Eight Problems With Martin's Six Notes To His Analysis Of Text [3:88]

Martin (1992: 150):

1.  the glass jar — the first example of addition in the text; the presumed information is neither directly recoverable nor implied.
2.  the next morning — in narrative, setting in time often involves relevance phoricity of this kind, bridging from the setting in time here by lying in bed asleep.
3.  the window — bridged from laying at the bottom of his bed, implying a room with a window.
4.  the woods — apparently bridged from came out; introducing this participant non-phorically was not felt appropriate by most children (cf. there was a woods out the back and…)
5.  the next minute — setting in time bridging as in note 2 above.
6.  the water — the second example of addition in the text; the identity of this participant is not recoverable from the co-text.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL theory, these are instances of homophoric demonstrative reference, which is not cohesive, made by the reference item the.

[2] As previously explained, this sense of "addition" is derived from confusing the experiential construal of participants with the textual reference to referents. The theoretical inconsistency is one of metafunction.

[3] To be clear, in SFL theory, these are circumstances (Location: time), not participants.

[4] To be clear, there is no "relevance phoricity here".  As previously explained, 'relevance phoricity' is Martin's rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) comparative reference, and the next morning includes no comparative reference items.

[5] As previously explained, Martin's "bridging" is a confusion of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) reference and lexical cohesion, both misunderstood.

[6] Even if this made sense, lying in bed asleep does not appear in the text.

[7] If laying at the bottom of his bed implies "a room with a window", the linguistic explanation for the implication lies in the cohesive use lexical relations: bed and window are co-meronyms of 'bedroom' (a hyponym of 'room' and a meronym of 'house', 'hotel, 'motel' etc.).

[8] It is understandable if most children felt there was a woods inappropriate, since a is singular, whereas woods is plural.  The appropriate form, in this instance, would be either 'a wood' or 'woods'.