Mick O'Donnell On Mental Processes

On 3/12/13 Mick O'Donnell wrote on the Sys-func and Sysfling lists:

As for your "get a bird's eye view" being mental, if it can't clausally project, it can't be mental, if we take Halliday's criteria seriously:

* I got a bird's eye view that it was beautiful

Note however:

I got the idea that you were here.

...that potentially projects, so could be mental.  An alternative analysis would place the "that" clause as a postmodifier to "idea", which would dismiss the mental analysis.

Blogger Comments:

[1] If we do indeed "take Halliday's criteria seriously", then the ability to project is not a necessary criterion for mental processes.  Only the 'higher' mental processes of cognition and desideration have the potential to project; the 'lower' mental processes of perception and emotion cannot project, though they can range over (embedded) pre-projected facts, as in He heard (the fact) that you were ill.

he	heard	(the fact) [[ that you were ill ]]
Senser	Process: mental	Phenomenon: metaphenomenon

[2] Again, this is not a projection nexus — but it is a mental clause.  The embedded Postmodifier does not "dismiss the mental analysis":

I	got	the idea [[ that you were here ]]
Senser	Process: mental	Phenomenon: metaphenomenon

As demonstrated elsewhere here, O'Donnell does not understand the distinction between projection nexuses and simple clauses with embedded projections.