David Rose On Halliday's Structure Of The Nominal Group As 'Superfluous'

David Rose replied to Bea Quiroz on SYSFLING on 29 Dec 2024, at 09:14:

I think Figure 6-9 is meant to exemplify ellipsis... ‘(look at) those two (things), (look at) those (things), which (thing)?’ 

Unfortunately this is obscured by re-labelling Deictic or Numerative as ‘Head’, as part of the argument for analysing nom gps as a hypotactic word complex, with a wandering Head. V confusing (and now superfluous*) .

 

Demonstratives as Thing are very common in English. Eg from the preceding para in IFG ‘But this is not so’, or my preceding para ‘Unfortunately this is obscured’.

 

You’re right, demonstratives are certainly not substitutes. The canonical substitute is ‘one’ which often serves as Thing... those ones, which one?  I used ‘possessive substitutes’ for personal pronouns ‘yours/mine’ etc, which always serve as Thing... those ones are mine, which one is yours? (Do these combine substitution with personal reference... my one, your one ??)

 

All this and more is why we need a description of English nom gps with Thing realised as pronoun, both personal and demonstrative. (Then you’d have something consistent to compare with Spanish.)

 

*simpler analysis first proposed by Matthiessen (1995), then Martin, Matthiessen, Painter (2010), now Martin, Doran, Zhang (2021)

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Figure 6-9 becomes less confusing, and what it is meant to exemplify becomes obvious, if the label beneath it is taken into account: 

[2] To be clear, as Figure 6-9 makes clear, in these instances, this serves as Deictic, not Thing. The misunderstanding of demonstrative pronouns as serving as Thing was introduced by Matthiessen when he misrepresented the 'Head' column in the following diagram from IFG1&2 (Halliday 1985: 295; 1994: 313):

as 'Head/Thing' in IFG3&4 (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 556; 2014: 629):

[3] To be clear, the possessive pronouns yours, mine etc. also serve as Deictic, not Thing. Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 628):

[4] This is misleading, because it is the direct opposite of what is true, as demonstrated by [2] and [3] above.

[5] To be clear, on the one hand, for Matthiessen (1995: 690) also, the possessive pronouns yours, mine etc. serve as Deictic, not Thing:

and Martin, Matthiessen, Painter (2010) do not provide any analyses with pronouns as Head.

On the other hand, the 'simpler analysis' that Rose refers to involves the function termed 'Facet' in Matthiessen (1995: 655-7), and rebranded as 'Focus' in Martin et al (2010: 169-71). However, some of these analyses introduce descriptive inconsistencies. For problems with 'Facet' in Matthiessen (1995), see

• "Facet" Nominal Group
• A Thematic Test For Head/Thing Conflation
• The Symbolisation Subtype Of Facet

For problems with 'Focus' in Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010), see

• Problems With The 'Perspective' Subtype Of Focus
• A Serious Problem That Invalidates The 'Dimensional' Subtype Of Focus
• Serious Problems That Invalidate The 'Classifying' Subtype Of Focus
• A Problem With A Further Proposed 'Classifying' Type Of Focus
• The Problem With Exercise 5: Recognising Pre-Elements
• Problems With Exercise 4: Analysing Groups With Focus

[6] To be clear, Martin, Doran & Zhang (2021: 271) add to these inconsistencies by misconstruing a structure marker as a structural unit, in an unranked form they invent called a 'subjacency duplex':

For the inconsistencies introduced by the notion of a subjacency duplex, and the misunderstandings on which it is based, see the very detailed review of Martin & Doran (2023):

• Structure Markers: A Subjacency Duplex Analysis