Bob, the point that Halliday makes is that you can't assume
the subject is the doer of the action. Thus, the analysis of
subject plus mood (in the predicate) and modality are treated
as "INTERPERSONAL meaning" -- meanings that have to do with
"arguability" "believability" "certainty" etc.

The analysis of actors and processes is one of (in SFG)
"EXPERIENTIAL meaning"

Perhaps I am too ready to assume the "understandability" of
this multi-functional description; although I am a far cry
from an expert, I have struggled with the theory long enough to
appreciate what it affords for me as a text analyst and as a
teacher of teachers of English -- though I must stress that
I don't teach SFG -- it informs my perspective on language and
how I introduce my students to 'how language works'


>I know of nothing in systemic functional grammar which explains why
>students
>have difficulty building up subject noun phrases.

There's quite a bit in SFG on nominalizations and other (in
SFG terms) "grammatical metaphors" that make the sorts of
meanings realized in built-up-noun-phrase-subjects relatively
strange especially to students whose parents don't talk
'school talk'

 If we take seriously
>the notion that the subject is an "actant," then it would seem that noun
>clauses
>functioning as a subject should be very difficult to create.  That noun
>clauses
>can be subjects of a clause can occur in some kinds of writing.

See my first point; I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you are arguing
here.

>Likewise, in the texts I have of SFG, the description of a sentence is
>very flat: subject; finite verb group; complement.  Given this
>description, I wonder why subject noun phrases are more problematic than
>other noun phrases elsewhere.

Which texts do you have? They are not ones that I have seen.

>
>If sentences don't have a "flat" structure, then there are explanations.
>
>Nobody, to my knowledge, argues that students do not need to think about
>how information is ordered in a text.  A central question that I have
>about
>SFG is whether it is claiming native speakers do not understand the
>theme-rheme/given-new information distinction is something that students
>don't already know.

I believe the argument is that "given-new" is signalled quite differently
in spoken language. "Theme-rheme" is a way of signalling something like
the same thing (but not exactly the same thing) in written language. I
know that, while I was a very good student in (most of) my schooling,
when I entered my doctoral program I found the discourse very difficult
to do, and when my attention was drawn to the ordering of information
in sentences, a HUGE lightbulp lit up and its flashes continue to
inform my choices as an academic writer.

>If students of all ages come to the class room knowing about this
>constraint on how they construct a text, then how do we explain apparent
>violations of how information is to be presented in a text?

As I said above, I don't believe that students do... Certainly my
(college level) students don't come to class knowing in a way that
they could use the knowing that information ordering in the sentence
is a resource for making texts.

>Perhaps, answering this last question is a central issue in teaching
>students about grammar.

I'm with you there.

Judy
>


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