Confusing Collocation With Transitivity

Martin (1992: 309):

In previous approaches to lexical cohesion, nuclear relations have been handled under the heading collocation.  An attempt will be made to unpack these relations here in order to identify more precisely the semantic relations involved.  What this amounts to is a foray into the discourse semantics of experiential grammar, which is in itself a daunting task.  It is however an essential one, since the lexical relations under consideration here cannot be explained simply by appealing to grammatical structure.  The relation between serve and ace for example is not limited to the Process Medium structure itself; the elements configured may be in different clauses — Ben serves… That's his fifth ace of the match.  And the configuration may be realised metaphorically — Ben's serve produced very few aces today.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, collocation is a type of lexical cohesion, and so a non-structural resource of the textual metafunction.  Clause nuclearity, in contrast, is grammatical: an aspect of the ergative model of transitivity, a structural resource of the experiential metafunction.

[2] An SFL model of ideational semantics that is theoretically consistent with SFL grammatics is expounded in Construing Experience Through Meaning (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999).

[3] In SFL theory, the semantic relations involved in collocation 'cannot be explained simply by appealing to grammatical structure'.  This is because the cohesive resource of collocation is lexical and non-structural.  On the other hand, instances of collocation can be sub-classified in terms the type of logico-semantic relation between the collocated lexical items.

[4] The relation between serve and ace is not one of Process and Medium when they appear as elements of the same clause, as in she served an ace.  An ace is not the Medium through which the serving Process unfolds; an ace is the Range of the serving Process. The Medium through which the serving Process unfolds is the server.

[5] When the elements serves and ace occur in different clauses, they are not configured, and so they are not related as Process + Medium.  The functions Process and Medium do not figure independently of clause structure.  In the example given, ace is part of the Range of a different Process (decoding identifying, rather than material).

Ben	serves
Medium	Process

that	’s	his fifth ace of the match
Medium	Process	Range

[6] In the metaphorical construal, serve functions as Agent, and aces functions as Medium:

Ben's serve	produced	very few aces	today
Agent	Process	Medium	Location

In a more congruent construal, served functions as Process, and aces functions as Range:

Ben	served	very few aces	today
Medium	Process	Range	Location