Beatriz Quiroz Misunderstanding Halliday On Thematic Equatives

 

Beatriz Quiroz wrote to SYSFLING on 22 Nov 2021, at 01:58:

Just a follow-up: 

I couldn't find any grammatical argumentation for specifically treating the nominalised clause in thematic equatives as Value in IFG (across editions), nor in Deploying functional grammar (Martin, Matthiessen and Painter, 2010). What I did find is Davidse (1992)'s claim, based on Halliday (1967b), that all thematic equatives are encoding identifying clauses (as opposed to decoding ones). If one goes back to Halliday (1967b, p. 230), on the other hand, he says the nominalised bit (in English) is always the Identified in an Identifier/Identified structure; he then assimilates (tentatively) encoding clauses to 'true' identifying with Token + Value structure, ergo 'the nominalisation [in such clauses] is always the Value'. Would from this follow that the nominalised clause 'is always' the Value in identifying clauses?. To begin with, "[w]hether the coding option, if admitted, is present in all equatives is very questionable." (Halliday, 1967b, p. 229). So not sacred word.

Anyhow, further below Halliday adds:

'The tentative conclusion would be that the 'identifying' option is a way of representing any clause as an encoding equative, with the nominalisation representing the function complex 'value' and 'identified'; a decoding equative, even if it has a nominalisation as the identified element, not being regarded as identifying since it has no non-identifying (non-equative) equivalent- or only one that is thematically incongruous... Alternatively, decoding equatives of this type could still be regarded as identifying but with identification as the unmarked option' (p. 231)."*

So even if we admit the coding option for ALL identifying clauses, not necessarily the nominalised bit in all equatives is the Value (in English). BUT even if we COULD say the value is 'always' the nominalised clause in (English) identifying clauses, does it follow we can extend such generalisation across languages?

As far as I know, nothing close to Halliday's (1967a, 1967b, 1968) and Davidse's (1991, 1992) fine-grained and reactance-based argumentation has been provided on this topic for languages other than English. In fact, the distinction between thematic equatives and predicated Themes, which is in turn based on the distinction between clefts/pseudoclefts, is rather problematic beyond English. As extensive descriptive literature in Spanish has shown, the 'cleft/pseudocleft' distinction emerged from the description of the English clause, and does not apply in the same way to Spanish. This has not been closely studied from a SFL perspective, yet (again, as far as I know).

The point of all of this is: can we just assume everything that is said in IFG, without any further argumentation, should be follow obediently? What is the nature of our enquiry, then? Is it restricted to applying (or even forcing!) ready-made analyses to texts? Not that there's anything inherently wrong with application, if it's helpful. It's just I thought we could always do more, including challenging received knowledge when evidence suggests we should probably revise our generalisations. Even the generalisations available in English descriptions.

Beatriz

*If we follow Davidse's own argumentation closely, Identifier/Identified and Token/Value are treated as independent variables (in English), and the different combinations lead to the encoding/decoding distinction.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the nominalised clause in thematic equatives serves as the Qualifier of a nominal group:

Quiroz clearly mistakes what we can notice for a clause; cf. what can we notice:

[2] To be clear, in an encoding identifying clause, Value conflates with Identified, whereas in a decoding identifying clause, Value conflates with Identifier. So the claim here is that in all thematic equative clauses, Value conflates with Identified.

[3] The adversative conjunctive Adjunct on the other hand is misleading here, because this claim is consistent with the previous claim, since the nominalisation serves as Value, which conflates with Identified.

[4] To be clear, what follows (tautologically) from the claim 'the nominalisation [in such clauses] is always the Value' is the claim that the nominalisation (not nominalised clause) is always the Value in thematic equative identifying clauses (not all identifying clauses).

[5] To be clear, the 'coding option' is the choice between encoding and decoding. Halliday's point, back in 1967, was that it is questionable as to whether decoding is an option in thematic equative identifying clauses. That is, Halliday thought, back then, that all thematic equative identifying clauses are necessarily encoding.

[6] This is a non-sequitur. It would seem that Quiroz is under the false impression that she has found inconsistencies in the quotes she has tendered, but failed to understand. More importantly, it commits the logical fallacy of attacking a straw man by misrepresenting Halliday's theorising as religious dogma ("sacred word").

[7] This is a false inference. In a thematic equative clause, the nominalisation serves as Value regardless of whether the direction of coding is encoding or decoding. In the case, of encoding, the nominalisation serves as Value/Identified, and in the case of decoding, it serves as Value/Identifier.

[8] To be clear, this is an hypothesis to be tested empirically by analysing data.

[9] See Theme Identification vs Theme Predication.

[10] To be clear, IFG illustrates SFL Theory by applying it in a description of English. There is no claim that descriptions of other languages will conform with its description of English. That is, Quiroz is again attacking a straw man. Importantly, SFL Theory is a scientific theory, and as such, warrants continuous hypothesis-testing on language data.

[11] To be clear, this is Halliday's model, not Davidse's argumentation, as Davidse would readily admit. See, for example, Halliday (1985: 112-28).

∞

For those unfamiliar with the political games that are played out in the SFL community, this and the previous post by Quiroz constitute an attempt by one of Jim Martin's faction to critique Halliday's analysis of thematic equative clauses, and to use the critique to cast doubt on the credibility of IFG as a whole — which she misrepresents as dogma to be obeyed. However, as Quiroz has demonstrated, she does not realise that her clause actually does conform to Halliday's analysis, and does not realise that the quotes that she tendered as inconsistent are, in fact, consistent both with each other and with Halliday's analysis.