Misrepresenting Halliday On Mood And Misunderstanding Ineffability And Stratification [New]

Martin (1992: 31-2):

To begin, consider two central MOOD systems, which classify English clauses as three basic types of interact (Fig. 2.1):

 

… Feature by feature, the appropriate structural realisations are:

 

Traditionally, these systems and structures have come to be viewed as formal ones — the basic syntax of the English clause. Halliday (1984a, 1985a) on the other hand suggests that these systems and structures require a richer interpretation, beyond form, in spite of the fact that the content of the terms is less than transparent (largely because of their antiquity; see Halliday 1984b/1988 on the ineffability of linguistic categories). 

Rather, the systems engender two fundamental oppositions: information as opposed to goods and services (indicative vs imperative) and giving (declarative) as opposed to demanding (interrogative). He accordingly proposes a semantic perspective on the grammatical labels along the following lines, fleshing out the paradigm with an additional category which is not grammaticalised in MOOD at the very general level of delicacy outlined above (the Offer), as in Table 2.1.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, unacknowledged by Martin, this MOOD system and its structural realisations were originally devised by Halliday. For the full system, see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 162).

[2] This is misleading in two respects. On the one hand, because these systems and structures were devised by Halliday, they have not come to be viewed traditionally. On the other hand, Halliday's systems and structures have not come to be viewed as formal ones, since they model interpersonal functions of the English clause.

[3] This is misleading. Martin's juxtaposition of the 'adversative' on the other hand with Halliday reinforces the false impression that the MOOD system and its structural realisations were not originally devised by Halliday.

[4] On the one hand, this is misleading, since the MOOD system and its structural realisations are already "beyond form"; see [2]. On the other hand, the semantic interpretation of MOOD is not a "richer interpretation", but an interpretation at a higher level of symbolic abstraction. This is a foretaste of Martin's inability to understand stratification as levels of symbolic abstraction, as will demonstrated throughout this blog.

[5] To be clear, this is ineffable twaddle. By 'the ineffability of grammatical categories', Halliday (2002 [1984]: 303, 306) means that

The meaning of a typical grammatical category … has no counterpart in our conscious representation of things. … they do not correspond to any consciously accessible categorisation of our experience.

[6] To be clear, it is not so much that MOOD systems "engender" the SPEECH FUNCTION systems of COMMODITY (information v goods-&-services) and INITIATING ROLE (giving v demanding), but that selections of features in SPEECH FUNCTION systems on the stratum of semantics are realised selections of features in MOOD systems on the stratum of lexicogrammar.