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.