Misrepresenting A Misunderstanding Of Deixis As Reference

Martin (1992: 107):

With partial nominal reference this picture is a more complicated one.  The following paradigm provides a discourse oriented interpretation of the function of indefinite deixis where this is not conflated with the Head of a nominal group, but realised separately through the Deictic function in nominal group structure.

	MARKED:		UNMARKED:
	SINGULAR	PLURAL/MASS	SINGULAR	PLURAL/MASS
UNRESTRICTED	any	any	a	/ïsm/
NONPARTICULAR	/some/	Ø	a	/ïsm/
PARTICULAR	one	/some/	a	/ïsm/
MAJOR ROLE	this, a certain	these, certain	a	/ïsm/

Blogger Comments:

[1] This again confuses (structural interpersonal) deixis with (non-structural textual) reference, and misrepresents these grammatical systems as discourse semantic.  The theoretical inconsistency involves both metafunction and stratification.

[2] The wording "discourse oriented interpretation" merely provides Martin with a pretext for re-classifying the deictic function of determiners in SFL theory, without providing any evidence or argument in support of the reclassification; cf Table 6-3 in Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 368):

[3] This misclassifies the specific determiners, this and these as 'indefinite' and misclassifies their number distinction as singular vs plural/mass instead of singular/mass vs plural (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 365).  To be more concrete:

• singular: this misunderstanding
• mass: this information, not these information
• plural: these misunderstandings

[4] This misclassifies the post-Deictic certain as expressing indefinite deixis; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 374).