"Two comments: First, I'm not fond of the systemicists. I think Halliday took a wrong turning. Second, you say that "somehow, we break up the meaning of the

"Two comments: First, I'm not fond of the systemicists. I think Halliday took a wrong turning. Second, you say that "somehow, we break up the meaning of the novel sentence, relating it to sentences we've seen." Quite correct. But I think the essential point of the Firthian approach is that there is not necessarily a single decomposition of the string. There can be multiple decompositions, each yielding components that can be related to other utterances. All of the standard approaches start by assuming single decompositions (or decomposition trees) on each level. That's where I think the whole structurallist (and systemicist) project went off the tracks. I did manage to crank out a few papers in this direction many years ago, but left it before I had gotten my act together, and I succumbed to the lure of Milton's "that bad eminence" (administration)." -My dad