
(ii) other components of COMMUNAL,
e.g. SFLF, the belief system, microplanners, parser, etc
(iii) the Cardiff Grammar,
i.e. descriptions of English, Chinese, Japanese (so far!)
and works on theory (e.g. Tucker 1998, Fawcett 2000a)
in the form of
(i) scholarly books (examples)
(ii) scholarly papers in journals and chapters in books
– and, in 2008:
(iii) textbooks (in Chinese, English and Spanish)
20
Look at the selected bibliography (See the handout)
-
a demonstration that both
the COMMUNAL Project and
The Cardiff Grammar
are the results of a team effort.
Full bibliography: over 250 items
by over 25 authors
This brings us to …
21
Overview of recent and forthcoming books
about the Cardiff Grammar
22
Note especially
the recent book publications in Section A
the available pre-publications in Section B.
These are the mainworks that this lecture is designed to lead
on to.
You can order Fawcett 2008 with a 25% discount
(details on the handout)
and the new paperback edition of Fawcett 2000/2010, with a new
‘Preface to the 2010 paperback edition’ and an updated
bibliography with a 30% discount
You can order the books in Section C, as they appear, for
yourself or your university’s library.
And skim Section D to get an impression of the range
publications from the Cardiff Model
23
Aside: the future of SFL at Cardiff
Gordon Tucker, Paul Tench and I have now all retired
- i.e. retired from teaching and admin!
NOT from research, writing, lecturing and teaching overseas,
etc.
The future of SFL at Cardiff is safe in the hands of:
Dr Tom Bartlett (lexicogrammar, culture, ideology)
Dr Lise Fontaine (lexicogrammar, computer-mediated
communication)
Dr Gerard O’Grady (intonation specialist; replacing Paul Tench)
24
That’s Part 1 of the story.
What next? Part 2 of the story
What I CAN”T do in one lecture
- show you the whole of the Cardiff Grammar.
What I CAN do:
- give you reasons for
(1) reading the introductory books,
(2) considering using Invitation as the version of SFL to
teach (plus supporting materials, - see the
bibliography on the handout)
25
Part 2
Why has the Cardiff Grammar come into
existence
as a distinct sub-theory within SFL?
26
What is – or should be - the common ground
between the SG and the CG?
Let us start by asking:
Who is the world’s greatest living linguist?
Chomsky? No!
Halliday? Yes!
A big claim! Grounds?
For me: the five revolutionary insights that Halliday
introduced in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
27
Halliday’s five great innovations in lexicogrammar:
are they the common ground for all SFGs?
28
Background
In the early 1960s, Linguistics was pre-occupied with
syntagmatic relations at the level of form
- i.e. with syntax.
Most obvious in Chomsky’s TG grammar
(focus on relating one structure to another).
Halliday too:
e.g. in ‘Categories of the theory of grammar’ (1961).
Then in a few years (starting in 1966) he produced the
following five revolutionary ideas.
29
Innovation 1
In ‘Categories’ (1961), Halliday’s four main concepts were:
unit, (element of) structure, class (of unit), and system.
But in ‘Some notes on “deep” grammar’ (1966/76: 93-4)
he proposed a change in the ‘balance of power’ in the theory of language - and so also
in descriptions of languages by giving a central role to the concept of ‘system’ - i.e.
he made system more ‘basic’ than structure,
so treating
paradigmatic relations (choice)
as more fundamental than
syntagmatic relations (sequence + constituency).
30
‘The grammar is based on the notion of choice. …. The
speaker of a language …. can be regarded as carrying
out… a number of distinct choices. …. The grammar of
any language can be represented as a very large network
of systems.’
(Halliday 1969/76:3)
=> ‘Systemic Grammar’ (e.g. Hudson 1971)
31
Innovation 2
Halliday proposed that the system networks for
TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME etc
should be seen as presenting
choices between meanings
(rather than choices between forms).
Most famously in the New Horizons paper (Halliday 1970).
HUGE INFLUENCE!
‘The system of available options is the grammar of the
language.... [these are] the meaning potential of language
itself.’
(Halliday 1970: 142)
32
Also at many points in Explorations (1973), e.g.
‘A functional theory of language is a theory about meanings, not
about words or constructions. …. Where then do we find the
functions differentiated in language? They are differentiated
semantically, as different areas of what I call the meaning potential
[my emphasis].*
(Halliday 1971/73b:110)
* i.e. in the system networks for TRANSITIVITY, MOOD,
THEME, etc.
33
The result of adding Innovation 2 to Innovation 1:
The concept of
choice between meanings in system networks
became the heart of the new model of language.
=> ‘Systemic Functional Grammar’
(Halliday; Hasan, Martin, Matthiessen, Butt; Fawcett, Tucker,
Tench, Huang, Castel; O’Toole, Kress, van Leeuwen, etc, etc.)
Implemented computationally in 1980s and 1990s:
(i) the Penman Project (ISI, U. of S. California)
(ii) the COMMUNAL Project (CLU, Cardiff University)
(iii) many others, borrowing from both.
SFG became the dominant model in NLG in the 1990s.
34
Innovation 3
Halliday suggested that a clause is the simultaneous realization of
several different strands of meaning (or ‘metafunctions’).
FOUR to FIVE (and more) in the Sydney Grammar, i.e. in IFG
We
THEME
woul d vi si t
Mrs Ski nner
Theme (t opical ) Rheme
INFORMATION
Focus
New
Gi ven
MOOD
every Sunday
S ubject
Mood
TRANSITIVITY Actor
Finite P redi cator Complement Adjunct
Residue
P rocess
Goal
Ci rcumstance
35
EIGHT strands of meaning in the Cardiff Grammar (Fawcett 2008a):
36
Innovation 4
Halliday (1961) suggested the possibility that the system network
might one day be extended beyond
the modelling of grammatical structures and items
and also be used in the task of modelling
a language’s lexis (vocabulary) - so creating
system networks for lexis, and so
an integrated lexicogrammar.
First implemented computationally in the COMMUNAL
Project - and on a large scale (e.g. over 5000 terminal features in
the ‘cultural classification of thing’ network);
See the survey of the literature in Tucker 1996, and the works of
Tucker, Neale, Ball and myself.
37
Innovation 5
Halliday demonstrated,
by providing a remarkably full description, that
intonation can - and should - be included
in the lexicogrammar of a language.
(Halliday 1967, 1970)
First implemented computationally in the
COMMUNAL Project (Fawcett 1980) - and also
punctuation.
38
It is these five concepts that constituted the core
assumptions of the Cardiff Grammar in the 1970s.
So the Cardiff Grammar is in a direct line of descent from
Halliday’s own specification of the nature of a Systemic
Functional Grammar.
But are they still the core assumptions of the Sydney
Grammar?
(It seems not, in one key respect..... Back to this later!)
39
Taken together, these five innovations have immeasurably
broadened and deepened our view, as linguists, of both
1 the nature of language and
2 the task that linguists face in constructing models of it.
Those who came into Linguistics after the 1970s
may find it hard to understand
how challenging to mainstream linguistics these proposals
were.
The combined effect was REVOLUTIONARY!
40
What was the effect of these ideas on those of us
working in SFL at the time?
They inspired us to adopt the challenging position that
the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD,
THEME and the like ARE the semantics of language.
Our writings at the time demonstrate this clearly:
41
Berry, in her classic introduction to SFG, wrote:
the terms in a system .... are distinct meanings
within a common area of meaning [my emphasis].
(Berry 1975: 144)
(Here ‘a common area of meaning’ = ‘a system or
system network’.)
42
And Kress (editor of Halliday 1976), states:
‘the freeing of system from surface structure has a
consequence that systems are now made up of
terms which are semantic features [my emphasis].’
(Kress 1976:35)
43
And I wrote:
‘Meaning’ is concerned with ‘the intra-linguistic level of
semantics. …. A network may therefore be regarded as a
summary of a complex area of meaning potential [my
emphasis].
(Fawcett 1973/81:157).
So all echo Halliday 1970 and 1971/3.
44
These quotations from
(i) Halliday himself and
(ii) others writing in the 1970s
demonstrate that the Cardiff Grammar is based on the
principles that established Systemic Functional Grammar.
i.e. it is just as systemic and just as functional as Halliday’s
version (‘the Sydney Grammar’).
Halliday has described the Cardiff Grammar as:
‘a closely related grammar [to that described in Halliday
1994], with some descriptive differences but based on the
same systemic functional theory’.
(Halliday 1994:xii)
45
Halliday’s 1970s proposals entail a model of language like this:
potential
meaning
form
instance
system network
of semantic features
selection expression
of semantic features
realization rules
one layer of a richly
labelled tree structure
It is implemented in the computer versions of
both the Cardiff Grammar and the Sydney Grammar.
To prove it, consider.....
46
Matthiessen & Bateman 1991:102
47
In a historical perspective, we should by now, over thirty
years later, be well advanced in the long task of:
1
2
3
4
revising and extending the descriptions of languages
made prior to this still new view of language,
testing and evaluating our revised descriptions,
revising again (and sometimes rejecting) large and
small parts of them,
re-testing and re-evaluating them ....
This has been the programme of research on the
lexicogrammar since the 1970s of myself and,
from 1987 onwards, of the whole Cardiff Grammar team.
But has this been the goal of the Sydney grammarians?
No! Why not? We’ll come to that...
48
In my view, the common ground between all
SFGs should be the combination of Halliday’s
five great innovations of the 1970s.
The big problem for the goal of a unified SFL:
Halliday - followed by most (all?) other Sydney
Grammarians – has modified one of the most central of the
five innovatory proposals,
without pointing out the enormous change to the model
that this implies.
(Back to this shortly.)
So - When did the concept of a ‘Cardiff Grammar’ arise?
49
In the early 1970s, my description of English differed from
Halliday’s only in relatively minor ways
e.g. my version of the TRANSITIVITY network.
Aside: this has been widely used;
it
is simpler, more comprehensive, and more user-friendly for text
analysts (e.g. by Anke Schulz at Darmstadt).
It was widely used in NLG and MT systems in the 1980s and
1990s (some still in use).
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s there was no ‘Cardiff Grammar’,
nor any thought of developing a separate version of the theory.
So:
What brought the Cardiff Grammar into existence?
50
Answer: the combination of three factors:
1 The many improvements to what was to become the Cardiff
Grammar, as a result of the eight factors about to be
described
2 The (relative) lack of developments in the Sydney Grammar
(as opposed to the overall Sydney Model)
3 The fact that the Sydney grammarians adopted hardly any of
the improvements made in what was to develop into the
Cardiff Grammar
We’ll look first at the eight factors in 1 above (very briefly).
51
Eight developments in Descriptive Linguistics
1970-2010 that have led to
improvements in the Cardiff Grammar
52
For each factor, ask yourself:
Would you expect this to lead to
improvements in descriptions of languages?
53
1
The growing emphasis in Linguistics in general on providing
descriptions of languages in terms of
meaning and function
(in broad senses of both terms)
i.e. meaning AS WELL AS form - but not replacing form.
Note the influence on this change of Halliday’s writings.
In the CG: we made ALL the system networks semantic - e.g.
MOOD - as Halliday had largely done for TRANSITIVITY.
54
2
The enormous amount of work, using
earlier SFL descriptions of English
(and other languages)
by university teachers, researchers and students - on
the detailed analysis of very large quantities of text
- and so in turn on
extending and refining earlier descriptions.
In the CG:
(a) Fawcett & Perkins (late 1970s) child language corpus of
70,000 words (a rare syntactically analyzed corpus), and
(b) three decades of supervising student projects on analyzing
text - also Nottingham, Madrid, Liverpool etc.
Most such work is not widely publicized.
55
3
The great amount of traditional descriptive work by
OTHER functionally-oriented scholars
working in linguistics and pragmatics
(some drawing on SFL ideas), e.g.
West Coast functionalists,
other functional theories (FG, RRG, Cognitive Grammar).
In the CG: We have benefitted from:
(a) Leech’s meticulous descriptions of various aspects of English,
(b) the great descriptions of English grammar of Quirk et al 1985
and Biber et al 1999, and Sinclair’s COBUILD Dictionary, West
Coast functionalists (Chafe, Prince).
56
4 The enormous amount of work by formally-oriented
linguists focussed primarily on syntax
(e.g. those working in the Chomskyan paradigm).
Much is too theory-dependent to be relevant outside their own
theoretical frameworks.
But some has helped us to identify the data of syntactic
structures that the grammar must generate.
In the CG: This work challenged us to develop new syntactic
and semantic analyses within SFG for complex constructions
whose ‘traditional’ names reflect a ‘transformational’
approach, e.g. ‘raising’, ‘cleft’, ‘pseudo-cleft’, ‘extraposition’
and ‘left-dislocation’.
See especially the definitive study of the ‘experiential enhanced
theme’ construction (aka ‘it-cleft’) by Huang (1996, 2002).
57
5
The enormous quantities of new evidence now available to
linguists through our ability to study patterns of language in
very large corpora of text
(stored in, and accessed through, computers).
In the CG: as well as our own parsed corpus (see 2 above),
we have benefited, in countless ways, from the British
National Corpus and the Bank of English.
Huang Guowen, Gordon Tucker, Fiona Ball, Amy Neale,
Michael Day and Robin Fawcett have all made innovative
contributions to the Cardiff Grammar as a direct result of
work with these corpora.
58
6
The growing appreciation of the central role of
probabilities
in modelling language,
typically derived from large computer corpora.
(Contrast the crude ‘grammatical v. ungrammatical’
distinction still found in most formal grammars.)
In the CG: we have accepted the general principle that
‘probability’ is a more significant concept than
‘grammaticality’ (and indeed that it includes it). So:
(a) we put percentages (changeable) on features in system
networks (apart from introductory mini-grammars), and
(b) we use them in parsing (filling probabilities).
59
7
The important lessons to be learnt from
developing and formalizing very large SFGs
in a computer model of language.
Such models can be TESTED by running them,
both in Natural Language Generation
and in Natural Language Understanding (including parsing).
In the CG: this factor has been a major aspect of the advances in the
Cardiff Grammar.
In NLG: probabilities on features in system networks
In NLU: probabilities that a unit will fill an element’
probabilities that one element will be followed by another
60
8 The steadily growing recognition,
in (a) NLG and (b) most theories of language that:
No account of language and its use can be complete
without being set within the framework of a
cognitive-interactive model of communication.
One of the great strengths of Sydney systemicists is their
interest in society, culture, ideology, etc - the socio-cultural
aspects of language and its use.
But this gives us only half the cake.
We also need to model
the details of how we plan and execute texts,
i.e. the cognitive-interactive aspects of language use
(e.g. for understanding the meaning and use of concepts such as
‘theme’ and ‘new’).
61
In the CG: The model that was to develop into the Cardiff
Grammar has had a cognitive-interactive orientation from
its origins in my early work (Fawcett 1973/81 and 1980).
This has led to a series of major studies in COMMUNAL
of
what guides us when we choose between the features in
system network, and so of
the overall architecture of language and its use.
For this, see my forthcoming book ‘Alternative
Architectures for Systemic Functional Linguistics’
(Fawcett forthcoming 2011a in your handout).
62
Summary
In science, the models of the phenomenon being studied are
constantly subject to testing, evaluation and change,
then more testing, evaluation and change, and so on.
Linguistics is - or should be - a science.
It is the eight factors described here that have led, collectively,
to the many advances in the Cardiff Grammar in the period
1870 to 2010 - and that are STILL leading to improvements.
Where can you see the results of these developments?
In the 250 published books and articles
(see the bibliography on the handout)
- starting with Invitation to Systemic Functional Linguistics
Note: the footnotes in Invitation give details of the reasons for
the changes from Halliday.
63
We have seen the influences that helped to change the
lexicogrammar in the Cardiff Model 1970-2010.
What has been happening in the framework of the Sydney
Model 1970-2010?
Plenty, as we shall see - BUT …
There have been almost NO CHANGES in Halliday’s
description of the lexicogrammar of English.
64
The question is:
Why has there been this (relative) lack of developments in
the Sydney Grammar (as opposed to the Sydney Model)?
Part of the answer – but not all of it - can be found by
looking at the work being carried out in the Sydney Model
over this period.
So we shall look at that – very briefly.
65
However, before we start focusing the differences between the work
in the SM and in the CM, let me emphasize:
1
the immense significance of Halliday’s
five revolutionary innovations of the 1970s.
This revolution left SFL both
(i) very different from all other theories, and
(ii) far in advance of them in its overall framework
- both then and still today, over thirty years later
(cp the limited scope of Cognitive Grammar, FG or
RRG);
2
the immense amount of common ground between all
SFGs,
which is largely based on the five revolutionary
innovations.
66
The foci of work in the Sydney Grammar 1970-2010
(a) Understanding and then trying out Halliday’s other major
innovative ideas of the 1970s:
1 his functionally based model of child language
development (Halliday 1975),
2 his ‘explorations’ of the concept of ‘language as social
semiotic’ (Halliday 1973 and 1978),
3 a picture of the development of the language of science, which
has since grown into
4 an interesting socio-cultural theory of the development of
human language,
5 the concept of ‘grammatical metaphor’ - and so the support
that this gave to the idea from the 1970s that the model needs
6 a layer of system networks ABOVE those of TRANSITIVITY,
MOOD, THEME etc, called variously ‘socio-semantics’,
67
‘discourse semantics’ and more recently simply ‘semantics’.
Each of these six areas is sufficient to motivate a lifetime of
research!
In addition, especially pre-1985, but also in the period pre-1994:
(b) Halliday’s huge amount of work on preparing his
Introduction to Functional Grammar (IFG)
for publication in 1985 and 1994.
So this would NOT have been a good time for him to be
considering changes to the SG.
But Sydney-based linguists have also been working on the
following:
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(c) Describing languages other than English,
using as a ‘template’ the IFG description of English
(Matthiessen and colleagues)
Very valuable.
Complementary to work in the Cardiff Grammar?
Yes, for now.
But at some point we shall need to decide
which of the two models is the ‘better’ one
(for this and other purposes).
(d) Work on genre (Hasan, Martin, Ventola)
(e) Developing the ‘appraisal’ framework (Martin, White)
Excellent summaries of the above work in Matthiessen’s
2007 survey of work ‘in the IFG tradition’ in Continuing
Discourse on Language.)
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So we return to this question:
Why has there been this (relative) lack of developments in
the Sydney Grammar (in contrast with the many
developments in the Sydney MODEL) in this period?
Three possible reasons:
1 Perhaps all the Sydney grammarians have been too busy
with other aspects of the overall model of language and its
uses to think about revising the lexicogrammar.
2 They may think: ‘The lexicogrammar is Halliday’s field,
so we’ll leave it to him.’
3 Halliday was focussing on the book production stage of
IFG.
But there is fourth possible reason (a more theoretical one):
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In this fouth reason, the line of argument would run like this:
1In the Sydney architecture of language there is now, in
principle, a new level of system networks that is called ‘the
semantics’ (even though there is relatively little descriptive
work of any language at that level).
2 The system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD,
THEME etc are consequently no longer seen, as they were by
most leading systemicists in the 1970s, as being at the level
of meaning.
3They are therefore now assumed to be at the level of form.
(This, of course, is they were in the 1960s, when the model
was called Scale and Category Grammar and ‘system’ was
one of the four major categories at the level of form (i.e.
BEFORE Halliday gave it the status of modelling the
meaning potential of a language).
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4 If this is so, there is no reason to undertake the vast task
of reviewing all of Halliday’s networks from the 1960’s
and early 1970s (as we have done in the CG), and revising
them so they they become explicitly semantic networks of
choices between meanings.
5 So the original system networks of the 1960s and early
1970s, most of which existed BEFORE the five great
innovations described earlier, are fine as they are.
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Halliday seems to be tacitly endorsing this line of argument
when he states (Halliday 1993: 4507 that
‘Systemic work [in the Sydney framework] has tended to
expand by moving into new spheres of activity, rather than by
re-working earlier positions.’
In other words:
Halliday is simply recording the facts that:
when he made the system networks semantic in the 1970s,
he did not then review the existing system networks, and
when he later reassigned the networks to the level of form,
he did not ‘desemanticize’ the TRANSITIVITY network.
NB He has chosen his words carefully; he does not say
whether making no changes was ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
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So: 1 The fact is that most of Halliday’s system networks
(except modality) have barely changed in the decades
since the early 1970s.
2 This is in spite of the many advances in research methods
described earlier, which should have enabled us all to spot
weaknesses in our earlier models and then to revise them –
as we have done continually in the Cardiff Grammar.
3 However, many good scholars seem to be reasonably
content to use Halliday’s description of English for text
description, etc. (Because it is the best descriptive
framework that is widely available available?)
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This intriguing question remains:
Did Halliday really get (almost) everything right, back in
the late 1960s and early 1970s?
My answer:
Halliday has produced an extraordinarily large number of
genuinely insightful ideas, but no one - not even Michael
Halliday – can get everything right the first time!
Advances in Linguistics, as in any other science, proceed by a
combination of
1innovatory ideas and
2 testing, revising, evaluating, re-testing, re-revising, etc.
Halliday’s role is clear and his reputation secure; he is
the most innovatory - and so greatest – of living linguists.
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So the major difference between the SG and the CG is the
double claim that
1 there is a higher system network, above the networks for
TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME, etc, and
2 that having this additional level is the best way to explain the the
set of phenomena that Halliday groups together under the
umbrella heading of ‘grammatical metaphor’.
The concept of ‘grammatical metaphor’ was a valuable contribution
to linguistics, in that it drew attention to an understudied set of
phenomena that require:
(a) modelling in the overall architecture of language and its use
(a synchronic description) and, if possible,
(b) an explanation of how they arose
(a diachronic description).
(This was part of Halliday’s ‘second set of major insights’.)
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The proposal is set out most fully in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).
Many questions about this proposal remain to be answered, e.g.:
1 What would these new system networks be like?
(So far we have only fragments of description in
Halliday & Matthiessen 1999 and Hasan’s writings.)
2 How do the higher networks predetermine choices in
the lower one?
3 Is the enormously greater complexity of the new
model justified?
AND, most important of all….
4 Are there alternative ways of dealing with these
‘problems’? And, if so .…
5 What are they?
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So what is the status of the ‘two levels of meaning’ proposal,
from the viewpoint of linguistics as a science?
An interesting hypothesis - but only that.
So, if there are other possible solutions to the problem,
we should, as good scientists, explore them.
And there ARE other possible solutions.
We have explored one set in the Cardiff Grammar, AND
implemented many parts in the computer.
See Fawcett forthcoming 2009 for descriptions of some cases in
which a solution to the problem lies in a ‘higher planning’
component.
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An example of how to get rid of ONE of the ‘problems’ to
which ‘grammatical metaphor’ is the supposed solution
(from Invitation)
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A semantic system network for MOOD (Figure 11.1)
SYST EM NET WORK
SYNT AX
EXAMPLES
99%
simple giver ...
S O Ivy will eat it.
1%
or S M Ivy ate it.
plus confirmation
seeker ...
A filled by Cl,
O S ..., didn't she?
98%
giver
38%
polarity seeker
98%
information
MOOD
1.4%
OS
Did Ivy eat it?
60%
seeker new content seeker O S What did Ivy eat?
or S O Who will eat it?
2%
or S M Who ate it?
choice of alternative
contents seeker O S Did Ike or Ivy eat it?
0.2%
confirmation seeker
O + n't S
Didn't Ivy eat it?
0.1%
exclamation ...
0.3%
SO
or S M
How kind she is!
What a lot he ate!
(others)
NB 'O' represents O or O/X or O/M
.
2%
proposal for action .... (to Figure 11-2)
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A semantic system network for MOOD (Figure 11.2)
SYSTEM NETWORK
SYN TAX E XAMP LES
55%
90%
(from
Figure 11-1)
90%
simple ... (S) Eat it! You eat it!
directive
45%
by
addressee
request ... O S Can/Could/Will/W ould
you eat it?
10%
proposal
for action
suggestion ...
O S Couldn't you eat it?
O S W hy don't you eat it?
5%
by self and addressee ...
O S Shall we eat it?
or L S Let's (all) eat it!
60%
5%
offer ...
by self
40%
O S Shall I eat it (for you)?
permission-seeker ...O S Can/May I eat it?
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A summary of the problem
1
2
3
In the 1970s, Halliday’s writings seemed to support first one
interpretation, then another, of the concept that system networks
should model choices between meanings.
(We should not blame him for this; it was an honest reflection of his
current thinking at the time.)
In the 1980s and 1990s he increasingly writes in a way that assumes
(i) that there is a higher level of system networks,
(ii) that this is ‘the semantics’, and
(iii) that the networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME etc are
therefore at the level of form.
Most Sydney grammarians appear to accept the new ‘two levels of
meaning’ model described in Halliday & Matthiessen 1999
uncritically (but not Martin, for experiential meaning).
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4
In the Cardiff Grammar, we are testing exciting
alternative ways of handling the ‘grammatical metaphor
phenomena’ - with good results.
Conclusions
1 Halliday’s adoption of ‘two levels of meaning’ model
creates a major difference between the Sydney Grammar
and the Cardiff Grammar.
The Cardiff Grammar has just ONE level of meaning
AND
it can handle the ‘grammatical metaphor phenomena’.
2 It will take time to resolve this issue.
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An example: towards a coming together of views?
Consider the history of the system network for TRANSITIVITY:
In the early 1960s, Halliday’s TRANSITIVITY network was at the
level of form (concerning the number of Complements, etc).
By the 1970s it had been fundamentally changed: it concerned
Participant Roles, etc, and he explicitly describes it as ‘semantic’.
In the 1990s the same system network is being treated as part of
the lexicogrammar – all of which is now at the level of form.
So is the TRANSITIVITY network part of semantics or part of
form?
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Halliday’s two answers:
1 In terms of the architecture of language, Halliday places it
at the level of form.
2 But in his 1994 ‘Introduction’ to IFG he describes the
lexicogrammar in IFG as having been
‘pushed fairly far’ ... ‘in the direction of the semantics’.
(Halliday 1994: xix)
Conclusions
1 I think the second answer, based on the nitty gritty
experience of descriptive work, is nearer the mark.
2 This would mean that the positions of the SG and the CG
are less far apart than is suggested by the widespread
assumptions (in the SG world) about the status of the
higher network for ‘semantics’ (still under-developed).
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Summary
The Cardiff Model –Why did it come into existence?
1 How I came into Linguistics and then into SFL,
2 The group of researchers in CLU at Cardiff University,
3 Halliday’s five revolutionary insights of the early 1970s a turning point in the history of Linguistics,
4 the main difference between the Cardiff and the Sydney
Grammars:
the Cardiff Grammar has one level of system networks
(at the level of meaning)
the Sydney grammar has two levels of system networks
(one at the level of meaning and one at the level of form).
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Where do we go next?
We have surveyed the the eight factors that led to developments in
the Cardiff Grammar 1970-2010.
But not the developments themselves - a major task!
What exactly were the developments?
1 one major one: confirmation of Halliday’s five 1970s insights
2 the detailed proposals:
(a) developments in lexicogrammar:
(i) next session: a workshop on using the CG functional
syntax for text analysis (so some of the developments!)
(ii) Invitation and the other books and resources
(b) developments in the overall architecture
Alternative Architectures for SFL
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We who work in the framework of the Cardiff Model
accept most - but not all - of what we have inherited from
our teacher, Michael Halliday.
Some things we have replaced.
This is because, in science, new evidence leads to new or
modified descriptions, and sometimes to a modification of
the theory.
For the modifications that contribute to the theory of
syntax that is required in a SFG for the twenty-first
century, see Fawcett 2000/2010 – now out in paperback –
so more affordable!
Only one thing is certain – that our current models will be
subject to further improvements in the future!
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