Misanalysing A Clause Complex And Its Clauses

Martin (1992: 434-6):

Topical Themes are in bold face in this text, and marked topical Themes are underlined … .

[6:34]	topical themes (underlined) [sic]
	j.	A female soverieign happened to marry an able and pertinaceous man,
	k.	and it seemed likely that an element which had been quiescent within it for years — the element of irresponsible administrative power — was about to become its predominate characteristic
	l.	and change completely the direction of its growth.

… Note that grammatical metaphor has been drawn on to weave these particular strings through Theme and to formulate the appropriate "hyper-Theme" predicting this interaction pattern.  … modalisation is dressed up as a quality in [6:34k] — likely.

Blogger Comments:

[1] There are only two, not three, ranking clauses in this clause complex; clause [l] is embedded:

A female sovereign happened to marry an able and pertinacious man,	and it seemed likely [[that an element which had been quiescent within it for years — the element of irresponsible administrative power — was about to become its predominate characteristic || and change completely the direction of its growth.]]
1	+ 2

[2] The (unmarked topical) Theme of the second clause is it.  The word likely is within the Rheme — not marked topical Theme.  This is an instance of postposed Subject, not predicated Theme, and as an interpersonal metaphor of modality, it seemed likely is an interpersonal Theme, not a topical Theme.

and	it	seemed	likely	[[that an element which had been quiescent within it for years — the element of irresponsible administrative power — was about to become its predominate characteristic || and change completely the direction of its growth.]]
Theme		Rheme

[3] In terms of ideational meaning, this is a quality of projection; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 211).  The realisation of a quality as an Attribute, as it is here, is not metaphorical.

and	it	seemed	likely	[[that an element which had been quiescent within it for years — the element of irresponsible administrative power — was about to become its predominate characteristic || and change completely the direction of its growth.]]
	Carr-	Process: relational	Attribute	-ier

The grammatical metaphor with regard to likely is interpersonal — a metaphor of modality: the explicit objective realisation of probability as it seemed likely.

It is this interpersonal metaphor that engenders a postposed Subject — see Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 97-8) — which is realised by an embedded clause complex that is lexically dense with ideational metaphor:

and	it	seemed		likely	[[that an element which had been quiescent within it for years — the element of irresponsible administrative power — was about to become its predominate characteristic || and change completely the direction of its growth.]]
	Subject	Finite	Predicator	Complement	postposed Subject

In terms of the textual metafunction, all the work here is being done by the marked distribution of information units, not by thematic structure.  The combined effect of the interpersonal and ideational metaphor is to package the quanta of information into four or five information units, highlighting four or five elements of New information, co-extensive with the postposed Subject.  It is New information that is most textually relevant here, not Theme.

that an element which had been quiescent within it	for years
Given	New

the element of	irresponsible administrative power
Given	New

was about to become	its predominate characteristic
Given	New

and change	completely
Given	New

the direction of its growth

New

Misconstruing Marked Topical Theme

Martin (1992: 435):

…in English declaratives, unmarked topical Theme is conflated with Subject, whereas marked topical Theme precedes it.

Blogger Comment:

This is misleading.  In SFL theory, there is only one topical Theme in a clause.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 79):

The guiding principle of thematic structure is this: the Theme contains one, and only one, of these experiential elements. This means that the Theme of a clause ends with the first constituent that is either participant, circumstance or process. We refer to this constituent, in its textual function, as the topical Theme.

A topical Theme of a clause is either unmarked or marked.  In the case of declarative clauses, Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 73, 74) set out the criteria as follows:

In a declarative clause, the typical pattern is one in which Theme is conflated with Subject; … We shall refer to the mapping of Theme on to Subject as the unmarked Theme of a declarative clause. The Subject is the element that is chosen as Theme unless there is good reason for choosing something else. …

A Theme that is something other than the Subject, in a declarative clause, we shall refer to as a marked Theme. The most usual form of marked Theme is an adverbial group … or prepositional phrase … functioning as Adjunct in the clause. Least likely to be thematic is a Complement, which is a nominal group that is not functioning as Subject — something that could have been a Subject but is not … . Sometimes even the Complement from within a prepositional phrase functions as Theme … .

The problem with Martin's interpretation can be demonstrated by the following:

(i) According to SFL theory:

blessed	are	the meek
Theme: marked	Rheme
Complement	Finite	Subject
Attribute	Process	Carrier

(ii) Following Martin's misinterpretation:

blessed	are	the meek
Theme: marked	Theme: marked	Theme: unmarked
Complement	Finite	Subject
Attribute	Process	Carrier

On Martin's interpretation, the clause as message has three 'points of departure', but no body.

Misrepresenting Information Structure

Martin (1992: 434):

Halliday is careful to distinguish Theme from Given, assigning distinct Theme ^ Rheme (realised by constituent sequence) and (Given) ° New structures (realised by intonation) to the English clause.  This is an essential step in understanding the difference between method of development (this section) and point (Section 6.3.3 below); without this distinction no adequate account of English texture can be provided.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, Given and New are not functional elements of clause structure.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 88):

[information] is a system not of the clause, but of a separate grammatical unit, the information unit. The information unit is a unit that is parallel to the clause and the other units belonging to the same rank scale as the clause: clause group/phrase word morpheme. Since it is parallel with the clause (and the units the clause consists of), it is variable in extent in relation to the clause and may extend over more than one clause or less than one clause; but in the unmarked case it is co-extensive with the clause.

[2] Because Martin does not understand that thematic and informational structures also contribute to texture in Halliday & Hasan's model — see Misrepresenting Hasan's Cohesive Harmony — the implication here is that their (original) model is therefore inadequate, but that his (derived) model, which will "add" them, is not.

Again, there is no reasoned argument, merely the declaration of an attitude, in this case negative appreciation: composition (no adequate).

Misrepresenting Hasan's Work On Coherence As Formalist

Martin (1992: 433):

As a final caveat the reasons for developing a measure of textual coherence need to be cautiously examined.  One might argue from the perspective of formal linguistics that just as the goal of a grammarian is to account for speakers [sic] intuitions about which sentences are grammatical, so the goal of the textlinguist is to account for intuitions about which texts are coherent.  But just as a functional grammarian would reject this delimitation of the goals of grammatical theory, so a functional discourse analyst might view accounting for a speaker's intuitions about coherent text with some suspicion.  Alternatively, one might pose questions about the effectiveness of a text in achieving it's [sic] interlocutors' social purpose.  This rhetorical perspective is likely to prove more appropriate as far as functional linguistics is concerned.  Or one might ask questions about a text's role in sustaining culture as a dynamic open system.  These points will be taken up again in Chapter 7 below.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The reason for raising formal linguistics here is to present Hasan's work as proceeding from Formalist (Cartesian, Chomskyan) principles and/or assumptions.  Martin introduced the word intuition in the previous paragraph and uses it three times in this paragraph in order to establish the collocation with Formal linguistics.  It is misleading in a number of ways.  To begin with, here is what Hasan (1985: 72, 86, 88) actually wrote:

The property of texture is related to the listener's perception of coherence.  Thus in common parlance, Example 5.1 would be described as possessing coherence while example 5.2 would be seen as lacking in coherence. …

Whenever I have presented these two texts to informants, they have unanimously agreed that text 5.2 is less coherent than 5.1… .  An explanation of what this judgement correlates with in patterns of texture is difficult to find, so long as grammatical and lexical cohesion are examined separately. …

…can the listener's perception of varying degrees of coherence between Texts 5.1 and 5.2 be correlated with differences in texture…?

A cautious examination of Hasan's work reveals that the purpose of the work on texture is to determine the linguistic correlates of the listeners' perception of coherence.  In Hasan's work, the data are instances of language (texts).  This is very distinct from the concerns of Formal semantics. In Formal semantics, it is intuitions about language that constitute the data.  As Martin Stokhof (2011 Intuitions And Competence In Formal Semantics) explains:

In formal semantics intuition plays a key role, in two ways. Intuitions about semantic properties of expressions are the primary data, and intuitions of the semanticists are the main access to these data.

[2] The implication here is that Hasan's work is not framed within the rhetorical perspective.  This is also misleading.  Here is what Hasan (1985: 96) actually wrote:

The infra-structure of all assumptions about co-operative acts of doing and saying is, in the last resort, social. The assumption of coherence can be sustained so well because human language has the resource for indicating coherence, while the nature of language as a resource has developed in a particular way because it has had to serve the needs of the community.  Our task is to understand the specific nature of these resources — not simply to hide behind the mind and the intention of particular speakers and listeners.

By way of clarification, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 415-6) characterise the two linguistic traditions in the following way:

We can identify two main traditions in Western thinking about meaning (see Halliday 1977):

(i) one oriented towards logic and philosophy, with language seen as a system of rules;

(ii) one oriented towards rhetoric and ethnography, with language seen as resource.

… Our own work here falls mainly within the second tradition — but we have taken account of the first tradition, and the general intellectual environment in which versions of our meaning base are being used also derives primarily from the first tradition. Indeed the two traditions can in many respects be seen as complementary, as contributing different aspects to the overall picture. Our own foundation, however, is functional.

[3] Incidentally, Martin provides no reasoned argument for or against the two linguistic perspectives, he merely expresses negative attitude (reject, suspicion) towards the Formalist tradition, and positive attitude (appropriate) towards the rhetorical tradition.

[4] In SFL theory, this is modelled by realisation, instantiation and semogenesis.  A text realising a context of situation (an instance of culture) unfolds at the instance pole of cline of instantiation during logogenesis, each text nudging the probabilities of its register and the overall linguistic potential, and each context of situation nudging the probabilities of the situation type and the overall culture as potential.  And, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 18) put it, logogenesis provides material for ontogenesis, which provides material for phylogenesis (with phylogenesis providing the environment for ontogenesis, and this for logogenesis).

Conclusion:

This extract from Martin (1992) is intended as the third and final part of a critique of Hasan's cohesive harmony, as a prelude to introducing his own version. As can be seen from the clarifications above, it is merely a misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Hasan (1985).