14 quotes
The human sciences have to assume at least an equal responsibility in establishing the foundations of knowledge.
Michael Halliday (1987)
The theme is what is being talked about, the point of departure for the clause as message, and the speaker has within certain limits the option of selecting any element in the clause as thematic.
Foregrounding, as I understand it, is prominence that is motivated
p. 112 cited in: Laura Hidalgo-Downing (2000)
The interpersonal function [of language] is the function “to establish, maintain, and specify relations between members of societies”
p. xix cited in: Sanna-Kaisa Tanskanen (2010)
The grammatical system has … a functional input and a structural output; it provides the mechanism for different functions to be combined in one utterance
p. 35 cited in: Terence Odlin (1994)
It is part of the task of linguistics to describe texts, and all texts, including those prose or verse, which fall within any definition of literature and are accessible to analysis by the existing methods of linguistics.
What makes learning possible is that the coding imposed by the mother tongue corresponds to a possible mode of perception and interpretation of the environment. A green car can be analysed experientially as carness qualified by greenness, if that is the way the system works.
p. 140 cited in: Clare Painter (2005)
In the relative orientation of different social groups towards the various functions of language in given contexts and towards the different areas of meaning that may be explored within a given function
p. xiv cited in: Piet Van de Craen (2007)
[A register is constituted by] the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features - with particular values of the field, mode and tenor.
p. 22 cited in: Helen Leckie-Tarry (1998)
[interpersonal meaning] embodies all use of language to express social and personal relations, including all forms of the speaker's intrusion into the speech situation and the speech act.
p. 41 cited in: Sin-wai Chan (2004)
The text is a product in the sense that it is an output, something that can be recorded and studied, having a certain construction that can be represented in systematic terms. It is a process in the sense of a continuous process of semantic choice, a movement through the network of meaning potential, with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further set.
Michael Halliday (1985)
[Register] is set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meanings.
p. 23 cited in: Helen Leckie-Tarry (1998)
A child learning his [her] mother tongue is learning how to name; he [she] is building up a meaning potential in respect of a limited number of social functions. These functions [instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, and imaginative] constitute the semiotic environment of a very small child, and may be thought of as universals of human culture
Traditionally, grammar has always been a grammar of written language: and it has always been a product grammar" ['Product' is here used as one term of the Hjelmslevian pair process/product.] A process/product distinction is a relevant one for linguists because it corresponds to that between our experience of speech and our experience of writing: writing exists whereas speech happens.