Experience as Meaning: Cryptogrammar

Experiential Grammar in Systemic Functional Linguistics - Assumptions and challenges - Beatriz Quiroz

Beatriz Quiroz [+-]
Departamento de Ciencias del Lenguaje, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Beatriz is Assistant Professor at the Department of Language Sciences in the Faculty of Letters of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC-Chile), where she teaches and supervises undergraduate and postgraduate students in Linguistics. She completed her PhD at the University of Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Her current research, informed by Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), focuses on a metafunctionally integrated description of clause systems in Chilean Spanish, with special emphasis on the system-structure principle embodied by the theoretical dimension of axis. Other research interests include the interaction between lexicogrammar and discourse-semantics, and systemic functional language typology. Further details about her work and academic interests can be found at http://beatrizquiroz.weebly.com/

Description

This chapter focuses on the specificities and challenges posed by the account of grammatical categories that are relevant from an experiential point of view, particularly in relation to assumptions on their ‘covert’ nature. Taking again English as the main language around which this discussion has been put forward in SFL, the notions of agnation, cryptotypes and reactances are firstly examined in detail, drawing on a range of relevant conceptualisations on the configurational nature of meaningful grammatical categories (Firth’s system-structure principle, Gleason’s discussion on agnation and enation relations, Whorf’s view on covert categories, and Halliday’s ‘proportionalities’). The chapter then focuses on a more specific discussion on the complexity of configurationally-defined experiential categories in SFL (Davidse, 1991, 1998; Martin, 1996). Here, comparison with other functional frameworks dealing with the meaning of ‘constructions’ and/or with underlying ‘argument structure’ is brought into the discussion. The chapter finally addresses the discussion on the type of structure specifically associated with experiential resources, as well as a view on ‘degrees of participation’ (or ‘nuclearity’).

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Citation

Quiroz, Beatriz. Experience as Meaning: Cryptogrammar. Experiential Grammar in Systemic Functional Linguistics - Assumptions and challenges. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. Oct 2022. ISBN 9781781795668. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=31718. Date accessed: 06 Oct 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.31718. Oct 2022

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