At 11:58 PM 2/10/99 -0600, you wrote:
>Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>
>> I'm not sure what you mean... Does your question have a function
>> other than its function as a question? (yes -- it functions in
>> relation to the rest of the text is some way[s])
>
>So, the form of a particular utterance does not necessarily predict its
>actual function.
>If that is the case, then besides making us dizzy, what does an SFG
>analysis get us?
>
>> I'm not sure what you mean by "the underlying subjects and objects of
>> a particular verb" -- you mean the sorts of subjects and objects that a
>> particular verb can take?
>
>Consider the following pairs.
>
>        a) Bob likes the decision to acquit the President
>        b) The decision pleases Bob.
>
>Isn't Bob the experiencer of the particular emotion (liking and
>pleasing) in both 1 and 2?  However, Bob does not have the same
>grammatical function
>in both sentences.  How does SFG handle this?  I can't figure it out.

        SFG defines "grammar" differently. That's its point.
        The grammar of a language is described as three simultaneous
        ("metafunctional") systems. So Bob is the experiencer in both
        sentences. SFG would say that the "ideational metafunction" of
        grammar is realized in the same way (as "Bob") in
        both sentences. However, both "subject" (considered
        as part of the interpersonal metafunction of grammar)
        and "first position" or sentence theme (considered as part of
        the textual metafunction of grammar) are different for the 2 sentences.

        SFG describes grammar as a system that evolved to serve
        these different functions.

        And it correlates the metafunctions of the (lexico)grammatical
        system with the sorts of environmental pressures that the system
        has responded to (the "field" "tenor" and "mode" dimensions of
        register)

>> It takes many many instances of "parole" for
>> there to be a "langue" -- not that parole comes first -- they grow up
together,
>> but they grow at different 'time depths'.
>
>That, I think, is demonstrably false.  We have knowledge about "langue"
>(competence) that
>cannot possibly be predicted by "parole" (actual utterances that we have
>heard).

        That would not disprove my point, though.
>
>Consider the following example with a verb you have never thought about,
>and may not have ever heard.
>
>As every adult native speaker of the language knows, the past tense form
>of the verb stand is stood.  In fact, there are some compounds with
>stand, withstand and understand, where the past tense form is withstood
>and understood.
>
>We all know what a grandstander is.  He is someone who grandstands.
>
>What form of grandstand do you use in the following sentence?
>
>Last night I saw Dennis Rodman.  He grandstanded/*grandstood too much.
>
>Are your intuitions like mine?  I find grandstood decidedly odd and
>grandstanded a clear preference.  I strongly suggest this intuition is
>shared by all native speakers.
>
>If your representation of SFG is right, that should not be the case.  In
>fact, it should be just the opposite when we consider what we have heard
>all of our lives.  How does SFG explain this?

        SFG does not presuppose that children learn only the language, exactly
        the language, that they have heard or spoken. That's a strawperson
        argument from the Chomsky school. I didn't mean to suggest anything
        like that, but I'm not sure that I have the language at this point
        to explain better what I mean. I will work at it though.

>I could go on with any number of examples of judgments about structures
>you have never heard, yet we, as native speakers of English would all
>agree, are the same.  Such agreement is not predicted by the claim that
>langue and parole "grow up together".  Parole/performance ALWAYS
>underdetermines what our underlying langue/competence is.

                No argument there. But there is still interaction between
               spoken language and knowledge of language in a growing
                child (ontologically) and in a growing people (phylogenetically)





>Bob Yates
>


Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
Graduate School of Education
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
10 Seminary Place
New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183

Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake