Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar (1985a) outlines the grammar of English which realises the discourse semantics developed in English Text (for a very useful elaboration of this grammar, see Matthiessen 1992). As Matthiessen and Halliday (in press) point out, in functional linguistics semantics is naturally (not arbitrarily) related to grammar. It follows from this point that functional approaches to discourse systems and structures will be enriched to the extent that they are able to draw on comprehensive, semantically oriented grammars which interface in a responsible way with textual considerations. English Text evolved in tandem with the richest extant English grammar of this kind, as developed by Halliday, and later Matthiessen, in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Sydney.
For many linguists, the richness of Halliday and Matthiessen's grammar has appeared excessive (see for example Huddleston's (1988) dismissal of Halliday (1985a)). It is important to stress here however that what might appear extravagant from the point of view of "syntax" is more often than not fundamental to the point of parsimony from the perspective of discourse analysis (see Matthiessen (1989) for an alternative perspective on Halliday (1985a) and Matthiessen and Martin (1991) for a reply to Huddleston (1988)). English Text has been designed to complement in a solidary way a non-parsimonious grammar of this kind. It has been designed in other words to be grammatically responsible, interfacing with a grammar that is equally responsible to textual considerations.
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[1] This is misleading. Martin's discourse semantics is largely a rebranding of textual lexicogrammar (Halliday & Hasan's systems of COHESION), together with a rebranding of interpersonal semantics (Halliday's system of SPEECH FUNCTION). Moreover, even ignoring this, Martin provides no realisation statements specifying how features in his systems are realised in lexicogrammatical systems.
[2] To be clear, this point had already been made in Halliday (1985: xvii):
[3] To be clear, what Halliday means by this is that the relation between experiential meanings and grammatical forms is not arbitrary: process and verbal group, participant and nominal group, circumstance and adverbial group/prepositional phrase.
Martin, however, mistakes this to mean the relation between his discourse semantics and lexicogrammar interpreted 'by reference to what it means' (rather than grammatical forms).
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