Kazuhiro Teruya

University of New South Wales

Literacy of grammatical logic: logic as movement and as object

In this paper, literacy is investigated as a linguistic phenomenon. It compares and contrasts spoken language and written language within the domain of the logical metafunction where grammatical logic is constructed logico-semantically through open-ended series of clause complexes. Here these two different modes of language can be contrasted: “spoken language is language in flux” realized in the movement of continuous flow of meaning, whereas “written language is language in fix” realized “as object that is stable and bounded” (Halliday, 1990). The way in which logical meanings unfold in the course of production and analysis in speech and writing will be presented explicitly by means of a visual semiotic form of representation that allows us to capture the dynamic unfolding of clause complexes and to contrast the patterns of unfolding in speaking and writing. The paper also attempts to show how differences among languages in favoured sequences of unfolding — ‘progressive’, ‘regressive’ or mixture of the two (Matthiessen 2002, Teruya forthcoming) — can influence how the literacy of grammatical logic can be brought into our conscious knowledge of the grammar of both written and spoken language. Japanese and English will serve as languages of illustration.

References:

M.A.K. Halliday (1990) “Linguistic perspectives on literacy: a systemic-functional approach”, a paper presented to The Inaugural Australian Systemics Network Conference “Literacy in Social Processes”, Geelong, Victoria: Deakin University 18-21 January 1990.

M.A.K. Halliday (1984) “Spoken and written modes of meaning”, Comprehending oral and written language, R. Horowitz & S. Samuels (eds.), Academic Press.

Matthiessen, Christian. 1995. Lexicogrammatical cartography: English Systems, Tokyo: International Language Sciences Publishers.

Matthiessen, Christian. 2002. ‘Combining clauses into clause complexes: a multi-faceted view’, Complex sentences in grammar and discourse — essays in honor of Sandra A. Thompson, Joan Bybee and Michael Noonan (eds.), Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 235-319.

Teruya, Kazuhiro. forthcoming. Grammatical logic in Japanese: logical metafunction, unpublished manuscript, UNSW.