The subject of this book is how human beings construe their experience of the world. The construction of experience is usually thought of as knowledge, represented in the form of conceptual taxonomies, schemata, scripts and the like. The authors offer an interpretation that is complementary to this, treating experience not as knowing but as meaning; and hence as something that is construed in language. In other words, the concern is with the construal of human experience as a semantic system; and since language plays the central role not only in storing and exchanging experience but also in construing it, language is taken as the interpretative base. The focus of the book is both theoretical and descriptive. The authors consider it important that theory and description should develop in parallel, with constant interchange between the two. The major descriptive component is an account of the most general features of the ideational semantics of English, which is then exemplified in two familiar text types (recipes and weather forecasts). There is also a brief reference to the semantics of Chinese. Theoretical issues are raised throughout as they become relevant to the discussion, with the theoretical base being drawn from systemic functional linguistics. Both the theoretical and descriptive proposals offered in the book are compared and contrasted with approaches deriving from AI, cognitive science and cognitive linguistics.

In Ten Lectures on Construction Grammar and Typology, William Croft presents a unified theory of linguistic form and meaning that encompasses crosslinguistic diversity, verbalization and language change.

Since the 1980s, metaphor has received much attention in linguistics in general. Within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) the area of 'grammatical metaphor' has become increasingly more important. This volume aims to raise and debate problematic issues in the study of lexico-grammatical metaphor, and to foreground the potential of further study in the field. There is a need to highlight the SFL perspective on metaphor; other traditions focus on lexical aspects, and from cognitive perspectives, while SFL focuses on the grammatical dimension, and socio-functional aspects in the explanation of this phenomenon.

Fully updated and revised, this fourth edition of Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar explains the principles of systemic functional grammar, enabling the reader to understand and apply them in any context. Halliday's innovative approach of engaging with grammar through discourse has become a worldwide phenomenon in linguistics. Updates to the new edition include: Recent uses of systemic functional linguistics to provide further guidance for students, scholars and researchers More on the ecology of grammar, illustrating how each major system serves to realise a semantic system A systematic indexing and classification of examples More from corpora, thus allowing for easy access to data Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar, Fourth Edition, is the standard reference text for systemic functional linguistics and an ideal introduction for students and scholars interested in the relation between grammar, meaning and discourse.

Presenting a field-defining overview of one of the most appliable linguistic theories available today, this Handbook surveys the key issues in the study of systemic functional linguistics (SFL), covering an impressive range of theoretical perspectives. Written by some of the world's foremost SFL scholars, including M. A. K. Halliday, the founder of SFL theory, the handbook covers topics ranging from the theory behind the model, discourse analysis within SFL, applied SFL, to SFL in relation to other subfields of linguistics such as intonation, typology, clinical linguistics and education. Chapters include discussion on the possible future directions in which research might be conducted and issues that can be further investigated and resolved. Readers will be inspired to pursue the challenges raised within the volume, both theoretically and practically.