David Rose wrote on Sysfling at 13:53 on 30 May 2012 about the clause complex Destroy it and man is destroyed:
There are two clauses in this sentence …
destroy it, will you?man is destroyed, isn't he?
They are related grammatically by paratactic addition 'and'.Any conditional relation is a discourse semantic inference, recoverable from the co-text, it is not there in the grammar of the clause complex. The grammar is not sufficient to interpret this (or any other).
Blogger Comments:
This confuses co-text with levels of symbolic abstraction (stratification).
Discourse semantics, if the stratum above lexicogrammar (wording), is a higher level of symbolic abstraction (meaning).
The co-text, on the other hand, is the text that accompanies this excerpt, and its content can be analysed at each stratum of symbolic abstraction: wording (lexicogrammar) and meaning (semantics).
It is simply not true that the meaning realised in the logical relation of the clause complex can be inferred — or is only recoverable — from the co-text: there is nothing at all in the co-text that suggests the logical meaning being incongruently worded as [extension: addition] is [enhancement: condition].
It is not that 'the grammar is not sufficient to interpret this (or any other)' but that, in SFL, all grammatical analysis involves taking a trinocular perspective, and this includes determining the meaning being realised in the wording.
See here for an analysis of the clause complex in question.
See here for an analysis of the clause complex in question.