Misconstruing A Modal Adjunct As A Conjunctive Adjunct

Martin (1992: 210, 211):

Unlike intensive attributive clause relations, internal reformulation can work either from particular to general as in [4:119] above or from general to particular as in [4:121] (intensive attributive clauses can only assign subclasses to classes; it is for this reason that possessive relationals are so commonly used in science to subclassify — Mammals include monotremes, marsupials and placentals) and has distinct conjunctions for moving in one direction or the other.

REFORMULATION:REWORK:GENERALITY…GENERALISE

[4:119] The riot began shows that riot is a process term, even though it is in nominal form. 

In general, nominals which function as Mediums for processes which characterise them as having beginnings and ends are in fact realising actions.

REFORMULATION:REWORK:GENERALITY…PARTICULARISE

[4:121] The text has a number of actions encoded as nouns which colligation clearly shows to be actions. 

In particular, certain of these occur as Mediums with verbs indicating they have a beginning and end, which concepts apply only to actions.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, in general functions interpersonally as a modal Adjunct, not textually as a conjunctive Adjunct (see Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 82, 125).  It is therefore not conjunctive in function.  (The asymmetry of the analogy, attributive relational clauses, might have served as a warning.)

[2] In SFL theory, the conjunctive relation of particularising is a type of clarification within elaboration (see Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 542).  Here it is relocated within similarity — i.e. comparison a type of enhancement.

[3]  Intensive attributive clauses construe class membership: both delicacy (hyponymy) and instantiation (token/instance/specimen to type).  See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 144-5).