Martin (2013: 78):
Blogger Comments:
[1] Again, here Martin misconstrues looking 'from above' as looking 'above' ("up"), and misleads by using this misinterpretation to claim that it is important to look at his discourse semantics, since it may be a rich source of interpreting grammatical structure.
[2] This misunderstands the significance of Halliday's observation of the natural relation between grammatical form and meaning — a relation which is not accommodated by Martin's discourse semantics. Halliday (1985: xvii, xviii, xix):
The relation between the meaning and the wording is not, however, an arbitrary one: the form of the grammar relates naturally to the meanings that are being encoded. A functional grammar is designed to bring this out; it is a study of wording, but one that interprets the wording by reference to what it means. …
What this means is that both the general kinds of grammatical pattern that have evolved in language, and the specific manifestations of each kind, bear a natural relation to the meanings they have evolved to express. … the distinction into word classes of verb and noun reflects the analysis of experience into goings-on, expressed as verbs, and participants in the goings-on, expressed as nouns; and so on. …
… the relation of grammar to semantics is in this sense natural, not arbitrary …
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