There are four papers in the present volume. The first paper is entitled "Exploring patterns of conjunction in different registers： A challenge from SFL for corpus linguists"， by Geoff Thompson. The author argues that "an SFL approach suggests strongly that it may be time for corpus linguistics to accept that at present it is both liberated and limited by its methodology"， which echoes Halliday's （2008： 75） assertion： "Corpus linguists have asked us to work towards 'corpus-based grammars'； in order to be able to do this we have to ask them， in turn， to work towards a grammar-based corpus."
The second paper is Part 2 of the paper entitled "Problems and solutions in identifying Processes and Participant Roles in discourse analysis" by Robin P. Fawcett， with its focus on how to handle metaphor， idiom and other problems. The first part of the paper was published in volume 3 （Fawcett 2011）. The relationship between the two parts is clearly explained by the author in the present part. The focus of Fawcett's paper is on identifying Processes and Participant Roles in discourse analysis in general and on "different problems that arise in the analysis of TRANSITIVITY" and the "problems that need to be handled within a framework that is able to model how we use both fresh metaphors and long-established idioms in a synchronic model of language and its use" in particular. The underlying aim is to demonstrate "a cognitive-interactive model of communication through language" within the general framework of SFL. The author argues that the Cardiff Grammar is simpler than the Sydney Grammar in that the former "accommodates the 'ergative' and the 'transitive' perspectives WITHn A SINGLE DESCRIPTIVE FRAMEWORK， SO relieving the text analyst ofthe task of deciding which framework to use in which cases".
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