Page 3 of 3

Re: Hayes - Analysis of Attributive Participle and Relative Clause

Posted: June 3rd, 2018, 5:22 pm
by Stirling Bartholomew
Matthew Longhorn wrote: June 3rd, 2018, 4:56 am Hearing “choice implies meaning” could lead to some fairly interesting exegetical decisions by people who are like me that stumble across it unless it is clarified.
Do apparent alternatives necessarily imply conscious choice? Does meaning imply authorial intent? I first ran into this idea exploring the fundamental assumptions of Systemic Functional Linguistics. I was skeptical at first and eventually set the question aside without resolving it. Had a sneaking suspicion there was a fallacy lurking in the shadows.

Re: Hayes - Analysis of Attributive Participle and Relative Clause

Posted: June 3rd, 2018, 5:30 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Matthew Longhorn wrote: June 3rd, 2018, 4:56 am I guess for me mantra isn’t necessarily a negative term, just one that is often seen.
That's how I meant it.

Re: Hayes - Analysis of Attributive Participle and Relative Clause

Posted: June 4th, 2018, 3:33 am
by Matthew Longhorn
Stirling, I like what Stephen Carlson stated - that proponents of “choice equals meaning” are not necessarily restricted to conscious choice.
The way that I understand an RT modular view our communication is typically fast, automatic and therefore not necessarily consciously chosen (unless reflection required due to miscommunication. When you think of it, we have limited control over our wording in the sense that we use what presents itself to us at the time of speaking, unlike a crossword situation where we are forced to try to access other possibly suitable terms.
I have listened to a number of journal articles recently criticising views on which concepts are defined by strictly by definitions. These have made me highly suspicious of overanalysing the definitions in lexicons for slight nuances
That said, the fact that we can adapt our language according to genre/register without much thought at all implies that we are, even if subconsciously, able to discriminate between possible terms to some degree.

Tying this back to the original post - whilst Hayes doesn’t use the phrase he does discuss choice when dealing with restriction/non-restriction of nouns or phrases in a subject slot.

Hopefully not an ill-informed rant. It seems I both agree and disagree with the phrase “choice implies meaning”