Martin (1992: 338):
It [this chapter] has also attempted to renovate (point (iii) above) linguists' interpretation of grammar and meaning by configuring the grammar as Agent in a material process with meaning as the Medium produced: grammar makes meaning (cf. learning how to mean, making meaning, meaning making resource etc.).
Blogger Comments:
[1] Here a statement about how the theorist has gone about modelling language is presented as an example of a relation in the model itself (i.e. realisation).
[2] In 'point (iii) above', A realises B is interpreted as A reconstitutes B, which is, in turn, glossed as A continually renovates B. In such an interpretation, the intensive identifying process of A realises B:
A
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realises
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B
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Token
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Process: relational: intensive: symbol
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Value
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is misconstrued as an assigned attributive relational process:
A
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continually
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renovates (‘makes new’)
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B
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Agent/Attributor
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Manner: quality
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Process: relational: attributive: intensive
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Range/Attribute
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Medium/Carrier
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In SFL theory, instead of characterising realisation, this is more a statement about the relation between the instance and the system: the notion that in logogenesis, through instantiation, each instance alters system probabilities. Halliday (2008: 119):
Each instance minutely perturbs the probabilities of the system. Any part of the system may remain stable over long periods of time; but the system as a whole is metastable: it persists by continually evolving within its overall eco-social environment.
Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 555)
Historical change in language is typically a quantitative process, in which probabilities in systems at every level are gradually nudged in one direction or another, now and again becoming categorical so that some systemic upheaval takes place. Each instantiation of a tense form, say, whenever someone is speaking or writing in English, minutely perturbs the probabilities of the system …
[3] This continues the confusion of semogenesis (making meaning) with stratification (realising meaning) — a confusion which makes Martins' model of stratification theoretically untenable.
stratification: intensive identifying relational process
grammar
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realises
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meaning
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Token
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Process: relational: intensive: symbol
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Value
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semogenesis: creative abstract material process
grammar
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makes
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meaning
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Agent
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Process:
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Medium
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Actor
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material: creative
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Goal
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Note that this material process does not exemplify the relational process of 'point (iii) above'.
