Confusing Circumstances Of Location With Demonstrative Reference Items

Martin (1992: 153-4):

3.6 Location And Manner

Because the point of departure for this chapter has been participant identification, closely related IDENTIFICATION systems realised through demonstrative and comparative adverbs have not yet been considered.  The demonstrative adverbs function as Circumstances [sic] of Location in clause structure (e.g. Come here.) or as Qualifiers in nominal groups (e.g. that guy there); they are realised by here, there, now and then.  Each involves reminding phoricity, presuming location in space or time.  They function both exophorically and endophorically; and where endophoric here and there may presume text (see Halliday and Hasan 1976: 74-75).  The paradigm of oppositions is a simple one, exemplified in [3:90] through [3:93] below.

	PROXIMATE	DISTANT
TIME	here	there
SPACE	now	then

[3:90]

I'm at work;
bring it here.

[3:91]

He's a bit off.
— You're right there.

[3:92]

It's past noon;
do it now.

[3:93]

I got a computer in 88;
writing was harder before then.

Blogger Comments:

[1] On the one hand, Location and Manner are experiential functions, not textual functions.  On the other hand, Martin's network for this discussion, Fig. 3.16, is instead concerned with Extent and Manner, and does not account for Location.

[2] As previously demonstrated, throughout this chapter on 'reference as semantic choice', Martin misinterprets textual reference as ideational denotation — where the ideational denotation, also contrary to SFL theory, is of meanings transcendent of language.

[3] To be clear, Martin's unit of IDENTIFICATION, the entry condition to his system of IDENTIFICATION is 'participant'.  The switch to circumstances here thus creates a fundamental inconsistency in the model that is not addressed.  Martin's network for this discussion, Fig. 3.16, lacks an entry condition to disguise this anomaly.

[4] To be clear, given that the 'point of departure for this chapter has been participant identification', the reason for excluding nominal groups like that guy there from that discussion does not ring true. 

[5] Contrary to Martin's claim, the temporal demonstratives do not refer.  Halliday (1985: 294):

The temporal demonstratives now and then also function as cohesive items, but conjunctively rather than referentially.

[6] To be clear, 'reminding phoricity' is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) co-reference, demonstrative and personal.

[7] This confuses experiential location with textual location.  As reference items, here and there only refer endophorically, anaphorically or cataphorically.  Examples provided by Halliday (1985: 294) include:

So here's a question for you.  How old did you say you were?

… she said: "but it wouldn't be all the better his being punished".  "You're wrong there, at any rate," said the Queen.

[8] Martin's paradigm is actually just part of the larger set of systematic distinctions devised by Halliday (1985: 295), reproduced in Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 629) as:

 

[9] Trivially, these terms are in reverse order.

[10] To be clear, this is not a referential use of here.  See [7] above.

[11] As mentioned above in [5], temporal demonstratives do not refer, but can function in another cohesive system, conjunction.  In Martin's second example, [3:93], this is the function of the conjunctive Adjunct before then.  In Martin's first example, [3:92], however, now simply serves as a circumstantial Adjunct.