Misconstruing Logico-Semantic Relations Realised In The Clause [2]

Martin (1992: 311):

Table 5.7 illustrates a number of these Process ° Range constructions.  Note the way in which they contrast with the Process ° Medium structures in parentheses.  From the point of view of field, the Process ° Range:process structure involves just one meaning (which is realised through two lexical items, one elaborating the other; the Process ° Medium structures on the other hand involve two meanings, and an action and the participant that action is mediated through).

Table 5.7. Elaboration and extension in the clause
Clause process	=	range:process	(process + medium)
play		tennis	(play + the ball)
sing		song	(sing + her x to sleep)
score		run	(score + some dope)
ask		question	(ask + Mary x to tea)
tell		story	(tell + him off)
take		bath	(bathe + the baby)
do		dance	(dance + her x over)
make		friend	(befriend + John)

Blogger Comments:

[1] The view from field is irrelevant to whether or not 'the Process ° Range:process structure involves just one meaning'.

[2] A 'Process ° Range:process structure' construes two meanings: a process and a range of the process — not one.

[3] In the case of a verbal Process, the Range (Verbiage) is related to the Nucleus by projection, not elaborating expansion.

[4] In SFL theory, logico-semantic relations obtain between the Nucleus and participants (and circumstances) outside the Nucleus — not between the Process and Medium within the Nucleus. There are no extending relations between the Nucleus and other participants (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 174-5).

[5] 'Friend' is an entity, not a process.

[6] In such construals, 'Mary' functions as Beneficiary (Receiver), not Medium — the omitted Sayer is the Medium.  The Receiver is related to the Nucleus by enhancement, not extension.

Misconstruing Logico-Semantic Relations Realised In The Clause [1]

Martin (1992: 309-10, 311):

The basic strategy used here will be to apply Halliday's general logico-semantic relations of expansion to clause, nominal group and verbal group meanings in order to produce a more abstract level of interpretation. … With clauses, elaboration is through Process ° Range: process (as opposed to Range: entity) structures.  These are of two kinds.  One type makes use of a general verb such as do, make, take etc. and expresses the experiential meaning of the process as a Range: e.g. do work.  The Range in effect elaborates on the general verb by specifying the meaning involved.  The other type makes use of a more specific verb which the Range function then subclassifies; the verbs play and tell are commonly specified in this way.  From the point of view of field, playing tennis, playing monopoly, playing rummy and so on are all hyponyms of play.  As Halliday (1985: 135) points out, "Tennis is clearly not an entity; there is no such thing as tennis other than the act of playing it."

play = tennis/football/cards/monopoly/chess/rummy…
tell = joke/story/anecdote/news/answer/solution… 

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, the logico-semantic relations of both expansion and projection obtain in the figure between the Nucleus (Process/Medium) and other participants (and circumstances) — see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 174-5).  That is, the relation is not between the Process and participants, and the type of relation is not restricted to expansion.

Elaboration in the figure is not restricted to Range: process.  It is also the relation between the Nucleus and Range as Attribute: quality and as Attribute: class.

[2] This describes only Range in material clauses, namely Scope.  Range occurs with all process types except the existential (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 293).  It corresponds to Behaviour in behavioural clauses, Verbiage in verbal clauses, Attribute in attributive clauses, Value in decoding identifying clauses, and Phenomenon in emanating mental clauses.

[3] The Range: process elaborates the Nucleus, not the verb.

[4] When the verb tell serves as a verbal Process, the logico-semantic relation between the Nucleus and the Range (Verbiage) is projection, not expansion: elaboration.

[5] More accurately, semantically, tennis, monopoly, rummy and so on are all hyponyms of game.  The Halliday quote on Range is irrelevant to the hyponymy analysis.

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

Misconstruing Ranges As Mediums

Martin (1992: 309):

Nuclear relations reflect the ways in which actions, people, places, things and qualities configure as activities in activity sequences.  The following Process Medium structures from the field of tennis illustrate the kind of relations involved.  In this field, players serve aces and volley winners, but they do not *serve lobs or *volley double-faults.

serve + ace

smash + overhead

put away + volley

hit + winner

net + passing shot

intercept + volley

drop + shot

lob + return

volley + winner 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the misconstrual of field as the semantic description of social activities.  That is, context — the culture as semiotic system — is misconstrued as the language that describes social activities.  See previous critique here.

[2] These structures are all Process + Range, not Process + Medium.  (The tennis player is the Medium of each Process.)  In each case, the participant refines the process by naming a particular variety of it.  On Range, Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 295) write:

There may be in each type of clause one element which is not so much an entity participating in the process as a refinement of the process itself.  This may be the name of a particular variety of the process…

[3] Ordinarily, this is construed nominally, rather than clausally, as Classifier + Thing.

An Unwarranted Claim About the System Of Identification

Martin (1992: 309):

This interaction between IDENTIFICATION and IDEATION provides a criterion for determining when relations between lexical items are cohesive.  They can be treated as such where one item codes sufficient experiential meaning to be presumed by another, either directly, or indirectly through bridging.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This was not demonstrated to be the case — even if the (previously discussed) confusion between reference and lexical cohesion in the discourse system of IDENTIFICATION is ignored. The examples used to argue the case were all clear cases of lexical cohesion: hyponymy (flowers-roses, insects-mosquitos) and meronymy (stadium-track, chimney-cottage). The system of IDENTIFICATION provided no criterion — it was irrelevant — for determining whether there was a lexically cohesive relation.

[2] In SFL theory, relations between lexical items are cohesive when items, as bundles of lexical features, are related by either repetition, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy or collocation.

Misrepresenting Meronymy As Bridging Meronymy

Martin (1992: 308):

Bridging is also possible with parts and wholes, working in either direction:

BRIDGING: PART FROM WHOLE
[5:23] Ben walked into the stadium, to look at the track. 

BRIDGING: WHOLE FROM PART
[5:24] Ben saw a chimney. He was close to the cottage now.

Blogger Comments:

These are just clear cases of meronymy (lexical cohesion).  The underlined grammatical reference item the is irrelevant to the cohesiveness of the lexical relation.

Misrepresenting Hyponymy As Bridging Hyponymy

Martin (1992: 308):

Hyponyms do not directly presume their superordinates, but they may presume them indirectly through bridging. … In the following examples hyponyms are bridged from their superordinates:

BRIDGING: HYPONYM FROM HYPERONYM

[5:23]  Ben admired his flowers, especially the roses.  

BRIDGING: HYPONYM FROM HYPERONYM

[5:24]  Ben hated the insects, especially the mosquitos.

Blogger Comment:

These are just clear cases of hyponymy.  The underlined grammatical reference item the is irrelevant to the cohesiveness of the lexical relation.

Confusing Lexical Cohesion And Reference

Martin (1992: 308):

One way of resolving the question of how taxonomic distance affects cohesion is to make use of IDENTIFICATION and test items to see whether they are experientially close enough for one to have been presumed by the other.  Along these lines, the flower straightforwardly presumes a rose, as the insect presumes a mosquito.  Hyponyms do not directly presume their superordinates, but they may presume them indirectly through bridging.  The reason for this difference is that superordinates contain less information than their hyponyms, while hyponyms encode all of the experiential meaning of their superordinates.  This asymmetry is reflected in definitions:

rose  a beautiful & usually fragrant flower usually of red or yellow or white

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the confusion of grammatical reference and lexical cohesion, as previously explained here.

[2] Whether the reference item the in the flower presumes that the identity ('which flower?') is recoverable in a rose depends crucially on the co-text.  On the other hand, what is straightforward is the hyponymic relation between flower and rose.

Likewise, whether the reference item the in the insect presumes that the identity ('which insect?') is recoverable in a mosquito depends crucially on the co-text.  On the other hand, what is straightforward is the hyponymic relation between insect and mosquito.

[3] In SFL theory, lexically cohesive hyponymic relations do not involve presumption.

[4] The relation between superordinates and hyponyms is delicacy.  Superordinates are more general (broader) categories, hyponyms are more specific (narrower) categories.

[5] In terms of the SFL theoretical architecture, hyponymy combines (logical) elaboration with (experiential) attribution.  Accordingly, there is no encoding in hyponymy, because encoding is a direction of coding in identifying relations.  The experiential relation between hyponym and superordinate is class membership, not identity.

[6] Any informational asymmetry in the attributive relation between hyponyms and superordinates (Carriers and Attributes) is not "reflected" in the identifying relation between words and meanings (Tokens and Values).

Misconstruing Synonymy + Collocation As Relational Meronymy

Martin (1992: 307):

The second type [of collective item] cannot function as a Pre-Numerative: *a cattle of cows and calves or *a furniture of chairs and sofas are nonsense.  These items do nevertheless assemble a potentially heterogenous [sic] collection of individuals into a single group.  They function "cohesively" in examples like Ben put the cutlery, glasses and plates into the sink and washed up the dishes.  This set includes cattle, clergy, furniture, dishes, cutlery, beverages, parts of speech, shrubbery, collection, constellation, galaxy, solar system, compilation, assembly, company, conference, stable, troupe, orchestra, band, conglomeration, portfolio.

Blogger Comments:

[1] At least 12 of the 22 examples can function as Numeratives; these are all extended Numeratives of the type aggregate (collective measure).

[2] The lexical cohesion between dishes and plates is synonymy, and the lexical cohesion between dishes and each of cutlery and glasses is collocation.  Martin would appear to think that 'dishes' refers to an assembly of cutlery, glasses and plates.

[3] This "collective item" is actually a nominal group that includes an extended Numerative: facet (partitive + type) — in contradistinction to aggregates, which are collective + measure.