The Thoughts Of Berkeley In Systemic Functional Linguistics [6]

Russell (1961: 629):

Things as we know them are bundles of sensible qualities: a table, for example, consists of its visual shape, its hardness, the noise it emits when rapped, and its smell (if any). These different qualities have certain [contiguities] in experience, which lead common sense to regard them as belonging to one 'thing', but the concept of 'thing' or 'substance' adds nothing to the perceived qualities, and is unnecessary.

Blogger Comments:

Through the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory, things and qualities are two types of participant (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 182), with the latter typically construed as an Attribute (op. cit.: 208) in an intensive (elaborating) attributive relation; that is: a quality is construed as a class to which things are members.

Here, however, the relation is construed as:

• identifying, not attributive, such that the identity decodes things by reference to aggregates of qualities:

things [[as we know them]]	are	bundles [of sensible qualities]
Identified/Token	Process: relational: intensive	Identifier/Value

• identifying and extending, instead of attributive and elaborating:

a table	consists of	its visual shape, its hardness, the noise [[[it emits || when rapped]]] and its smell (if any)
Identified/Token	Process: relational: possession: containment	Identifier/Value

• attributive, but extending instead of elaborating:

these different qualities	belong to	one 'thing'
Carrier: possessed	Process: relational: possession	Attribute: possessor