Cognitive Semantics : Meaning and Cognition

46 PETER HARDER
semantics is incomplete has to do with the situational and interactive aspects
of meaning. The type of meaning, that is, the type of dependence, described by
Langacker is not the only one that plays a role in language: it accounts for
distinctions and relations between aspects of a conceived world, not between
aspects of a communicative utterance. Before elaborating on this criticism, we
shall look at the syntactic model I would like to base my own account on.
6. Meaning and layered clause structure in Functional Grammar
Inspired by Foley and Van Valin (1984), Functional Grammar (FG) as practiced
by Simon Dik and associates (Dik 1989; Hengeveld 1989, 1990) has
developed a theory of the clause in which the clause is seen as consisting of a
series of “layers” superimposed upon one another.
The notion of layering involves a central idea which can be illustrated by
a diagram of the earth cut in half. With reference to such a picture, the earth
can be described in a movement from the core outwards, such that each
successive layer contains the previous layer and adds something to it. The idea
is that complications can be described by successive additions to a nuclear
element that remains inside the superimposed layers. A central concept is the
“scope” relationship: “outer” layers take “inner” layers in their scope. Although
the term “operator” in the theory is reserved for grammatical as
opposed to lexical items, I shall use the distinction between “operator” and
“operand” for the relation that obtains as you move outward from an “inner”
layer (the “operand”) to the next higher element, which functions as an
“operator” that transforms the operand into a more complex, higher-level
entity.
Hengeveld (1990) provides a general introduction to the layered format
of description under the title “The Hierarchical Structure of Utterances”; but
the notion of layering is not identical to that of a hierarchy. Standard examples
of hierarchies include administrative organization in terms of departments
with subdepartments, giving rise to a chain of command with one head at the
top, executives who function as heads of their departments, and so on down to
the lowest tier of employees. The most obvious example of this in language is
traditional constituent structure; generative grammar, as also revealed in the
pervasive metaphor of regimentation (cf. the notions “command”, “government”
and “binding”), started off with a clearly hierarchical as opposed to a