The other foundation for the child’s ʻlanguage about languageʼ is to be found in the immaginative function. This also relates the child to his environment, but in a rather different way. Here, the child is using language to create his own environment; not to learn about how things are but to make them as he feels inclined. From his ability to create, through language, a world of his own making he derives the IMMAGINATIVE model of language; and this provides some further elements of the metalanguage, with words like 'story', 'make up' and 'pretend'.
- Halliday (1973), a pag.15