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