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Confusing Functional Syntagmatic Relations With Formal Constituency

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 209):

Working from a functional paradigm we of course have to approach the relation of ‘sign languages’ to one another differently. In essence this means adopting a paradigmatic perspective and formalising their meaning potential as far as possible in system networks specifying the relation of one sign (in Saussure’s sense of the term) to another. 

The crucial question we then need to ask is whether meanings combine with one another. …The paralinguistic systems we describe in this volume do combine ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings but apparently without involving syntagmatic relations (i.e. parts configuring as wholes).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the Saussurean sign includes both content ('signified') and expression ('signifier'), whereas system networks specify relations within one or the other, e.g. lexicogrammar or phonology. For some of Martin's misunderstandings of Saussure, see:

• Misunderstanding What Saussure Was "Struggling Against"
• Mistaking Saussure's Rejected Model For Saussure's 'Sign' [1]
• Mistaking Saussure's Rejected Model For Saussure's 'Sign' [2]
• Misunderstanding The Saussurean Sign
• The "Non-Privileging" Of Either Level Of Symbolic Abstraction
• Misunderstanding Saussure's Coins Example
• Misunderstanding The Bonding Of Signified And Signifier And The Relation Of Form To Substance
• Seriously Misunderstanding The Sign In Relation To Linguistics And Semiotics

[2] To be clear, this confuses structural relations along the syntagmatic axis (e.g. Pretonic ^ Tonic) with the part-whole relations of the rank scale (e.g. feet (parts) as constituents of a tone group (whole)).

The View Of Paralanguage As ‘Outside’ Language

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 208-9):

In order to explore this question we need to first ask why paralanguage came to be regarded as in some sense ‘outside’ language proper in the first place – a position which has been challenged by specialists such as Fricke (2013), who argue for a more unified approach to gesture and speech. To understand this we probably have to appreciate the privileged position of the phoneme in influential linguistic paradigms such as the American structuralism documented in Joos (1957). This work founds a phonemics, morphology and syntax approach to language description which continues to shape introductions to linguistics, at least in the English-speaking world and its compliant intellectual dominions. The approach is fundamentally a combinatorial one, with clauses (ultimately) composed of morphemes and morphemes composed of phonemes – all of which is presented as linguistic form, arbitrarily related to meaning. Since paralinguistic signs are not composed of phonemes (or arguably of comparable entities) and do make meaning, paralanguage gets positioned as something to be studied alongside language, not as part of it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL, Fricke (2013) provides no argument with regard to theorising in SFL, because she does not proceed from the same theoretical assumptions as SFL. That is, Fricke operates with a different conception of grammar, and a different conception what constitutes inclusion in a grammar, as the following quote (op. cit.: 734) makes clear:

[2] In contrast, Halliday (1989: 30) offers an  explanation in terms of SFL Theory:

[3]  To be clear, for Halliday (1989: 31), paralanguage is not part of the grammar, but is part of the linguistic system: