Group 2:

1. Dwi Wanda Septiyanti (119060027)

2. Deni Ramdani (119060069)
3. LilisSugiarti (119060083)
Class: 2C
Intro to SFL Meet 5 – Chapter Review

Introduction to the Lexico-Grammar

Semantics and lexico grammar
Adding new contents and simultaneous meaning.
In the text I have caught several points, namely the ponint of a symbol or thing that has a
different field and is represented by a unique symbol. for example, such as a traffic light
symbol, red lamou means stop, yellow means getting ready, and green means it is allowed to
walk. according to this meaning we can enter new content in things that were not there
before, for example if I make a pink symbol I will give a special sign of the action that must
be taken. in entering new content into things that were not there before, it must have
sufficient meaning to bear this symbol.
The demands we make of language.
Meaning in a language has very important uses. Separate meanings can have different
meanings if the understanding in the discussion is still not mastered, but if we master the
understanding of a language meaning we can look for different meanings in symbols or
words that can be judged from different views or different points of understanding , if we
understand what the meaning in a language is, we can create a symbol in the meaning of the
word and it is very useful for overall language mastery.
Principles of grammatical analysis: units and constituency
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.
Units Criteria used to identify units
Paragraph Double spacing
Sentence Full stop
Comma-unit Comma
Word Spaces
letter Small spaces
  A ranked constituent analysis or Rank Scale
Constituent → Units at each level are made up of one or more of the units at the level below.
Ranked → Organized in terms of biggest to smallest.
 A ranked constituent analysis, or rank scale, indicates that the letter is the ultimate
constituent of writing, it is the smallest unit here.
Establishing the constitution hierarchy for the lexico-grammar is an important first step in
examining grammatical structure.
constituents of the content plane
In establishing the rank scale of lexico-grammar, consider language as meaning or content,
not expression. The largest and the smallest units of meaning that we can distinguish is the
text as a whole is a semantic unit which is constituted of a number of different-sized units of
meaning and in a passage, there are the meaningful units ranging from largest to smallest.
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 Paragraph
Sentence Capital letter/ full stop
(largest)
Comma (often colon, semi-colon)
Clause
Comma
Group/ phrase
Spacing
Word
No signal (except that we tend to break words at morpheme
Morpheme boundaries when we need to hyphenate at the end of a line)

Grammatical constituents: the rank scale

Since text does not belong in the lexico-grammatical rank scale and sentences cannot
represent both written and spoken expressions, we need to establish again the rank scale at
the lexico-grammatical stratum in systemic approach.
Grammatical description is limited by two general characteristic:
1. it relates kerns of the same kind to each other (e.g.clauses to clauses, words to words,
phrases to phrases, etc.) 
2. it relates items that are adjacent, or nearly adjacent, to each other.  
At clause rank the kind of structures we find are those of participants carrying out actions in
relation to other participants and situated in time or space.
Clause and clause complexes are on the same rank because the relationship between clauses
in clause complexes is not a constituency relationship, but logical structure, relationship of
interdependence. Although each unit on the rank scale relates to the other units through the
constituency, we have to keep each unit distinct because each carries patterns of a different
kind, and each unit requires a different structural description.
The techniques in Describing Structure which are Made up of Grammatical Constituent
Bracketing
To this point, we have suggested the purpose of a grammar: to make infinite meanings from
finite expression units, and to make meanings simultaneously. Involves taking the largest
grammatical constituent then dividing it into the units which make it up at each rank.
Graphical presentations in the form of brackets of tree diagrams. Minimal bracketing analysis
involves taking the largest grammatical constituent (in our rank scale, this is theclause)and
then progressively dividing the clause into the units which make it up at each rank (i.e. first
phrases/groups, then words, then morphemes). By this procedure, each constituent is shown
to be made up of one or more of the constituents of the lower rank, until the ultimate
constituents of the grammatical stratum (morphemes) are reached. That is: 
1. First, the clause is bracketed into the phrases/groups which make it up 
2. then, each group/phrase is bracketed into the words that make it up 
In dividing a clause into its constituents, you need to be able to decide just when a particular
phrase or group is operating at the clause rank, and when it is operating at the phrase/group
rank. There are a number of tests you can use: 
1. movability: if an element is a clause rank constituent, it is likely to be independently
movable.
2. substitution: elements which are acting together as a single clause constituent should be
reducible to a single substituted item.
3. probe questions: constituents at clause rank will 'answer' to a range of probe questions. 
Embedding or rank shift.
The case of the prepositional phrase considered above highlights one of the main
complexities that bracketing can reveal, one that is important in understanding the structure
of clauses. A way of boosting the content of a clause by exploiting the clause’s potential to
recycle through the ranks. Sometimes a clause constituent seems to be a complex structure in
itself, so this technique deals with bracketing of clause complex including embedded clauses.
Systemic analysts would argue that clauses in such sequences (and sequences can be of any
number of clauses) are not in a constituent relationship (neither clause is a part of the other
clause), but they are in a logical relationship: each clause is in an (inter-)dependency
relationship with the other. 
Labelling
Bracketing on its own is a very limited tool in grammatical analysis as it does not really tell
us anything more about the structure. Labelling more powerful techniques in describing
grammatical structure than the previous technique. By attaching labels to nodes of our
structural trees so that the bracketing becomes more useful. Kinds of labelling.
1. Formal (Up) 
 Classifying item in terms of class membership
 At word rank, sometimes referred to as the parts of speech.
2. Functional (Down)
 Classifying item in terms of its role
 Function labels tell what grammatical function an item is performing relative to the
whole. 
Multifunctionality of clause constituents
The lexico-grammar enables us to mean more than one thing at the time. In nearly all cases
the constituents of the clause are playing more than one functional role at a time. The
systemic approach that seeks to describe these distinct levels of functional organization is
considered as multifuncional approach to language.
As a result, in clause analysis, there are three sets of functional labels to describe clause
structure, to reveal how the clause is a simultaneous realization of ideational, interpersonal
textual meaning.
The notion of Subject is really a fusion of three different functional roles. In fact Halliday and
Matthiessen (2004: 53-62) identifies three different types of 'subjects': 
1. The psychological subject; the psychological subject is the constituent which is 'the
concern of the message' (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 55), the information that is the
'point of departure' for the message. Halliday uses the functional label THEME to refer to this
psychological subject. 
2. the grammatical subject: the grammatical subject is the constituent 'of which something is
predicated' (ibid.), the constituent we can argue about. Halliday retains the term SUBJECT to
refer to this grammatical subject, 
3. the logical subject: the logical subject is the constituent which is the 'doer of the action', the
constituent that actually carries out the process. Halliday uses the ACTOR to refer to this
logical subject.
Descriptive grammar and the notion of 'appropriacy'
Grammars that impose moral judgements, that view grammar in terms of rights and wrongs,
do's and don'ts, are prescriptive grammars. An account of how we should speak is a
prescriptive or normative grammar. Such 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.
The kind of grammars linguists write a descriptive grammars. A descriptive grammar makes
no judgements about the goodness/badness, tightness/wrongness of language use. A
descriptive grammar is an account of how speakers actually use the language. Linguists are
not interested in making judgements about whether people should or shouldn't use particular
structures. They simply describe the grammar that enables language users to do what they do.
A descriptive grammar does this by making statements and assessments not about good/bad,
right/wrong, but about appropriacy or inappropriacy. Degree of appropriacy is assessed not in
terms of arbitrary blanket statements about inflexible grammatical rules, but as statements
about grammar as a set of choices for use in context. Some choices are appropriate in certain
contexts, but inappropriate in others. Part of what the grammar has to do is to specify the
contextual dimensions of appropriacy for different choices.
The kind of grammatical description will be exploring allows us to make statements about the
appropriateness of certain linguistic choices given the context of their use. It is a grammar by
which we can relate the system of all possible choices (the total grammatical potential of a
language) to the grammatical choices made when language is used within a particular context
(how the potential is actualized in specific contexts of use).