Misconstruing Phonology As Grammatical Ellipsis–&–Substitution Misunderstood As Semantic Reference

Martin (1992: 101):

Redundancy Phoricity – 

VERBAL SUBSTITUTION & ELLIPSIS 

[3:13]   Has he found his pets?
             — He has done his dog, but I don't think he's found his frog. 

CLAUSE SUBSTITUTION & ELLIPSIS

[3:14]   Has he found his pets?
             — I think so.

TONICITY 

[3:15]   Did he bring home a frog?
             — //1 He brought home a baby frog //

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as explained in previous posts, "redundancy phoricity" is Martin's rebranding of Halliday's ellipsis–&–substitution, misunderstood as a type of reference.

[2] Here Martin adds to the confusion above ([1]), by further confusing:

• content plane (cohesion) with expression plane (tonicity)*, and
• a non-structural system (cohesion) with a structural system (tonicity).

This example is even inconsistent with Martin's own definition of "redundancy phoricity" (p100), since it features neither ellipsis nor substitution.

This example is even inconsistent with Martin's claim that the tonic (baby) is marking "redundancy phoricity", since the relation is represented as obtaining between frog and frog.


* Further inconsistent, even with these inconsistencies, Martin elsewhere (p401) misrepresents the textual content realised by tonicity and tonality, information, as located on the expression plane (phonology).