Experiential cryptotypes : reasoning about process type 1
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Date
2019
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Routledge
Abstract
Conceptualizing how language construes experience has been a pervasive thread through the modern history of linguistics. This chapter explores how we can describe languages models of experience through a focus on the reasoning underlying an explicit account of process types in SFL. It takes seriously the claim developed through Whorf, Gleason, Halliday and Davidse that, cross-linguistically, clausal configurations are based on ‘covert or cryptogrammatical patterns that do not necessarily maintain any explicit markings. In doing so, it makes clear a method based on the interdependency of system and structure, known as axial argumentation, that enables description to move beyond unsystematic interpretations of the meanings of isolated items such as work classifying verb types based on their ‘lexical meaning. In doing so, this method offers a path toward responsibly accounting for the agnation patterns, structural configurations and discourse semantic realizations that underpin grammatical organization. This approach is illustrated by exploring the cryptogrammar of ‘sensing in Chilean Spanish, with a particular focus on the covert patterns that are key for distinguishing mental processes from other experiential types in this language.