The Logical Thoughts Of Plato In Systemic Functional Linguistics

Russell (1961: 136-7):

There is, however, something of great importance in Plato's doctrine which is not traceable to his predecessors, and that is the theory of 'ideas' or 'forms'.  This theory is partly logical, partly metaphysical.  The logical part has to do with the meaning of general words.  There are many individual animals of whom we can truly say 'this is a cat'.  What do we mean by the word 'cat'?  Obviously something different from each particular cat.  An animal is a cat, it seems, because it participates in a general nature common to all cats.  Language cannot get on without general words such as 'cat', and such words are evidently not meaningless.  But if the word 'cat' means anything, it means something which is not this or that cat, but some kind of universal* cattiness.  This is not born when a particular cat is born, and does not die when it dies.  In fact, it has no position in space and time; it is 'eternal'.  This is the logical part of the doctrine.

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In Systemic Functional Linguistics, the logical part of Plato's theory of ideas/forms can be related to three dimensions of the theory: stratification, instantiation and orders of experience. 

In terms of stratification, the word 'cat' is located on the stratum of lexicogrammar, and the meaning of the word 'cat' is located on the stratum of semantics.  Strata are levels of symbolic abstraction, such that the lower stratum realises the higher; the wording 'cat' realises the meaning (just as the letters c-a-t realise the wording).

In terms of instantiation, the word 'cat' is both potential and an instance of that potential. What Plato modelled as universal versus particular, Systemic Functional Linguistics models as potential versus instance. What Plato modelled as eternal, Systemic Functional Linguistics models as virtual. The process of instantiation can be construed as a translation from the virtual into the actual.

Importantly, the ideational meaning of the word 'cat' is a (potential or instantial) construal of experience.  Systemic Functional Linguistics distinguishes between different orders of experience, in the first instance between material and semiotic orders.  When we speak or think of cats, we are construing material order phenomena; when we speak or think of the word 'cat' or its meaning, we are construing semiotic order phenomena (metaphenomena).

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* Hence the Universal Grammar of Chomskyan Formal Linguistics.