Misconstruing Ellipsis Of Repetition As Relational Meronymy [1]

Martin (1992: 305):

As with hyponymy, the relationship between part and whole may be named.  Thus a kind of chair is proportional with a part of the chair, but with the name of the relational [sic] filling a Pre-Numerative (Halliday 1985: 174) rather than a Pre-Classifier position.  The relational items may function cohesively between clauses, as in The chair's broken. — Which part?  The following items are among those realizing relational meronymy:

part, content, ingredient, fitting, member, constituent, stratum, rank, plane, element, factor, component, faction, excerpt, extract, selection, piece, segment, section, portion, measure

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, this nominal group function is termed 'extended Numerative: portion', which is the cross-classification of 'partitive' and 'measure'.  See Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 333).

a	part	of	the	chair
Numerative: portion			Deictic	Thing

[2] The cohesion in the response is ellipsis of the potential lexical repetition of chair (and of the Finite and Residue).

the chair	’s	broken
Subject	Finite	Complement

which part of the chair	’s	broken
Subject	Finite	Complement

The notion of a 'relational meronymy' therefore arises from not recognising a cohesive relation.

[3] Not all of these items necessarily represent parts of wholes.