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