Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

Systemic grammar
This article is best read in conjunction with the article on SCALE AND CATEGORY
GRAMMAR. In systemic grammar, the notion of the system, as used in
M.A.K.Halliday’s earlier model, is no longer seen as a single set of choices available at a
particular place in structure; now (Butler, 1985, p. 40):
we find the paradigmatic patterning of language described in terms of sets
of systems, or system ‘networks’, operating with a particular rank of unit,
and sometimes a particular class of a given rank, as their ‘point of origin’.
Certain system networks are selected from a clause rank, others operate at
the nominal class of the unit group, and so on.
The notion of the network of systems obviously indicates that there are interrelations
between the various systems. So choices from within one system may co-occur with
choices from within other systems, in one of two ways: either the choices made are
independent of each other, in which case the systems are simultaneous and unordered
with respect to each other; or a choice made from within one system implies certain
choices from within other systems, in which case the systems are dependent on each
other, and hierarchically ordered (Halliday, 1966a/Kress, 1976, p. 92):
So for example the system whose terms are declarative/interrogative
would be hierarchically ordered with respect to the system
indicative/imperative, in that selection of either of the features declarative
and interrogative implies selection of indicative.
A simplified system network for the English clause might look like Figure 1 (from
Halliday, 1966a/Kress 1976, p. 93). The change from system of structure to paradigmatic
system network is made possible in this model because the systemic relations, as well as
the structural relations, are now described in terms of delicacy. A more delicate
description of an indicative clause will show that it is of the type interrogative; a more
delicate statement about the interrogative clause is that it is of the yes/no type; and so on.
The description of paradigmatic patterns in terms of system networks allows Halliday
to deal, in his own way, with deep grammar (ibid., pp. 93–4):
Systemic description may be thought of as complementary to structural
description, the one concerned with paradigmatic and the other with
syntagmatic relations. On the other hand it might be useful to consider
some possible consequences of regarding systemic description as the
underlying form of representation, if it turned out that the structural
description could be shown to be derivable from it. In that case structure