Post Titles For Chapter 1 — Discourse Semantics: A Proposal For Triple Articulation

The titles of the posts that evaluate chapter 1 provide a glimpse of some of its theoretical shortcomings.

1. The Aim Of Martin (1992)
2. Confusing Strata
3. Misunderstanding The Natural Relation Of Grammar And Semantics
4. Confusing Realisation And Instantiation
5. Misconstruing Realisation And Instantiation
6. Blurring The Distinction Between Function (Structure) And Form (Rank Scale)
7. Preparing To Argue 'From Below' And Misunderstanding 'Cumulative'
8. Misrepresenting Information Distribution
9. Misrepresenting Agency As A Recursive System
10. Misunderstanding Levels Of Symbolic Abstraction
11. Confusing Levels Of Symbolic Abstraction
12. Falsely Claiming That The Content Plane Was Not Stratified Before Martin (1992)
13. The Problems With Semantic Motifs As A Motivation For Stratification
14. Grammatical Metaphor As Martin's Second Motivation For Stratifying Content
15. Misrepresenting Grammatical Metaphor
16. Self-Contradiction On Modelling Grammatical Metaphor
17. Misrepresenting Cohesion
18. Misrepresenting The Domain Of Cohesion
19. Misconstruing 'Cohesion Within The Sentence'
20. Not Recognising The 'Continuity' Between Clause Taxis And Conjunctive Cohesion
21. Martin's Claim That Cohesion Is Only "Measured" Between Clause Complexes
22. Why The Argument For A 'Discourse' Semantic Stratum Is Invalid
23. Martin's Stratification Of The Content Plane
24. Misconstruing Stratification
25. Metafunctional Structure Types In Discourse Semantics
26. Confusing Formal Constituency With Function Structure
27. Misrepresenting Multivariate Structure
28. Misconstruing The Level Of Symbolic Abstraction Of Cohesion
29. Conflating Realisation With Instantiation
30. Inconsistency In Reconstruing Reference As Identification
31. Problems In Construing Cohesive Ties As Identification Structure
32. Problems In Construing Cohesive Ties As Ideation Structure
33. Blurring The Distinction Between Paradigmatic And Syntagmatic Lexical Relations
34. Inconsistencies In The Notion Of 'Discourse Semantic Structure'
35. Discourse Semantic Systems: Metafunctional Inconsistencies
36. Misrepresenting Texture
37. Confusing Stratification With Instantiation: Register And Genre
38. "The Purpose Of These Descriptions Is To Enhance, Not Supplant, Those Offered In Cohesion In English"
39. Martin's Interpersonal Discourse Semantic System Of NEGOTIATION
40. Martin's Textual Discourse Semantic System Of IDENTIFICATION
41. Martin's Logical Discourse Semantic System Of CONJUNCTION
42. Martin's Experiential Discourse Semantic System Of IDEATION
43. Martin On Cohesion, Coherence, Cohesive Harmony And Texture
44. Misconstruing Register As Context

Misconstruing Register As Context [New]

 Martin (1992: 28):

Beyond this, as Halliday and Hasan note, the concept of cohesion is not in itself sufficient to define a text. Context is also critical and it is for this reason that Chapter 7 has been included in this volume to contextualise the work on discourse semantics developed in Chapters 2 through 6. Needless to say only a brief sketch of a model of the contexts in which English is used is provided at that stage. Since they have so often been misunderstood in this regard, we will close this introductory chapter with the following quotation from Halliday and Hasan (for further discussion of this point see Chapters 6 and 7 below).

The concept of COHESION can therefore be usefully supplemented by that of REGISTER, since the two together effectively define a TEXT. A text is a passage of discourse which is coherent in these two regards: it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent in register; and it is coherent with respect to itself, and therefore cohesive. Neither of these two conditions is sufficient without the other, nor does the one by necessity entail the other. (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 23)

Blogger Comments:

Amusingly, here Martin accuses others of misunderstanding Halliday & Hasan's notion of context, while introducing a clarifying quote from them on the subject which he himself misunderstands.

To be clear, Martin mistakenly equates context and register, presumably on the basis of:

it is coherent with respect to the context of situation, and therefore consistent in register

despite the fact that on the previous page, Halliday & Hasan (1976: 22) make a clear distinction between context (situational features) and register (linguistic features):

The linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features — with particular values of field, mode and tenor — constitute a register.

This simple misunderstanding invalidates Marin's model of context. For Martin, varieties of language — registers and genres — are context, not language. This is equivalent to claiming that varieties of climate — tropical, temperate etc. — are not climates, or that varieties of dog — cattle dog, sheep dog etc. — are not dogs. 

Martin On Cohesion, Coherence, Cohesive Harmony And Texture [New]

Martin (1992: 27):

Before going on to explore these systems it perhaps needs to be stressed that like Cohesion in English, English Text does not equate cohesion with coherence. Hasan's methodology for measuring coherence, cohesive harmony, will be introduced in Chapter 6, alongside other analyses which focus on patterns of interaction among discourse semantics systems and across strata. It is only by the end of Chapter 6 then that something approximating a comprehensive analysis of texture will have been achieved.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Martin is merely stating that he agrees with the sources of his work, Halliday & Hasan (1976) and Hasan (1989/1985) who, unlike Martin, originated and developed the notions of cohesion and coherence.

[2] It will be seen in the examination of Chapter 6 that Martin misrepresents Hasan's model of cohesive harmony in order to replace it with his own model. See the posts here.

[3] To be clear, Martin's notion of interactions among his metafunctional systems and across strata derives from his misunderstanding of metafunctions and strata as modules (p390).

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, 'texture' is the property of being a text (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 2) and it is created through the resources of the textual metafunction: the systems of COHESION, THEME and INFORMATION (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 650).

Martin, on the other hand, misunderstands texture as arising from the interaction of different metafunctions across different strata; see here, or here.

Martin's Experiential Discourse Semantic System Of IDEATION [New]

Martin (1992: 27):

Finally IDEATION attends to a variety of experiential relations among "lexical" items — hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy, meronymy and so on (the semantics of collocation if you will). The major influence on this chapter is once again Halliday and Hasan.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's experiential discourse semantic system of IDEATION is far more than just "influenced" by Halliday & Hasan (1976). Martin's IDEATION, which he characterises (p271) as 'the company words keep', is Halliday & Hasan's system of lexical cohesion, misunderstood, relocated from the textual metafunction to the experiential, and from lexicogrammar to Martin's discourse semantics stratum, and rebranded as Martin's work. The metafunctional confusion is maintained by Martin's use of a textual sub-unit 'message part' — realised by a lexical item — as his experiential unit (p325).

[2] To be clear, here Martin gives early warning that he does not understand his intellectual source by misconstruing the paradigmatic lexical relations of hyponymy, antonymy, synonymy and meronymy as types of the syntagmatic relation of collocation. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644) provide the following useful classification of the relevant lexical relations:

Martin's Logical Discourse Semantic System Of CONJUNCTION [New]

Martin (1992: 27):

CONJUNCTION focuses on logical meaning — on relations of addition, time, cause and comparison between messages, as these are variously realised through paratactic, hypotactic and cohesive conjunctions (or metaphorically within a clause; see Chapter 4 for details). Once again, this analysis is inspired by Gleason (1968) and by Halliday and Hasan (1976).

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin's logical discourse semantic system of CONJUNCTION is far more than just "inspired" by Halliday & Hasan (1976). It is a confusion of Halliday & Hasan's cohesive CONJUNCTION and Halliday's CLAUSE COMPLEXING, misunderstood and relocated from lexicogrammar to Martin's discourse semantics. That is, Martin confuses expansion features serving the textual metafunction (cohesive CONJUNCTION) with expansion features serving the logical metafunction (CLAUSE COMPLEXING). This confusion is maintained by Martin's use of Halliday's textual unit 'message' as his logical unit (p325).

The reason why Martin uses the relations of addition, time, cause and comparison instead of expansion and its most general subtypes elaboration, extension and enhancement is that these were the categories used in Martin's source, Halliday & Hasan (1976).

Moreover, because the logico-semantic relation of projection does not function cohesively, Martin's model of logical semantics omits the system of PROJECTION. That is, there is no semantic system to be realised lexicogrammatically by projection relations between units in unit complexes or metaphorically, for example, in circumstantial relational clauses such as the lecture covered topics in evolutionary biology.

Martin's Textual Discourse Semantic System Of IDENTIFICATION [New]

Martin (1992: 27):

IDENTIFICATION is a textual system concerned with tracking participants in discourse. At issue here is the way in which people, places and things are introduced in text and potentially referred to again once introduced (e.g. a robot...the android below). This work is based on Gleason's analysis of discourse structure within a stratificational framework (Gleason 1968) and Halliday and Hasan's (1976) description of referential cohesion.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's IDENTIFICATION, which he characterises (p93) as 'reference as semantic choice' is Halliday & Hasan's cohesive reference, misunderstood, relocated from Halliday's lexicogrammar to Martin's discourse semantics, and rebranded as Martin's work.

The fundamental misunderstanding that invalidates the model is Martin's confusion of textual reference with 'reference' in the the sense of ideational denotation. It is this confusion that leads Martin to misconstrue an ideational unit, the participant, as his textual unit.

This also leads Martin to mistake nominal groups — that realise participants — for reference items, which then leads Martin to confuse reference with nominal group DEIXIS.

[2] Consistent with the metafunctional confusion noted above, Martin here provides an example of his experiential system, IDEATION, instead of his textual system, IDENTIFICATION.

Martin's Interpersonal Discourse Semantic System Of NEGOTIATION [New]

Martin (1992: 26-7):

NEGOTIATION is an interpersonal system concerned with discourse as dialogue. Given an exchange such as that presented below, an account will be developed which shows how a sequence of speech acts which we might gloss informally as question, nomination, answer and validation are syntagmatically related to each other and systemically related to other types of exchange. This work takes as its point of departure the work on classroom discourse developed by the Birmingham school (Sinclair and Coulthard 1975).

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, NEGOTIATION is Martin's only genuine semantic system, the other systems being rebrandings of Halliday & Hasan's lexicogrammatical systems of COHESION. However, NEGOTIATION is only "Martin's" system in the sense that it is his rebranding of Halliday's system of SPEECH FUNCTION, incorporating work carried out by Halliday's colleagues.

By the same token, NEGOTIATION is also Martin's only system that is realised by genuine structures, the others being, instead, cohesive relations misconstrued as Lemke's covariate structures, which Lemke has since (1989) conceded are not, in fact, a type of structure. However, despite being interpersonal structures, Martin models them in terms of constituency — e.g. exchanges consisting of moves — which is the favoured structure type of the experiential metafunction.

"The Purpose Of These Descriptions Is To Enhance, Not Supplant, Those Offered In Cohesion In English" [New]

Martin (1992: 26):

The purpose of these descriptions is to enhance, not supplant, those offered in Cohesion in English; English Text functions for the most part to recontextualise Halliday and Hasan's conception of cohesion from the perspective of discourse semantics. Their very rich descriptions of texture in English will not in general be recapitulated, but rather presumed. This is particularly true with respect to SUBSTITUTION and ELISIPIS [sic], which will barely be touched on at all (see Chapter 6 below for further discussion).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday & Hasan (1976) analysed data and came up wth the theory of lexicogrammatical cohesion and its subtypes. Martin (1992), on the other hand, does not take data and come up with a theory of discourse semantics. Instead, he takes the hard won theorising of Halliday & Hasan and merely relabels (his misunderstanding of) it:

• lexicogrammatical cohesion is rebranded as discourse semantics,
• cohesive reference is rebranded as identification,
• cohesive conjunction is rebranded as conjunction (later 'connexion'), and
• lexical cohesion is rebranded as ideation.

By doing so, Martin gains institutional credit for the original intellectual work of Halliday & Hasan.

[2] To be clear, the reason why Martin was not able to reinvent Halliday & Hasan's ellipsis–&–substitution as discourse semantics is that it sets up a relationship that is lexicogrammatical, not directly semantic; see Halliday (1985: 296-7).

Confusing Stratification With Instantiation: Register And Genre [Revised]

Martin (1992: 26):

Finally, in Chapter 7, a model of context will be built up by sketching in the connotative semiotics of register, genre and ideology.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin (p493) claims to be following Hjelmslev in his use of the notion of a connotative semiotic. However, for Hjelmslev (1943), a connotative semiotic is a semiotic system whose expression plane is a denotative semiotic system. Martin's model of context misunderstands Hjelmslev in two crucial respects.

Firstly, as will be seen, Martin misinterprets Hjelmslev's connotative semiotic as merely its content plane, excluding its expression plane, the denotative semiotic.

Secondly, as will be seen, Martin misinterprets functional varieties of a denotative semiotic, registers and genres of language, as connotative semiotics.

These basic theoretical inconsistencies invalidate Martin's model of stratified context.

In SFL Theory, register and genre (text type), as functional varieties of language, are modelled as language, not as context. This means that, as varieties, they are located at the midpoint on the cline of instantiation of language. Register is text type (genre), viewed from the system pole of the cline, whereas text type (genre) is register, viewed from the instance pole.

However, as will be seen, Martin's model of genre adds further to the theoretical inconsistencies by also encompassing the SFL notions of MODE (e.g. recount, anecdote etc.) and semantic structure (e.g. Orientation^Record^Reorientation).

Misrepresenting Texture [New]

Martin (1992: 26):

Chapter 6 then looks at the ways in which the discourse structures generated by these systems interact systematically with lexicogrammatical structures (the question of texture).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin's notion that the discourse semantic stratum and the lexicogrammatical stratum "interact" derives from his misunderstanding (e.g. p390) of strata as modules. Importantly, strata are not modules, but different levels of symbolic abstraction, and to claim that they interact is analogous to claiming that Hamlet and the actor playing him interact.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory 'texture' refers to the property of being a text (Halliday & Hasan 1976: 2), and it is created by the textual resources of the lexicogrammar: the systems of THEME, INFORMATION and COHESION (Halliday 1985: 313-4). That is, texture is not a question of semantic structures interacting with lexicogrammatical structures.

Discourse Semantic Systems: Metafunctional Inconsistencies [Revised]

Martin (1992: 26):

The chapters which follow are organised in the following way. Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 deal with the four central discourse systems constituting the discourse semantic stratum proposed: NEGOTIATION, IDENTIFICATION, CONJUNCTION and IDEATION respectively. These chapters are organised by metafunction: NEGOTIATION considers the discourse semantics of interpersonal meaning, IDENTIFICATION the discourse semantics of textual meaning, CONJUNCTION the discourse semantics of logical meaning, and IDEATION the discourse semantics of experiential meaning. 

 Blogger Comments:

[1] As will be demonstrated, Martin's interpersonal system of NEGOTIATION is his rebranding of Halliday's interpersonal system of SPEECH FUNCTION, and later developments of that system carried out by colleagues using Halliday's model. Of Martin's discourse semantic systems, it is the only genuine semantic system, the other three systems being his rebrandings of Halliday & Hasan's systems of cohesion, which are non-structural textual resources of the lexicogrammatical stratum.

[2] As will be demonstrated, Martin's textual discourse semantic system of IDENTIFICATION is his rebranding of Halliday's textual lexicogrammatical system of REFERENCE, confused with 'reference' in the sense of ideational denotation. That is, Martin's system confuses both strata and metafunctions.

[3] As will be demonstrated, Martin's logical discourse semantic system of CONJUNCTION is his rebranding of Halliday's textual lexicogrammatical system of COHESIVE CONJUNCTION, confused with Halliday's logical lexicogrammatical system of CLAUSE COMPLEXING. Again, Martin's system confuses both strata and metafunctions.

[4] As will be demonstrated Martin's experiential discourse semantic system of IDEATION is his rebranding of Halliday's textual lexicogrammatical system of LEXICAL COHESION, confused with his misapplications of Halliday's expansion relations to clause and group structure. Again, Martin's system confuses both strata and metafunctions.

Inconsistencies In The Notion Of 'Discourse Semantic Structure' [Augmented]

Martin (1992: 25-6):

Following Lemke (1985) [Ideology, Intertextuality and the Notion of Register], discourse semantic structures of this kind will be referred to as covariate.  Covariate structures are those in which a semantic interdependency is constructed between items (which may or may not be grammaticalised) and in which dependent items have the potential to themselves be depended on.  These structures are the principle resource used by the discourse semantics for constructing text (although multivariate and univariate structures are also found…). A summary of the types of structure considered to this point and their association with different strata is outlined in Fig. 1.16. In this model, covariate structures in which one item presumes another are referred to phoric; covariate structures in which information is not so presumed are referred to as expectant.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Lemke (1988: 159) reinterprets his 'covariate structure' as a structuring principle, rather than a kind of structure:

My own 'covariate structure' (Lemke 1985), which includes Halliday's univariate type, is for the case of homogeneous relations of co-classed units, and should perhaps be called a 'structuring principle' rather than a kind of structure.

Martin includes Lemke (1988) in his list of references (p603).

[2] No argument has been offered to demonstrate that these discourse semantic 'structures' are structures.  It has been presumed throughout.  This is the logical fallacy known as 'begging the question':

The fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, is committed when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof.

[3] Interdependency is a system of the logical metafunction.  Here it is applied to systems of the textual metafunction — cohesion — which Martin reconstrues as the full range of metafunctions at a higher level of symbolic abstraction — discourse semantics.  Each move creates a serious theoretical inconsistency.  

A related inconsistency is the reconstrual of the interdependency relations, hypotaxis and parataxis, as the relations 'presumption' and 'expectancy', respectively, neither of which is a form of interdependency.

[4] In SFL, the resource for 'constructing text' is the textual metafunction, structural and non-structural, operating at all strata.  It is not restricted to one level of symbolic abstraction — 'discourse semantics' — nor is it the concern of the other metafunctions.  The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with enacting the self and relationships as meaning; the ideational metafunction is concerned with construing experience as meaning.

[5] Here a relation that has been explored through the lens of the logical metafunction — as hypotaxis — is given a label of a resource of the textual metafunction — phoric (reference) — and then proposed as a structural principle across all metafunctions at a level of symbolic abstraction above the lexicogrammar — discourse semantics.  Each move creates a serious theoretical inconsistency.

Blurring The Distinction Between Paradigmatic And Syntagmatic Lexical Relations [New]

Martin (1992: 25):

With ideational semantic relations of this kind, there is no need to propose a discourse Head. Consequently the relationship between expectant items will be modelled with an arrow-less inter-dependency line as outlined below… :

As with "hypotactic" semantic structures, these "paratactic" relationships may extend over any number of mutually expectant items to form lexical strings:

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, this is lexical cohesion, and its function is textual, not ideational.

[2] To be clear, the notion of 'expectancy' is an addressee-oriented rebranding of collocation, where the cohesive lexical relation is syntagmatic. Here Martin confuses it with hyponymy, where the cohesive lexical relation is paradigmatic; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 644).

[3] To be clear, hyponymic and superordinate relations between lexical items are types of the logico-semantic relation of elaboration, not interdependency. Interdependency is concerned with the equal or unequal status of units in a unit complex.

[4] See the previous post for the problems with these analyses.

Problems In Construing Cohesive Ties As Ideation Structure

Martin (1992: 24-5):

With IDEATION, a different type of discourse structure is found.  Consider the following proportionalities:

I'm a little tired of this robot :

but I'd love to try that android :: 

I'm not pleased with this robot :

but that model looks fine.

In these examples a semantic relationship is established between robot and android and between robot and model; but it is not one that depends on identity of reference as above (in both examples the related items refer to different participants).  Rather the cohesive tie is one that depends on taxonomic relations … android is a hyponym of robot in the first example; and model is a superordinate of robot in the second.  This type of semantic relation is more analogous with parataxis: the items related are mutually expectant — android is no more dependent on robot in the first example that robot is on android.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Again, no argument is put forward as to why these relations are structures.  They are presumed to be structures, and so the question to be addressed is merely 'what type?'.  This is the logical fallacy known as 'begging the question':

The fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, is committed when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof.

[2] Trivial point: model is not a superordinate of robot.  For model to be a superordinate of robot, robot would have to be a type of model, in the sense that lorikeet is a type of bird.   Here model is in a token-type relation with robot — it refers to an instance of the class robot.

[3] Taxonomic relations are not analogous with parataxis.  Taxonomic relations are relations between items within a scheme of classification (and subclassification), organised on the principle of either elaboration ('hyponymic') or extension ('meronymic').  Parataxis, in contrast, refers to forms in a complex being of equal status, with regard to interdependency.

[4] Again, a non-structural relation within the textual metafunction — the metafunction that organises the other metafunctions in the creation of texts — is being construed here as if it is a structure of the logical metafunction.  This theoretical inconsistency will be further compounded by Martin reconstruing this textual system, at the level grammar, as an experiential system, at the level of 'discourse' semantics.

Problems In Construing Cohesive Ties As Identification Structure

Martin (1992: 23-4):

Introducing/presuming oppositions of this kind are one resource for constructing discourse structure in text (for producing what Halliday and Hasan refer to as cohesive ties).  Read as texts, the proportionalities reviewed above display three structures of this kind:

a robot	a robot	a robot
á	á	á
it	the android	this model

What kind of structures are these?  If we try to relate structure of this kind to those we are familiar with from grammar, then they are more closely related to univariate structures than multivariate ones.  They are open-ended, with the same type of relation between elements potentially occurring over again and over again; a cohesive chain such as a robot-the android-it-it-the robot… in other words is more like a clause complex than a clause.  It is (semantic) interdependency that is relevant here, not constituency.

Within univariate structures, the analogy is with hypotaxis.  Presuming items are semantically dependent on the information they presume, with presumed information functioning as a kind of Head.

Blogger Comments:

[1] No argument is provided to support the claim that these relations are structures.  The relations are presumed to be structures and the question then is 'what type?'.  This is the logical fallacy known as 'begging the question':

The fallacy of petitio principii, or begging the question, is committed when a proposition which requires proof is assumed without proof.

[2] Again, android and model are related to robot by lexical cohesion (Martin's ideation) not reference (Martin's identification).  Anaphoric reference is realised only by the grammatical items it, the and this.  That is, two distinct types of cohesion are being confused for the purposes of establishing a model of 'discourse structure'.

[3] There are two immediate problems with using interdependency and univariate structures as a model of these relations.

The first problem is the theoretical inconsistency of construing what is purported to be a structure of the textual metafunction in terms of a principle and structure type of the logical metafunction.  Martin's identification is proposed to be a discourse semantic system of the textual metafunction.

The second problem is the absence of structure in these relations.  Univariate structures are structures because they involve units related by interdependency in unit complexes: clauses in clause complexes, and so on.  Nothing analogous to a unit complex is proposed here.  And, considering the first problem, anything corresponding to a unit complex would be a logical structure, not a textual one.

Inconsistency In Reconstruing Reference As Identification

Martin (1992: 23):

First, IDENTIFICATION.  Consider the following proportionalities:

There was a robot : It looked bored ::
There was a robot : The android looked bored ::
There was a robot : This model looked bored

The relevant opposition here is between introducing a participant (a robot) and presuming one (it, the android, this model).  In the examples, it, the android and this model assume that identity is recoverable from context, while a robot does not.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Martin's IDENTIFICATION is Halliday's cohesive system of REFERENCE, reconstrued as 'discourse semantics'.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 550-1):

The textual status at issue in the system of reference is that of identifiability: does the speaker judge that a given element can be recovered or identified by the listener at the relevant point in the discourse or not? If it is presented as identifiable, then the listener will have to recover the identity from somewhere else. If it is presented as non-identifiable, then the listener will have to establish it as a new element of meaning in the interpretation of the text.

[2] The reference items in the examples are the grammatical items it, the and this which refer anaphorically to a robot.  The lexical items android and model are related to robot by lexical cohesion (Martin's IDEATION), not by reference (Martin's IDENTIFICATION).  This inconsistency will contribute to undermining the argument for this type of 'discourse structure'.

Conflating Realisation With Instantiation [Revised]

Martin (1992: 23):

From the perspective of discourse semantics, however, these relationships [cohesive relations] can be construed as "structural", although clearly involving a structure of a non-grammatical kind.  This construal is important in order to understand the sense in which the discourse semantic unit text instantiates discourse semantic systems.

Blogger Comments:

[1] It will be demonstrated in later posts that cohesive relations are not 'structural' — except as a Humpty-Dumptyism.

[2] This is misleading. Whether or not cohesive relations are construed as structural, or not, is irrelevant to the instantiation of system as text. Here Martin confuses axial realisation with instantiation: the relation of system to structure with the relation of system (potential) to instance (text).

Misconstruing The Level Of Symbolic Abstraction Of Cohesion [Revised]

Martin (1992: 23):

Univariate structure at the rank of clause brings us to a grammatical frontier — the distinction between the clause complex and cohesion discussed in Section 1.4 above.  As noted, Halliday and Hasan refer to this frontier as non-structural; and from the perspective of lexicogrammar, this is just what they are — semantic relationships which transcend grammatical structure.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. The distinction between clause complexing and cohesion is not a grammatical frontier; it is a distinction within lexicogrammar: between the structural resources of logical metafunction and the non-structural resources of the textual metafunction.

As previously observed, Martin repeatedly misleads by misrepresenting Halliday & Hasan's cohesion as opposed to lexicogrammar, instead of within it, as a prelude to rebranding Halliday & Hasan's cohesion as his discourse semantics.

[2] Trivially, it is not this frontier — "the distinction between the clause complex and cohesion" — that is non-structural; but cohesion.

[3] Cohesive relations are also non-structural from the perspective of discourse semantics, as will be demonstrated in later posts.

[4] This is misleading on two counts. On the one hand, not all cohesive relations are semantic. Halliday (1985: 296):

But unlike reference, which is itself a semantic relation, ellipsis sets up a relationship that is not semantic but lexicogrammatical – a relationship in the wording rather than directly in the meaning.

On the other hand, cohesive relations do not transcend grammatical structure. Instead, grammatical structure is irrelevant to cohesion. Halliday & Hasan (1976: 9):

Misrepresenting Multivariate Structure [New]

Martin (1992: 22):

Throughout his work on English grammar Halliday has used univariate structure to model logical meaning and multivariate structures to model experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning (the problems prosodic and periodic realisation cause for interpersonal and textual multivariate representations notwithstanding). In fact, only experiential meaning is ideally suited to multivariate representation. Halliday recognises two types of univariate structure, hypotactic and paratactic. With hypotaxis, the recurring variables have unequal status; with parataxis they have equal status. The contrast between multivariate and these two types of univariate structure is exemplified below, following Halliday (1985a):

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it is not so much that Halliday has used these structure types to model different metafunctional meanings, but that he has proposed that the each metafunction favours a specific type of structural realisation.

[2] This is misleading, because it is demonstrably untrue. A multivariate structure is 'a configuration of elements each having a distinct function with respect to the whole' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 30). Clearly, textual and interpersonal structures satisfy this definition, since, textually, Theme and Rheme each have a distinct function with respect to the whole structure, as do, interpersonally, Subject, Finite, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct.

[3] To be clear, it is the units in a unit complex that have unequal (hypotaxis) or equal (parataxis) status.

Confusing Formal Constituency With Function Structure [New]

Martin (1992: 21-2):

Note that from a syntagmatic perspective this amounts to another grouping of metafunctions, complementary to that in Fig. 1.8 above; in Fig. 1.14 the logical metafunction is opposed to the three others (as in Halliday 1978a: 131).

The tension between Fig. 1.8 and Fig. 1.14 as far as realisation is concerned is summarised in Fig. 1.15.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Reminder (p12):

 

[2] This is misleading, because Figure 1.15 misunderstands the difference between logical structure and experiential structure as the difference between part–part relations and part–whole relations. To be clear, part–whole relations characterises the rank scale of forms, not experiential function structure. For example, a clause (whole) consists of groups (parts), each of which realises some function (Theme, Subject, Actor etc.).

Structure, on the other hand, refers to the relations between functional elements, not relations between formal parts and wholes. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 84, 451):

It is the relation among all these [functions] that constitutes the structure. …

Note that, although it is the functions that are labelled, the structure actually consists of the relationships among them.

In any case, having recounted these distinctions between structures according to metafunction, Martin ignores them in his discourse semantic model, as previously explained, making his work inconsistent with SFL theory in this respect, as well.