ABSTRACT
These theoretical assumptions have informed different descriptions in the SFL tradition. Even though work on other languages has also been done (as we shall see throughout this chapter), descriptions of English (still) predominate. About his work on English, Halliday (1994: xxxiv) himself wrote: ‘There are many aspects of English that need to be much more fundamentally re-examined than I have managed to achieve here; one obvious example is the circumstantial elements in the clause, which I have treated in very traditional fashion.’ Cautioning against dramatic paradigm shifts per se, he continued:
Twentieth-century linguistics has produced an abundance of new theories, but it has tended to wrap old descriptions up inside them . . . The old interpretations were good, but not good enough to last for all time. . . . What are needed now are new descriptions.
