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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.

— Michael Halliday p. 140 cited in: Clare Painter (2005)

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More quotes by Michael Halliday

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)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Michael Halliday (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.