David Rose On Subjacency Duplexes

 David Rose wrote to asflanet on 11 Feb 2024, at 15:08:

Chris’ example is a nom gp, with embedded adv gp as Qualifier... 

some	of	those	days	[long	ago]
Focus		Deictic	Thing	Qualifier
a	b	determiner	noun	adv gp
				b	a

Here [long ago] specifies which days

 

Focus in English is realised by a subjacency duplex with the structure marker ‘of’, discussed in Martin & Doran 2023. The Head is more often an embedded nominal group... 

[a example]	of	those	days	[[a little while]	ago]
Focus		Deictic	Thing	Qualifier
a	b	demon	noun	adv gp
nom gp				b	a
				nom gp

Martin, J. R., & Doran, Y. J. (2023, May). Structure markers: A subjacency duplex analysis. In Language, Context and Text. The Social Semiotics Forum (Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 16-48

  

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in this case, Martin's 'Focus' is a rebranding of Halliday's Pre-Deictic (e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 394).

In SFL Theory, a duplex is a complex of two units related by expansion or projection, where each unit in the complex serves the same function. This is not the case here. On the one hand, the preposition of does not modify the determiner some by expansion or projection, and on the other hand, the determiner some and the preposition of do not serve the same function. While the determiner some serves as a structural element, the preposition of does not. Instead, it functions as a structure marker. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 425):

The exception is prepositional phrases with of, which normally occur only as Postmodifier; the reason is that they are not typical prepositional phrases, because in most of its contexts of use of is functioning not as minor Process/Predicator but rather as a structure marker in the nominal group.

[2] For a close examination of Martin & Doran (2023), see the review here. Among other things, the authors mistake functions for structures, and so, mistake function markers for structure markers, with the result that most of the paper is concerned with adpositions that serve as function markers, rather than the structure markers they intended to provide a subjacency analysis for. 

[3] To be clear, on the basis of IFG (Halliday ± Matthiessen 1985, 1994, 2004, 2014), this can be analysed as follows:

(a) ranking nominal group:

(b) nominal group embedded in ranking nominal group:

(c) nominal group embedded in nominal group embedded in ranking nominal group:

That is, example of is not a two-unit complex (duplex) realising Focus, and a little while ago is a nominal group realising a Qualifier, not an adverbial group realised by a two-unit complex (duplex).