Relational Systems: A New Foundation for Linguistics: 1 Construal as Relational Cut: Meaning Begins with Differentiation

Systemic Functional Linguistics begins with system: a structured potential of meaning.

But relational ontology lets us sharpen this:

a system is a theory of possible instances, and construal is the cut that actualises a possibility into a horizon-bearing event.

This post reconstructs construal not as representation, not as mapping between mind and world, but as the fundamental operation of semiosis.

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1. No Meaning Without a Cut

In relational ontology, there is no unconstrued phenomenon.

Nothing “is there” before the differentiation that brings it into horizon.

Construal is this differentiation.

It is not cognitive.

It is not internal.

It is not a mental act imposed on an external world.

Construal is the way a relational field carves itself, stabilising a momentary horizon that becomes available as meaning.

For SFL, this means:

• meaning does not pre-exist the system

• meaning does not reflect external reality

• meaning is the event of system → instance,
  actualised by a perspectival cut that differentiates a horizon

Halliday’s insight that “language construes experience” becomes sharper:

Experience is not prior to language;

experience is the horizon that emerges through construal.

The world is not represented.

It is differentiated into being.

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2. The Cut as the Origin of Metaphenomena

Every construal produces:

1. a phenomenon — the horizon-bearing event

2. a metaphenomenon — the field-level pattern generated by repeated cuts

3. a theory of meaning — the structured potential that the field stabilises

This triad is not temporal.

It is perspectival.

A cut does not occur in time.

The cut is what generates the time of the event.

Thus SFL’s distinction between text (instance) and system (potential) is a difference in perspective, not a vertical ontology.

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3. The SFL Metafunctions as Cut-Types

The ideational, interpersonal, and textual are not functional domains stored in the system and deployed by cognition.

They are species of relational cut:

Ideational → Differential structuring of horizons

What counts as a process, participant, circumstance is a way the field cuts the flow of potential into event-structure.

Interpersonal → Energy and stance cuts

Not attitudes, not roles, but energetic tensions actualised between co-participants in the field.

Textual → Cohesive orientation of cuts

Textual resources regulate the sequencing of cuts so that horizons remain viable across time.

The metafunctions thus become metabolic operations of a semiotic organism.

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4. Construal Without Representation

Traditional linguistics solves meaning through reference:

words correspond to things, structures correspond to events.

Relational linguistics solves meaning through differentiation:

• before a cut, there is no “thing” to be named

• after the cut, the horizon has been stabilised as a phenomenon

• meaning is the structured potential that allows that cut to be recognised, repeated, varied, systematised

Representation is replaced by:

relational conditioning

the system constrains the possible cuts

horizon formation

the cut brings a phenomenon into relational foreground

field persistence

patterns of cuts shape the larger semantic ecology

This is consonant with Halliday’s insistence that grammar construes experience — but it radicalises the claim:

there is no experience to construe until the cut happens.

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5. Instantiation Reinterpreted

Instantiation becomes:

the perspectival shift from potential (system) to event (phenomenon) through a cut.

Not a process.

Not a movement in time.

Not a psychological operation.

A shift of viewpoint.

• The instance is the system as seen through the cut.

• The system is the instance as seen from the field of potential.

Thus we avoid the representational trap and stay aligned with Halliday’s systemic commitments.

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6. Delicacy as Finer Differentiation (Not Proliferation)

Delicacy is often framed as finer choice.

But under relational construal, delicacy becomes:

the refinement of differentiation

the resolution of the cut.

Fine distinctions are not more choices;

they are finer-grained cuts in the field.

This preserves Halliday’s canonical delicacy model while making it ecologically grounded:

• lower delicacy = coarser metabolic regulation

• higher delicacy = fine-horizon tuning in constrained environments

• delicacy increases viability by reducing metabolic load or increasing precision

Delicacy is metabolic finesse.

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7. Construal as the Basis for a Relational Semantics

Semantics in a relational system is not a layer “above” grammar.

It is the metabolism of horizon formation.

Construal produces the horizon.

Semantics sustains the horizon.

Text actualises the horizon in time.

Thus the architecture becomes:

field (constraints)

↓

system (potential)

↓

construal (cut)

↓

semantics (metabolism)

↓

text (phenomenal event)

Not as a hierarchy — but as phases in the ecology of meaning.

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8. Why this matters for SFL

Reframing construal as relational cut accomplishes three things:

1. It restores SFL’s anti-representational core

Halliday’s model becomes fully ecological, not symbol-based.

2. It integrates language into the semiotic biosphere

Construal becomes a biological operation of a meaning organism, not a mental act.

3. It creates the foundation for a relational semantics

Horizon metabolism becomes the basis for all further reconstruction:

context, register, metafunctions, delicacy, typology.

This post provides the conceptual keystone for the entire series.