Friday 10 March 2017

Constituency: Simplest & Prototypical Type Of Structure

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 85):
It is the segmental kind of structure, with clearly separated constituent parts organised into a whole, that has traditionally been taken as the norm in descriptions of grammar; the very concept of ‘structure’, in language, has been defined in constituency terms. This is partly because of the kind of meaning that is expressed in this way: experiential meaning has been much more fully described than meaning of the other kinds. But there is also another reason, which is that constituency is the simplest kind of structure, from which the other, more complex kinds can be derived; it is the natural one to take as prototypical — in the same way as digital systems are taken as the norm from which analogue systems can be derived, rather than the other way round.

Blogger Comment:

Really?