Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen is a Swedish-born linguist and a leading figure in the systemic functional linguistics (SFL) school, having authored or co-authored more than 100 books, refereed journal articles, and papers in refereed conference proceedings, with contributions to three television programs. A major work is his Lexicogrammatical cartography, published in 1995—a 700-page study of the grammatical systems of English from the perspective of SFL. He has co-authored a number of books with Michael Halliday

Michael Halliday

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar .-Biography:Halliday was born and raised in England...

. As of 2011, he is Professor in the Department of English at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Before this, he was Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Macquarie University

Macquarie University

Macquarie University is an Australian public teaching and research university located in Sydney, with its main campus situated in Macquarie Park. Founded in 1964 by the New South Wales Government, it was the third university to be established in the metropolitan area of Sydney...

 in Sydney.

Contributions to linguistics

Matthiessen has worked in areas as diverse as language typology, linguistics and computing, grammatical descriptions, grammar and discourse, functional grammar for English-language teachers, text analysis and translation, the evolution of language. He is an author of Rhetorical Structure Theory, along with Bill Mann and Sandy Thompson. Matthiessen's 1,000 page Lexicogrammatical Cartography offers "the best account of the S.F. description of English based on Halliday's work." His co-authored book, with Michael Halliday

Michael Halliday

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar .-Biography:Halliday was born and raised in England...

, Construing Experience through Meaning: A language based approach to cognition shows how to construe a linguistic/semiotic approach to cognition without invoking pre-linguistic mental fictions.

Selected works

• Matthiessen C.M.I.M. (1995) Lexicogrammatical cartography: English systems, Tokyo, International Language Sciences Publishers
• Halliday M.A.K., Matthiessen C.M.I.M. (2000) Construing experience through meaning: a language-based approach to cognition, Open linguistics series, Continuum International
• Matthiessen C.M.I.M., Caffarel A., Martin J.R. (2004) Language typology: a functional perspective, Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science, Series IV: Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 700 pp.
• Halliday, M.A.K., Matthiessen C.M.I.M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar, 3rd ed. London, Arnold
• Matthiessen C.M.I.M. (2004) "Descriptive motifs and generalisations". In A. Caffarel, J.R. Martin, C.M.I.M. Matthiessen (eds.), Language typology. A functional perspective (pp. 537–64). Amsterdam/Philadelphia, John Benjamins
• Martin J.R., Painter C., Matthiessen C.M.I.M. (2006) Working with functional grammar, Hodder Arnold Publication, 340 pp.
• Matthiessen C.M.I.M., Halliday M.A.K. (2009) Systemic functional grammar: a first step into the theory, Higher Education Press

External links