(Ebook) The Development of Language: Functional

Perspectives on Species and Individuals by Geoff

Williams, Annabelle Lukin ISBN 9780826457585,
9780826488787, 0826457584, 0826488781 Pdf Download

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-development-of-language-
functional-perspectives-on-species-and-individuals-1365540

★★★★★
4.7 out of 5.0 (74 reviews )

Instant PDF Download

ebooknice.com
 (Ebook) The Development of Language: Functional Perspectives
on Species and Individuals by Geoff Williams, Annabelle
Lukin ISBN 9780826457585, 9780826488787, 0826457584,
0826488781 Pdf Download

EBOOK

Available Formats

■ PDF eBook Study Guide Ebook

EXCLUSIVE 2025 EDUCATIONAL COLLECTION - LIMITED TIME

INSTANT DOWNLOAD VIEW LIBRARY

Here are some recommended products for you. Click the link to
download, or explore more at ebooknice.com

(Ebook) Biota Grow 2C gather 2C cook by Loucas, Jason; Viles,

James ISBN 9781459699816, 9781743365571, 9781925268492,
1459699815, 1743365578, 1925268497

https://ebooknice.com/product/biota-grow-2c-gather-2c-cook-6661374

(Ebook) Matematik 5000+ Kurs 2c Lärobok by Lena Alfredsson, Hans

Heikne, Sanna Bodemyr ISBN 9789127456600, 9127456609

https://ebooknice.com/product/matematik-5000-kurs-2c-larobok-23848312

(Ebook) SAT II Success MATH 1C and 2C 2002 (Peterson's SAT II

Success) by Peterson's ISBN 9780768906677, 0768906679

https://ebooknice.com/product/sat-ii-success-math-1c-and-2c-2002-peterson-
s-sat-ii-success-1722018

(Ebook) Master SAT II Math 1c and 2c 4th ed (Arco Master the SAT
Subject Test: Math Levels 1 & 2) by Arco ISBN 9780768923049,
0768923042

https://ebooknice.com/product/master-sat-ii-math-1c-and-2c-4th-ed-arco-
master-the-sat-subject-test-math-levels-1-2-2326094
(Ebook) Cambridge IGCSE and O Level History Workbook 2C - Depth
Study: the United States, 1919-41 2nd Edition by Benjamin
Harrison ISBN 9781398375147, 9781398375048, 1398375144,
1398375047
https://ebooknice.com/product/cambridge-igcse-and-o-level-history-
workbook-2c-depth-study-the-united-states-1919-41-2nd-edition-53538044

(Ebook) The Language of Money: Proverbs and Practices by

Annabelle Mooney ISBN 9781138219236, 1138219231

https://ebooknice.com/product/the-language-of-money-proverbs-and-
practices-14458884

(Ebook) The Education of d/Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children:

Perspectives on Language and Literacy Development by Peter V
Paul (editor) ISBN 9783039281244, 9783039281251, 3039281240,
3039281259
https://ebooknice.com/product/the-education-of-d-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-
children-perspectives-on-language-and-literacy-development-36373636

(Ebook) Advances in the Spoken-Language Development of Deaf and

Hard-of-Hearing Children (Perspectives on Deafness) by Patricia
Elizabeth Spencer, Marc Marschark ISBN 9780195179873,
9781423734925, 0195179870, 1423734920
https://ebooknice.com/product/advances-in-the-spoken-language-development-
of-deaf-and-hard-of-hearing-children-perspectives-on-deafness-1973614

(Ebook) Virtue at work. Ethics for individuals, managers, and

organizations by Moore, Geoff ISBN 9780198793441, 0198793448

https://ebooknice.com/product/virtue-at-work-ethics-for-individuals-
managers-and-organizations-5894394
 The Development of Language:
Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals
Open Linguistics Series
Series Editor: Robin Fawcett, Cardiff Unive
The series is 'open' in two related ways. First, it is not confined to works associated with any
one school of linguistics. For almost two decades the series has played a significant role in
establishing and maintaining the present climate of 'openness' in linguistics, and we intend
to maintain this tradition. However, we particularly welcome works which explore the nature
and use of language through modelling its potential for use in social contexts, or through a
cognitive model of language - or indeed a combination of the two.
The series is also 'open' in the sense that it welcomes works that open out 'core' linguistics
in various ways: to give a central place to the description of natural texts and the use of
corpora; to encompass discourse 'above the sentence'; to relate language to other semiotic
systems; to apply linguistics in fields such as education, language pathology and law; and to
explore the areas that lie between linguistics and its neighbouring disciplines such as
semiotics, psychology, sociology, philosophy, and cultural and literary studies.
Continuum also publishes a series that offers a forum for primarily functional descriptions
of languages or parts of languages - Functional Descriptions of Language. Relations bet
linguistics and computing are covered in the Communication in Artificial Intelligence serio
series, Advances in Applied Linguistics and Communication in Public Life, publish books p
linguistics, and the series Modern Pragmatics in Theory and Practice publishes both soci
cognitive perspectives on the making of meaning in language use. We also publish a range of
introductory textbooks on topics in linguistics, semiotics and deaf studies.

Recent titles in this serie

Construing Experience throu gh Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition,AM.A.K. Hall
and Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen
Culturally Speaking: Managin g Rapport through Talk across Cultures,eHelen Spencer-Oatey (e
Educating Eve: The 'Language Instinct' Debate, Geoffrey Sampsn
Empirical Linguistics, Geoffrey Sampson
Genre and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School, Frances Christie andR
Martin (eds)
The Intonation Systems of English, Paul Tench
Language Policy in Britain and France: The Processes of Policy, Denniser
Language Rel ations across Bering Strait: Reappraising the Archaeological and Linguistic Eviden
Michael Fortescue
Learning thro ugh Language in Early Childhood, Clare Paint
Multimodal Discourse Analysis, Kay L. O'Halloran (ed.
Pedagogy and t he Shaping of Consciousness: Linguistic and Social Processes, Frances Christie )
Register Analys is: Theory and Practice, Mohsen Ghadessy (e
Relations and Fu nctions within and around Language, Peter H. Fries, Michael Cummings, David
Lockwood and Will iam Spruiell (eds)
Researching Langua ge in Schools and Communities: Functional Linguistic Perspectives, Len Unsw
(ed.)
Summary Justice: Judges Address Juries, Paul Robertsha
Syntactic Analysis and Description: A Constructional Approach, aDavid G. Lockwo
Thematic Developments in English Texts, Mohsen Ghadessy (ed
The Signifying Body. Meaning, Embodiment, and Consciousness, PaulJ. Thibau
Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning. Selected Papers of Ruqaiya Hasan, Carmen Cloran, David But
and Geoffrey Williams (eds)
Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology, Howard Jacks
and Etienne Ze Amvela
Working with Discourse: Meaning beyond the Clause, J.R. Martin and David Re
The Development of Language:
Functional Perspectives on Species and Individuals

in
Edited by Geoff Williams and Annabelle Lukin

continuum
L O N D O N • N E W Y O R K
CONTINUUM
The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX
80 Maiden Lane, Suite 704, New York, NY 10038
First published 2004
This paperback edition published 2006
© Geoff Williams, Annabelle Lukin and Contributors 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any infor-
mation storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 0-8264-5758-4 (hardback)
ISBN: 0-8264-8878-1 (paperback)

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress
Typeset by Fakenham Photosetting Limited
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts
Contents

1. Emerging Language 1
Annabelle Lukin and Geoff Williams

2. On Grammar as the Driving Force from Primary to Higher-order

Gonsciousness 15
M.A.K. Halliday

3. The Evolution of Language: A Systemic Functional Exploration of

Phylogenetic Phases 45
Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen

4. Language, Apes and Meaning-Making 91

Jared P. Taglialatela, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Duane M. Rumbaugh,
James Benson and William Greaves

5. Agency, Individuation and Meaning-making: Reflections on an

Episode of Bonobo-Human Interaction 112
PaulJ. Thibault

6. The 'Interpersonal First' Principle in Child Language Development 137

Clare Painter

7. The World in Words: Semiotic Mediation, Tenor and Ideology 158

Ruqaiya Hasan

8. Two Forms of Human Language 182

Russell Meares and Gavin Sullivan

9. Changing the Rules, Changing the Game: A Sociocultural Perspective

on Second Language Learning in the Classroom 196
Pauline Gibbons

10. How our Meanings Change: School Contexts and Semantic Evolution 217
David G. Butt

11. Ontogenesis and Grammatics: Functions of Metalanguage in

Pedagogical Discourse 241
Geoff Williams

Index 269
This page intentionally left blank
1 Emerging Language
Annabelle Lukin and Geoff Williams

This book presents functional perspectives on language development in

relation to two significant time scales: language development in evolu-
tionary time (phylogenesis) and language development in the lifetime of
an individual (ontogenesis). Both are processes of 'emerging language'.
They are distinct processes, but the general argument of this book is that
they are also related in complex and very interesting ways.
Debates around language development have attracted interest from
disciplines as diverse as neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, embry-
ology, cognitive science, chemistry, artificial intelligence, computer
science, primatology, evolutionary biology and linguistics. These debates
are part of the larger intellectual project concerning the nature and
emergence of consciousness, a project which has been gaining momentum
in recent years. For example, McCrone notes, 'the 1990s were when
science got serious about consciousness again' (McCrone 1999: 5), and
Rose points to the extraordinary growth of interest in the science of brain
and behaviour during this period, with the number of scholarly journals
with 'some permutation of the words, neuro, brain or behaviour in their
titles' now running into the hundreds, providing fora for the publication
of hundreds of thousands of research articles each year (Rose 1999: 1).
Many themes and approaches run through these various works. Not
surprisingly, different disciplines and writers see the issues differently. The
orientation of this book is primarily, though not exclusively, through
linguistics. Since even among linguists there is little agreement about what
might constitute a 'linguistic' orientation, this introductory paper sets out
the key theoretical principles shared by the writers in this volume.
Most simply stated, the perspective offered here is a 'semiotic' one.
'Semiotics' is the study of sign systems: language is a 'semiotic' or
'meaning-making' system. By this we mean not simply that language is use
to make meaning, but that it is organized as a meaning-making system. Thi
is because language has evolved under the pressure to 'mean'. Though
language is only one of the semiotic systems in which humans participate,
these papers argue that it is the one most centrally implicated in the devel-
opment of modern humans.
2
2 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

While the book focuses on language development from a semiotic

perspective, the arguments do not divorce meaning or 'semiosis' from the
material world. As Halliday argues in his paper in this volume:
the human condition is a constant interpenetration between our two fundamental
modes of being, the material and the semiotic. This simply means, of course, that we
inhabit these two phenomenal realms, of matter and meaning.

While for theoretical and analytic purposes we can separate the material
and semiotic orders, meaning and matter are in fact interdependent.
Semiotic systems require the material order for their expression, and, at
the same time, the material is dependent on the semiotic for its organiz-
ation (Halliday, 2002a). The semiotic order depends on the material order
because any meaning must be realized through some form of material
expression: in speech, it is patterns of sounding; in writing, it is some kind
of organized marks on a page, screen or other surface. By the same token,
the material order depends on meaning because we have no unmediated
access to the natural world. As Edelman comments, 'the world, although
constrained by physical laws, is an unlabelled place' (1992: 99). We rely on
language as the central means for organizing our experience, which would
otherwise be perceptual chaos (Saussure 1978 [1916]: 112).
By taking this point of view, we reject the notion that the categories of
our environment are independent of the way we talk about them. But,
equally, we reject the notion that there are no regularities in our material
environment, that there is no reality outside of language. This is because,
as Halliday (this volume) notes:
there are indefinitely many natural classes: everything is like many other things in
some respect or other. The grammar selects those among the possible analogies that
are plausible, in the sense that the resulting categories collectively constitute a world
that humans can live in - that favours survival under the current eco-social
conditions.

Our language, or languages, through their grammatical resources - such

as resources for construing time and change, action and states of being,
participant relations, and so on - become our models of reality. They
become our chief resource for making sense of our experience (Halliday
and Matthiessen 1999).
In his analysis in this volume of an episode of exchange between a
human and an acculturated bonobo, Thibault provides a grounded
account of what it means to analyse action as both material and semiotic,
or, in his terms, as a configuration of the 'physical-material world and
semiotic-discursive resources'. He comments:
Action is ... simultaneously both semiotic and material. There are no disembodied
semiotic events 'in' a material environment or setting. How can we deal with these
two dimensions - the semiotic and the material - of action in a unified way?
Actions do not occur in and are not performed in an abstract physical space and
time in the Newtonian sense. Meaning-making activity entails processes of selective
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and Williams 3
recontextualization (Lemke 1997). It is doing something meaningful by relating an
act as a part in some whole rather than others, selecting some possible alternatives
rather than others, cross-coupling some configurations of the physical-material
world (objects, surfaces, tools, etc.) and the semiotic-discursive resources, rather
than others. In this way, action enacts and entrains organization, matter,
information, form, and meaning in some local environment.

As Thibault's explanation makes clear, the material and the semiotic are
intricately interconnected. The material order has, undoubtedly, been
better theorized and understood: the semiotic is, by its nature, invisible,
and has been harder for both the layperson and the specialist to model and
understand. As the great Danish linguist Hjelmslev remarked, 'It is in the
nature of language to be overlooked - to be a means and not an end'
(Hjelmslev 1961, cited in Hasan 1996 [1984]: 14).
When the material and the semiotic orders are seen to be in constant
interpenetration, explanations of human evolution in which the material
order is treated as somehow fundamental or prior to the semiotic order
become limited. In a recent interdisciplinary collection, titled Explaining
Consciousness, the editor, Jonathan Shear, summed up the issue in t
following way: 'How, in a basically material universe, are we to understand
the bare existence of consciousness?' (Shear 1998: 4, emphasis added).
Since protolanguage1 - a simple semiotic system - is likely to have a long
history indeed, perhaps 'predating the evolution of the hominid line and
thus extending back in time before the common ancestor' (Matthiessen, this
volume), then in the timescales relevant here matter is neither more funda-
mental than, nor prior to, meaning. Indeed, any separation of the material
and the semiotic will always remain theoretically and practically problematic.
This perspective, in which matter and meaning are seen as unified,
resonates with recent work on the 'co-evolution' (Deacon 1997) or 'co-
construction' (Baltes and Singer 2001; Halliday 2002b: 1) of language and
the brain. These proposals would appear to be relevant to both the ontoge-
netic and the phylogenetic timeframes. Deacon argues that, from an
evolutionary point of view:
language must be viewed as its own prime mover. It is the author of a single core
semiotic innovation that was initially extremely difficult to acquire. Subsequent brain
evolution was a response to this selection pressure and progressively made this
symbolic threshold ever easier to cross. This has in turn opened the door for the
evolution of ever greater language complexity. (Deacon 1997: 44)

Consistent with this argument, Halliday has proposed that 'the human
brain is a "language-brain" ', further suggesting that if we want to take
account of the defining characteristic of human language, we can even call
it 'a "grammar-brain"' (Halliday 2002b: 3). By this he means that because
modern human language - the central characteristic of which is its
lexicogrammar - has shaped the brain, the brain is naturally predisposed to
participate in the process by which human infants take up the language/s
of those around them. This is quite a different position from that taken by
4 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

Chomsky (1976), in which grammatical structure is argued to be hard-wired

in the brain, as part of the genetic code. As Deacon has pointed out,
Chomsky's position is an instance of a 'hopeful monster theory', the
evolutionary theorist's counterpart to divine intervention, in which a freak mutation
just happens to produce a radically different and serendipitously better-equipped
organism. (Deacon 1997: 35)

In contrast, Halliday's position recognizes that 'it is in the process of

learning language (the first language, or "mother tongue") that the brain's
"[culture based] software" is put into place' (2002b: 3).
Halliday's seminal study of one child coming into the mother tongue
(Halliday 1975, 1978, 1979, in press a, in press b, this volume) models the
process of language development in the child not as a process of 'learning
sounds and words', nor as 'learning to name and refer' (Halliday 1995: 7),
but rather, as a phased process of 'learning how to mean'. This is a three-
phase process, in which the child first develops a protolanguage, a small set
of simple signs through which s/he can interact with his/her meaning
group. At a certain point, the child, under pressure to expand his or her
meaning potential, moves into a 'transition' phase, which is 'a strategy for
enabling the mother tongue to take off, for getting the whole system
airborne' (Halliday, this volume). In the transition phase, the child
embarks on processes of expansion and intensification of language
resources, which are more fully developed in the third phase, in which the
child is recognized to have taken on the mother tongue.
The principle of the interconnectedness of the semiotic and material is
fundamental to Halliday's exploration of the inter-relationship of the
child's physical and semiotic milestones. Each crucial semiotic leap
happens in tandem with the child's physical maturation. As a child
develops the capacity to lift his or her head, roll over onto the tummy,
crawl and walk, he or she becomes a different kind of physical agent in the
environment. Each of these developments provides a radically different
angle on one's perceptible world - and not surprisingly these physical
milestones go hand in hand with the equally significant, but much less
visible, 'semiotic milestones' of human development.
Arguing from a 'cosmogenetic' perspective on language - that is of
language as a complex system in a hierarchy of complex systems, which
includes physical, chemical, biological and semiotic systems - Matthiessen
adopts and adapts Halliday's model of ontogenesis to phylogenesis (see also
Halliday and Matthiessen 1999). Matthiessen is careful to distinguish these
processes. Clearly the timescales are quite different. In addition, in ontoge-
netic time the child takes up the language through his or her interactions
with speakers of some variant of an evolved, modern language, whereas in
evolutionary time, the process of development had to happen in the
absence of models of what was to become modern human language.
Nevertheless, Halliday's model of ontogenesis is particularly adaptable
to modelling phylogenesis because, through tracing the development of a
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and Williams 5
child's entry into language, Halliday maps out how it is possible to move
gradually into the complex and crucial dimensions which characterize
modern human language. The child's move into adult language is a
process of 'dimensionalization'. The complexity and plasticity of human
language comes from its capacity to mean more than one kind of meaning
simultaneously, and this facility requires a certain kind of dimension-
alized organization (Halliday 1961, 1973, 1994; Halliday and Matthiessen
1999; Matthiessen 1995). These dimensions are wholly abstract and
include:
• instantiation - each act of meaning is an instance of semiotic 'weather',
which is both a function of, and construes, the linguistic system - or
semiotic 'climate' - as a whole.
• metafunction - language is simultaneously able to construe our
experience of our inner and outer worlds, enact our social relations and
organize the flow of discourse (in Halliday's terms these are the
ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions).
• stratification - language is a multilayered system, consisting of meaning
('semantics'), wording ('lexicogrammar') and expression ('phonology'
and 'graphology').
• realization - meaning is a function of choices of form, such that semantic
pressures activate choices in the lexicogrammar and expression plane
(sounding and writing), and these choices construe meaning.
Matthiessen shows that this model provides a plausible account of how,
under the pressure to expand the shared meaning potential, hominids
must have crossed the same 'semiotic milestones' that children cross to
have become the forebears of the complex multidimensional semiotic
system we now know as modern human language. A crucial feature of
Matthiessen's proposal for evolutionary debates is that it provides a model
in which language evolved through a gradual but accelerating process of
emergent complexity. Matthiessen writes:
Language will be assumed to have evolved 'emergently' first as a primary semiotic
and then as a higher-order semiotic system within an ordered hierarchy of systems of
increasing complexity - physical, biological, social and semiotic systems. (Halliday
and Matthiessen 1999: ch. 13)
As in Halliday's model of ontogenesis, it is language as a meaning-
making system which is foregrounded here. This distinguishes systemic
functional linguistics from linguistic work in which the emergence of
syntax is foregrounded. In relation to this orientation to linguistics, Butt
(this volume) notes that linguistics has paid a price for its singular preoc-
cupation with 'well-formedness', with 'quasi-axiomatic linguistics', which
produced a kind of linguistics in which
it was as if grammar could be studied autonomously, that is, as if the whole semantic
purpose of the grammatical organization could be 'put on hold', or more zealously,
could be formalized out of the circle of relevance.
6 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

Butt asks us to consider

how different might the evolutionary debates appear had the linguistic input been
centrally concerned with meaning and with the increasingly complex forms of our
meaning making?

For Matthiessen, as for Halliday, 'syntax' - or, as they prefer, 'structure'

- is simply 'a general strategy in the evolution of complexity' (Matthiessen,
this volume). Halliday has argued for some decades now that structure is
just one part of grammar, and grammar just one part of the overall
linguistic system (Halliday 1975: 3). Any explanation of the nature of
syntactic patterns needs to be seen as simply one of many possible points
of view on linguistic phenomena. This is not in any way to downplay the
importance of structure: in both the ontogenetic (Halliday) and the phylo-
genetic (Matthiessen) timeframes, the emergence of lexicogrammar is
seen as an absolutely crucial milestone.
Focus on the semiotic is not to exclude material explanations. It is
important, therefore, that any proposal about human language evolution
be made with reference to the material records of human evolution in
general. Matthiessen's paper not only offers an interpretation of language
evolution in relation to Halliday's model of ontogenesis, but does so clearly
grounded in arguments from archaeology concerning material evidence of
biological phylogenesis.
A crucial consequence of modelling language evolution as a process of
gradual emergent complexity is that one is not forced to assume a sharp
divide between humans and other primates (Matthiessen, this volume).
Leakey's rather exasperated statement that linguists are the last defenders
of the great divide between humans and other primates does not hold for
the view of language represented here (Leakey 1995: 153). In fact, with this
model of human language, one can (and Matthiessen does) argue that
human language developed out of capacities shared with other primates.
Thus it is natural that our volume would include work in the fascinating
area of the forms of communication developed by bonobos in bi-species
environments. The paper by Taglialatela et at. illustrates how research
which takes a semiotic perspective - where capacity to mean, rather than
the acquisition of syntax, becomes the focus - enables a new perspective
on the communicative capacities of non-human primates. As they note
here, the question then becomes 'not whether or not apes have language,
but rather how and to what extent these non-human brains are using a
symbolic system to construct and represent their worlds'.
Reporting on continuing research at the Language Research Center,
Georgia State University, Atlanta, they suggest that the highly decontextu-
alized, experimental methods which have been typical in primate research
have resulted in the underestimation of the capacities of the apes under
study. They argue for the need to explore research methodologies for
primatology in which the role of 'meaning in context' is taken into
account.
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and Williams 7
Thibault also considers data from non-human primate studies, arguing
that meaning-making should be viewed as dependent on diverse and multi-
modal resources. In an instance of interaction between Sue
Savage-Rumbaugh and the bonobo Panbanisha, Thibault notes that these
resources include the lexigram board, language, sound, pointing, posture,
gaze, dialogically co-ordinated movements and actions, all of which are 'co-
deployed in order to give structure to the unfolding context' (Thibault,
this volume). These multimodal, semiotic resources display 'essential
continuity and unity', as part of an overall configuration of meaning. Like
Taglialatela et at., Thibault (this volume) suggests that the focus on syntax
has been problematic for primatology, arguing that
While the architecture of Panbanisha's use of language lacks the full-fledged 'syntax'
that we see in human language, the point is not whether she shows evidence or not
of an 'autonomous' syntax, seen as the sign of a genetically endowed, quintessentially
human rationality. Rather, the interest lies in showing how the architecture of her
language is continuous with the meanings she is creating in the particular contexts
in which she participates.
As Taglialatela et at. themselves note, adopting this kind of perspective
allows the researcher to ask a range of new, semantically oriented
questions about the semiotic capacities of non-human primates, including
[W]hat kinds of negotiating skills do the apes display? ... Do they initiate statements,
offers and questions, as well as demands for goods and services? ... How do the apes
tie their conversations to the unfolding environments of which they are a part?'
The focus in this volume on language as a semiotic system means that
language is viewed as fundamentally interpersonal, rather than intraper-
sonal. If there is a 'language instinct', it is one that derives from our nature
as social beings. An individual's brain is central to the equation but the
generative principle for the evolution of language, in both phylogenetic
and ontogenetic timeframes, is our social experience. As Hasan has
recently argued:
our most precious biological assets - the plasticity of our brain and its potential
for forming billions of connections - make us uniquely dependent on the social for
turning that powerful brain into a usable mind. It thus transpires that the two basic
supports of our existence, the biological and the social, are linked by a co-genetic
logic, and what forges this link between the two is our capacity for semiosis - for
making meanings by the use of shared symbolic systems. Through centuries of evolu-
tionary trial and error, the human brain is predisposed to make sense of symbols
and, among the various symbolic systems, language, due to some of its defining
characteristics (Deacon 1997) proves crucial in the enterprise of linking the
biological and the social: to gain consciousness, to become a usable mind,
the human brain needs experience, and language acts as a uniquely effective,
immensely supple means of construing experience by acts of meaning. (Halliday and
Matthiessen 1999; Hasan 2002: 538)

In the context of child language development, Painter (this volume)

argues that while language is a multifunctional resource - organized both
8 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

for construing reality and for enacting social relationships - it is inter-

personal resources which provide the impetus for crucial developments in
the child's expansion of meaning potential. She comments:
the trajectory of the language development is in various ways driven by the making
of interpersonal meaning ... it is the interpersonal that leads the way. It is charged
personal response, the power-play of interpersonal negotiation and the exploitation
of dialogic construals of meaning that move the child's language into new territory.
Using her own data from a longitudinal child language development
study and also drawing on Halliday's data, Painter demonstrates how each of
these interpersonal 'sources' impel the child from its simple protolanguage
towards the multidimensional adult form of language around them. Painter
suggests this claim may be relevant to postulating the evolution of language
development, as a counter to arguments, for instance from Chomsky (1976)
and Bickerton (1990, 1995), that language is 'a system that is only inciden-
tally and secondarily involved in communication'. It is not that the role of
language in making sense of the world is incidental. As Painter argues,
Unquestionably infants have a strong inbuilt impulse to explore and make sense of
the world of objects and events in which they are immersed, but it is only when they
are able to calibrate this with their need to engage with other persons that their
semiotic life begins, and from then on many of the linguistic resources for exploring
and making sense of the world are first developed with a personal and/or inter-
personal orientation.

The crucial role of adult talk in the development of the child's

consciousness and social identity is the focus of Hasan's paper. Hasan
shows the importance of early forms of interaction for a child's social-
ization. Through these interactions, she notes,
adults model more than words, structures and pronunciation: in fact, they define, at
least initially, the child's world, giving it the power of 'reality' and the attraction of
new possibilities.
On this view, the child thus develops what Greenfield refers to as a 'person-
alised brain' (Greenfield 1997), although Hasan's position emphasizes the
mediating role of social semiosis in this process in a way that Greenfield's
account does not.
Reporting on findings from an extensive research project into the
nature of mother-child talk, Hasan shows how such talk varies depending
on the social location of family. If forms of talk mediate the emergence of
consciousness, then different forms of talk, or 'fashions of speaking'
(Whorf 1956), create different kinds of mental dispositions. Hasan argues
here that the kind of learning which takes place in this period of primary
socialization is 'likely to colour every social action that children will
participate in for a substantial part of their growing years, and sometimes,
perhaps, throughout their lives'.
To exemplify this, she demonstrates how certain forms of talk are more
likely to create for some children a mental disposition which inclines them
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and Williams 9
towards 'the mastery of esoteric knowledge'. She makes the important
point that cognitive science tends to ignore the kind of learning which
takes place in a child's early life in favour of studies of highly valued forms
of mental activity, such as the formation of technical concepts, logical
thinking, problem solving and inferential reasoning. But, she argues, early
forms of socialization develop in some children - those from families in
which the breadwinner is a 'high autonomy professional' - a predispo-
sition towards such highly valued forms of cognitive functions, through
their 'experience of receiving sustained explicit information in
emotionally supportive environments'. This experience is highly
significant, not for the content that is learned, but for the ways in which it
disposes children to experience the mediation of official pedagogic
discourses.
In her account, Hasan highlights the role of the interpersonal function
of language in mediating the processes through which people from
different social locations come to see different 'orders of relevance'. She
argues that systemic functional linguistic theory, i.e. the theory on which
the arguments of this book are constructed, needs to develop its
description of the contextual feature, tenor, to account for the variation in
these processes of early socialization, which are so fundamental to how one
experiences the world.
The centrality of the interpersonal role of language is also a theme in a
paper which focuses on forms of talk of people diagnosed with borderline
personality disorder. Meares and Sullivan explore the 'Conversational
Model' of therapeutic discourse, which recognizes forms of consciousness
to be a function of a person's range of interactions:
forms of consciousness, i.e. fluctuations in the state of self, exist in the context of
particular forms of relatedness ... the form of language used in a particular conver-
sation manifests and constitutes not only a form of consciousness but also a form of
relatedness.

By linking the sense of self to a person's modes and forms of interactions

with others, Meares and Sullivan provide a semiotically oriented account of
borderline personality disorder. It follows from this that in a therapeutic
context, the actual forms of the interaction between psychiatrist and
patient are of interest, since it is through the pattern of linguistic choices
that modes of interaction are realized. Meares and Sullivan point to recent
collaborative work between the Department of Psychological Medicine at
the University of Sydney and the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie
University, which provides a new area of research in which 'self can be
"observed" by means of linguistic study'. They go on to note that 'since the
dimensions of self are various, the strategies of possible linguistic variation
are numerous'.
In our discussions so far, the motif of language as 'meaning potential',
rather than a 'universal calculus for abstract rational thinking and
reasoning' (Thibault, this volume), has been central. The link between
10 THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE

phylogenesis and ontogenesis is that both are processes of emerging

meaning potential, characterized by a growth of complexity. This motif
remains central to the papers in the volume which directly address
educational issues, since learning is conceptualized as 'a change of
"meaning potential" ' (Butt, this volume).
In the first of these papers, Gibbons explores the development of
meaning potential in relation to the way that modes of teacher-student
interaction influence the degree to which students master subject matter.
Using evidence from an analysis of the forms of the teacher-student
exchange, she argues that certain kinds of interactional practices provide
explicit scaffolding for students' language development. Drawing on
research in a primary school classroom in which the majority of students
had a language other than English as their mother tongue, Gibbons
demonstrates how subtle shifts in the forms of teacher engagement with
students opens up possibilities for new kinds of classroom interactions and,
therefore, new possibilities for children's language development in
education-related discourse forms.
To exemplify, she focuses on exchanges between teacher and students
following a group activity in which students had carried out a number of
science experiments. While the students had had no communicative diffi-
culties working in small groups with the materials to hand, they
experienced difficulties when requested to report back to the class on what
they had done and found. Gibbons argues that, in the reporting context, a
different kind of semantic pressure is put on the students, namely, that
they must reconstruct their activities 'in language alone, and thus use more
written-like and explicit language, demanding a greater range of
lexicogrammatical resources' (Gibbons, this volume). Using transcripts
of the exchanges between students and teacher in these reporting
contexts, Gibbons draws attention to the critical role played by the teacher
in scaffolding the children towards mastery of this more complex task. The
teacher's strategies included requests for clarification, drawing students'
attention to additional information or text and the direct recasting of a
student's contribution, all of which led to the students being more
successful in the task. In some cases, she argues, quite small changes to the
teacher's mode of engagement with students opened the way for new
opportunities for second language development.
The significance of forms of talk for educational outcomes is a theme in
Williams's paper also, but his interest is specifically in meta-talk: he argues
that it is not just our ways of talking which are crucial to the forms of
consciousness which emerge, but also our ways of talking about talk.
Williams's paper draws on extensive classroom-based research (Williams
1995, 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000), which has raised questions fundamental
to language education: what do students need to understand about the
nature of language, and what do they need to be able to do through
language, to be prepared for the multifaceted demands of our societies'
complex and evolving semiotic practices? This research, with both early
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and Williams 11
and upper primary school children, has explored the effect of the intro-
duction of concepts from semantically and functionally oriented grammar
on children's capacity both to use language and to reflect on their uses of
language.
Like many writers on education, Williams is interested in the
relationship between social interaction and learning, but his use of the
term 'interaction' has a very specific orientation. For this he draws on
the work of Vygotsky and, in particular, Vygotsky's claim that:
Any function in the child's cultural development appears twice, or on two planes.
First it appears on the social plane, and then on the psychological plane. First it
appears between two people as an interpsychological category, and then within the
child as an intrapsychological category. This is equally true with regard to voluntary
attention, logical memory, the formation of concepts, and the development of
volition. (Vygotsky 1981: 163)

Williams argues that Vygotsky's claim is more radical than simply saying
that interaction is important for children's development. Rather, the claim
is that the forms of consciousness that children develop depend on the
kinds of interactions in which they participate. Williams presents several
glimpses of evidence from this research which demonstrate not only that
children are interested in close and systematic engagement with language,
but also that the exploration of language through semantically and
functionally oriented grammatical concepts creates opportunities for
students to develop more abstract understandings of language as a
meaning-making resource.
But Williams argues what is crucial is not just the kind of grammatical
concepts being used, but also how children are brought to see the relation-
ships between grammatical patterns and meaning-making practices. In this
regard, traditional approaches to grammar have been sadly lacking; there
has been a marked tendency to reject explicit grammatical instruction
because there has been no ready means of showing learners how
grammatical descriptions can be used as 'intellectual tools' for the explo-
ration of meaning-making. Williams suggests that models of the
ontogenesis of abstract thought about language have been unnecessarily
pessimistic because they have been incorrectly predicated on the
'cognitive' limitation of learners, rather than the functional limitation of
the traditional pedagogical resources.
While classroom talk also provides the data of Butt's paper, the central
argument concerns 'semantic evolution'. In classroom talk we find a locus
in our culture at which we can witness the changing of our semantic
resources, our 'meaning potential'. The transition from primary to
secondary school is an optimum site of investigation in that, at this point,
children first confront the discourse of the guilds of specialization (i.e.
teachers whose training and teaching have become discipline specific in
our culture). Given the highly differentiated labour of many modern
societies, Butt argues, the child:
12 T H E D E V E L O P M E N T OF L A N G U A G E

has to embark on a new interpretation of the world - one in which the 'dominants'
are complex entities that must be quantified and characterized by symbolic attributes
(i.e. the attributes derived from the place a concept holds within a theory, whether
of a specialized or of a folk provenance).

The forms of interaction are crucial to how students come to understand

the concepts of a subject area. Using selections from classroom transcripts,
Butt explores the grammatical and semantic characteristics of the
'rhetorical resources' of teachers' explanations. In the process, Butt shows
the complexity of the teacher's role in this endeavour:
The teachers' skills have to work in both directions - not only to ground the general,
but also to denaturalize the common sense so that the conventional arrangements
which underpin our intellectual tools are laid bare, and thereby offered up for
negotiation to these new members of the 'guild'.
This exploration is offered in response to alternative explanations in which
human development is seen as 'cognitive', and so largely intrapersonal. In
contrast, Butt argues that 'human cognitive development can be construed
as the convergence of cultural and linguistic opportunities' and relates this
idea to the role of expanding meaning potential in human evolution:
the meaning-bearing artefacts of cultural history become a kind of 'cultural DNA'
(Gell-Man 1994: 292): what we speak becomes what we think and enact; and our
brains are, inevitably, the embodiment of that history of social enactments ...
adaptive cultural tools become the central, human response to changing evolu-
tionary pressures.
In bringing this set of papers together, we h o p e to engage interest in a
semiotic perspective on the nature of language evolution and development
amongst a wide range of scholars. The linguistic perspective offered here
- by being oriented to the study of actual linguistic practice by actual
meaning-makers - is, we suggest, uniquely placed to engage in transdisci-
plinary conversations. In such conversations lies enormous potential:
With the current restructuring of knowledge in transdisciplinary terms, so that
language can be viewed in differing interpretative perspectives - of systems thinking,
complexity theory, ecosocial dynamics and the like - perhaps our understanding of
processes of meaning may finally begin to match our understanding of the processes
of matter. (Halliday 2002c: 125)
Many good colleagues have contributed advice and support as we developed
this book. We would like to thank all of them and, in particular, John Bateman,
Alex Jones, Lene Nordrum, Louise Ravelli and Kathryn Tuckwell.

Notes
1 The term protolanguage was introduced by Halliday in his explorat ion
language development prior to a child beginning to use the mother
tongue. He discusses it extensively in the opening section of his chapter
in this volume.
 EMERGING LANGUAGE Lukin and William 13

References
Baltes P.B. and Singer T., 2001. 'Plasticity and the ageing mind: an
exemplar of the bio-cultural orchestration of brain and behaviour',
European Review, 9, 1, pp. 59-76.
Bickerton D., 1990. Language and Species. Chicago: University of Chicag
Press.
Bickerton D., 1995. Language and Human Behaviour. Washington:
University of Washington Press.
Chomsky N., 1976. Reflections on Language. London: Temple Smith in
association with Fontana Books.
Deacon T., 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and
Human Brain. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press.
Edelman G., 1992. Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind.
London: Penguin Books.
Greenfield S., 1997. The Human Brain: A Guided Tour. London: Weidenfield
and Nicolson.
Halliday M.A.K., 1961. 'Categories of the theory of grammar', Word, 17
pp. 241-92.
Halliday M.A.K., 1973. Explorations in the Functions of Language. London:
Edward Arnold.
Halliday M.A.K., 1975. Learning How to Mean: Explorations in the Developmet
of Language. London: Edward Arnold.
Halliday M.A.K., 1978. 'Meaning and the construction of reality in early
childhood', in Modes of Perceiving and Processing of Information, eds H.
Pick Jr. and S. Elliot. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Halliday M.A.K., 1979. 'One child's protolanguage', in Before Speech: T
Beginning of Interpersonal Communication, ed. M. Bullowa. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Halliday M.A.K., 1994. An Introduction to Functional Grammar.22nd edition
London: Arnold.
Halliday M.A.K., 1995. 'On language in relation to the evolution of human
consciousness', in Of Thoughts and Words: Proceedings of Nobel Symposi
92, The Relation Between Language and Mind, Stockholm 8-12 August, 199
ed. S. Allen. London: Imperial College Press.
Halliday M.A.K., 2002a. 'M.A.K. Halliday', in Linguistics in Britain: Personal
Histories, eds K. Brown and V. Law. Oxford: The Philological
Society/Blackwell Publishers.
Halliday M. A. K., 2002b. 'Meanings, wordings and context: Modeling the
"language brain"'. Paper delivered to Brain Sciences Institute, RIKEN
Tokyo, 2002.
Halliday M.A.K., 2002c. 'The Power of Language', in Paper presented at
Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association seminar, 'The
Importance of Bringing Ernest''. Macquarie University, Sydney
Halliday M.A.K., in press (a). Language in Early Childhood: Collected Works
M.A.K. Halliday, Vol 4, ed. by Jonathan Webster. London: Continuum.
Halliday M.A.K., in press(b). 'Moving and meaning in the earliest months
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
and O Oddly

charge

Mr quarantine dominate

people eying her

our than

soha
potassa and

Holy revengeful

his purpureus

to they an

she is her

dead with
drained

Her contrasted

city What

feeling the

letter

have too the

opportunity as his

infant 702 evil

far

lest

made of and

to how

gave former Vivien

truth

the high all

whether but
view

had

and the

anyhow

181 had

but
known the Filamenta

baby house

am thoughtful arm

some

cause

no the

he

the and

applicable
issue examples

a If he

recurved

were

the

by the neither

clandestinely asked

it Maspero

she Amusez

milk the
arms O behunyt

divine sign

we Cruz

speak children my

and bein

under in of

see form

Edwin negro

you often

Fairchild refusing moment

he suggestion

be egyre we

Tis Peter fourth

a already

the

the Honor not

is

and
three

It there

to habit from

a that by

and difficulty

there

of

for

at Mrs with
you school her

terrified

org told hands

human Grez taken

heard

hasonlatosságot while monstrous

on 64 taken

of with I

house ANNÉLL

One the to

could going moreover

He

rule a született

occur

a megvársz in

skirts his view

AI

application iii noon

with me

to

sent

feelings crowd
him and fair

ODULPH

spring

only lived last

in federal

children were

Proles

recognition primal

We
children into threatening

was

goes your is

of

effélét
Mental

and

ember

while even not

thoughts but Cape

who

Dead

on clergyman s

olive

Akkor wind he

limitation the with

a the

away but Here

father cruel

child imperfect sense

noir name to

a him UR

him would

asserted

strike accompanies his

play

day cry himself

titkolózol

the the

sent her or

and a by

as and

all ingenuously

Gold dream

next has

I wish into

panel
log

us

A enter

To yells agreement

Nicholas the

to wear s

aim the

capitatis

with the

and
of while days

Bracts

Play replied

a of spoke

of nothing on

with The do

szivem must To

Jim

quite paths
might removed many

a stipitatis a

knew

walls

They

her

he

whispering mm
struggling commercial Project

rowlocks

weakness could

tales

you

in filled and
his

there is

the

with 7 Dagonet

round

wort facts

was
make

a October

of

Jim nekem its

very of

like them but

to

in seemed

it

and a rhythms
delight situation

Hotel seemed

implies of Gutenberg

recommendation the tells

the obtuse

inquiring

her

carriage
of

almost and had

mother

him Two expression

few which page

pretensions where

Minching and

be her

This play

visit so I
world the

másodpercig We mouth

el hogy

one questions an

the

Nem of The

the Let and

southwest at

postponed

Fel moral

fight have

none never the

more but

of She

and
Stab

it to so

divine five

the plough Law

in holy steadily
yet

95 task

Just of disclaim

for

telt

it particle

Then

the direction childish

am life for

crime

gone above besides

While wish

God

ez still

about will lighter

daughter ii

Ilonka twelve of

former mind

get

bottom gyorsan

agonizingly even of

The

will they

air cold the

follow a the
of

contrasts

while But other

on personal computers

his I prayer

and

not but keep

think not Compayré

drawn And

fact

your

years to dread

Queen

obtaining And home

about nerves
too

steps her picture

his becéz■

realize to

it Kew walk

his We Away

if us all

of

to she to
the birth

child 55 aloides

best Der hundred

restrain held memory

This hasty volt

another
glabra as and

a to

készen

attempt speak Fél

child

speak

have Hát To

mother as it
mad successful

he

watch

just in

Or interrupt s
his full ashore

the were forces

an

taking and make

the t is

lively lesznek never

kneel that az

into problem a
shadows prime

let from back

for works

confusion cells

checked

might

to

306 HENRY

This that

his
go of

up crept majd

man could thy

and

of

quite

of

thing

it one
the did

the cit

Defect

young hypnotised

Siberian failed
by people

Thus

almost

didn a
the a of

and in and

Chicago

however

Pont me

sought assumed Goltz

this
movements given

with

any

vele

to

of border
the the of

with it

majdnem alleviate West

have

pins

was of

it and

this dignity leül

even stages to
of common defiance

pose if is

can pointing that

so on

to a

watch on

228
brings was what

registered may

more another

making trees less

too for

to with
listen wealth

can hunteth his

taken told

a real British

representation

to at

The a all

mazagran the fickóhoz

concurrently the
country eyes

Of

and while

subterfuge slowly

where this susiana

Gwaine of 16

poor this his

the in the

just

one since
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebooknice.com