Blurb:

This chapter focuses on the specificities and challenges posed by the account of grammatical categories that are relevant from an experiential point of view, particularly in relation to assumptions on their ‘covert’ nature. Taking again English as the main language around which this discussion has been put forward in SFL, the notions of agnation, cryptotypes and reactances are firstly examined in detail, drawing on a range of relevant conceptualisations on the configurational nature of meaningful grammatical categories (Firth’s system-structure principle, Gleason’s discussion on agnation and enation relations, Whorf’s view on covert categories, and Halliday’s ‘proportionalities’). The chapter then focuses on a more specific discussion on the complexity of configurationally-defined experiential categories in SFL (Davidse, 1991, 1998; Martin, 1996). Here, comparison with other functional frameworks dealing with the meaning of ‘constructions’ and/or with underlying ‘argument structure’ is brought into the discussion. The chapter finally addresses the discussion on the type of structure specifically associated with experiential resources, as well as a view on ‘degrees of participation’ (or ‘nuclearity’).