INTRODUCTION TO THE LEXICO-GRAMMAR

The discourse-semantic stratum functions to enable context to be textured into a coherent and cohesive linguistic text. The experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning choices which express context in the text are turn realized through lexico-grammatical patterns: through the words and structures that speakers use. In the first chapter, the traffic lights were described as a two-level semiotic system, involving a level of content realized through a level of expression. The lexico-grammatical level was described simply as an intermediate level of linguistic coding. We must consider in more detail what the function of this level is. What, for example, does it allow us to do in language that we cannot do with a two-level semiotic system like the traffic lights?

If we wish to extend the system so that we can mean more things (for example, we want to add the meaning “REVERSE” to the system), we will have to find a new light to stand for this meaning.
For each new content is we must invent a new expression. For example we could introduce a pink light to encode this new meaning, giving us system:

Reverse                                               PINK

Stop                                                     RED

Slow down                                          AMBER

Go                                                       GREEN

 Content          encoded in                 expression

(Meaning)        (Realized in)                (Realization)

Thus it seems that traffic light system has a very significant drawback: its creative potential is limited. It cannot mean much, and it cannot mean many new things.

However, with the semiotic system of language, we want to make many many more meaning than that. In fact, the amazing demand we make of language is that we want to use it to mean anything at all. Language meets this demand, in that it has an unlimited Creative potential. That is:

·         Language allows us to mean new things: you can say things no one has ever said before; and you have no trouble understanding things that you have never hears before. So, while you could never hope to have heard every sentence it is possible to say in English, you will have no difficulty understanding any English sentence said to you (provided it conforms to the conventions of the system of English).

·         Language allows us to mean anything: it is very rare that, as a speaker of a language, you would come to a point where all of a sudden you cannot make the meanings you want to because the system is too limited. (When this dos sometimes happen, it is often because we are overcome with emotion or because we want to talk about ideas or beliefs which, being new to the culture, have not yet been “encoded” within the language)

In such a system, every time we wanted to make a new meaning we would have to invent a new word. The situation would nit be very different from the one we just reviewed: the obvious problems of memory and distinguish-ability again arise.

What makes language different is it has an intermediate level of lexico-grammar, what we more informally refer to simply as the grammatical level. The function of this grammatical level is to free language from the constraint of bi-uniqueness. The effect of this freedom from bi-uniqueness is that language can take a finite number of expression units 9sounds) to realize an infinite number of contents (meaning). Thus, in language we use finite means to realize infinite ends.

Part, then, of what lexico-grammar does for language is to give it a creative potential: a way of creating new meanings, by inventing new signs which then get incorporated into the lexico-grammar of the language, by simply arranging existing signs in different ways, or by using structure in typical ways.There are two preliminary observations that we can make of this level of lexico-grammar. The first is that we find a number of different kinds of units. The second is that these units are related to each other through constituency.

Table 5.2. Units and criteria of graphological expression (rank scale of the graphological stratum) p.124

Units	Criteria used to identify units
Paragraph Sentence Comma-unit Word letter	Double spacing Full stop Comma Spaces Small spaces

When we arrange the units of graphological expression plane in this way, it become obvious that the units are related to each other through constituency: some units are bigger than units, and each unit is made up of one or more of the units below.

Table 5.4. Initial list of content units

Content units	Orthographic signals
Text Sentence (largest) Clause Group/ phrase Word Morpheme	Paragraph Capital letter/ full stop Comma (often colon, semi-colon) Comma Spacing No signal (except that we tend to break words at morpheme boundaries when we need to hyphenate at the end of a line)

Grammars that impose moral judgments, that view grammar in terms of right and wrongs, dos or don’ts, are prescriptive grammars. An account of how we should speak is a perspective or normative grammar. Such a grammar is interesting to linguists not for what it tells us about the facts of language, but for what it tells us about the values and prejudices of society at a given time.

Reference:

Eggins, Suzzanne, 1994, An Introduction to systemic Functional Lingustics.Printer Publisher Ltd. United Kingdom. P: 114-145.