Sunday 3 May 2015

Mistaking Experiential Construal For Textual Reference

Martin (1992: 113):
Phoric reference to supersets presumed on the basis quality is recursive in the sense that where more than one quality is relevant to isolating one participant from the set, two or more superlative Epithets can be used.  Note that this does not mean that extra supersets are being presumed.  The holiday is [sic] [3:36] is isolated along three dimensions within the same superset:
[3:36]     What are you hoping for?
               — The longest, most relaxing, most refreshing holiday ever.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses the experiential construal of participants (realised by nominal groups) with presenting identities as recoverable (textual reference).  The 'recursion' here is the logical relation of modification in the nominal group.  Again, the grammar is being misunderstood and rebranded as discourse semantics.  The inconsistencies are both metafunctional and stratal.

[2] This misunderstands class membership (and set theory).  To be clear, the holiday is a member  of three partially overlapping sets, located at their intersection:

  • longest
  • most relaxing
  • most refereshing.

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