Tom Bartlett On Identifying Processes

Tom Bartlett replied to David Banks on SYSFLING on 6 Mar 2022, at 22:08:

Token and Value in identifying clauses do not need to refer to the same entities, they just reflect some form of coextension, with identity being the most clear cut case. Note the following:

1a Trees (Tk) line the road (Val)

1b The road (Val) is lined by trees (Tk)

2 The road (Ca) is lined with trees (At).

This wordings in 1a and 1b construe the trees and road as in some way coextensive, just as the baby and the mother in the Glaxo example are being construed as in some way coextensive for advertising processes. The wording in example 2 doesn't really do this, it's more of a description.

The names we give to process types are aide-memoires, often reflecting prototypical use. When the lexicogrammatical reactances identify the process in a clause as belonging to a specific process type but the reading this gives is in some way in conflict with the label we give the process type or the typical examples that label brings to mind, we have to question the ineffable meaning of that process type/grammatical construction, try and work out what relations it actually construes, not assign the example to a different category.

This is the logic of the IFG approach. There [are] other ways of doing things. It depends what we are trying to show.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. Identity is not the "most clear cut" form of co-extension, though an identifying relation may involve "co-extenion" (see [2] below). As Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 276) explain:

In the ‘identifying’ mode, some thing has an identity assigned to it. What this means is that one entity is being used to identify another: ‘x is identified by a’, or ‘a serves to define the identity of x’. Structurally we label the x-element, that which is to be identified, as the Identified, and the a-element, that which serves as identity, as the Identifier.

[2] To be clear, the reason why trees and the road are co-extensive in Bartlett's examples is that the identifying relation between them is one of spatial extent.

Other types of identifying clauses do not construe co-extension, and many types contradict the notion explicitly. For example:

[3] To be clear, this is utter nonsense. In the Glaxo example, a happy baby is identified by a happy mother. The identity decodes a happy baby by reference to a happy mother:

The clause does not make the ludicrous claim the baby and the mother are co-extensive — not even for advertising purposes.

[4] To be clear, attributive clauses construe class membership (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 145). In Bartlett's example, the road is construed as a member of the class lined with trees:

[5] To be clear, what is true is that grammatical analysis often requires compromise, but in SFL, the method is to take a trinocular perspective, while giving priority to the view 'from above'. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 48-9):

We cannot expect to understand the grammar just by looking at it from its own level; we also look into it ‘from above’ and ‘from below’, taking a trinocular perspective. But since the view from these different angles is often conflicting, the description will inevitably be a form of compromise. All linguistic description involves such compromise; the difference between a systemic description and one in terms of traditional school grammar is that in the school grammars the compromise was random and unprincipled whereas in a systemic grammar it is systematic and theoretically motivated. Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning – it is a semanticky kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself.

However, there are no conflicts requiring compromise in the examples discussed here. The problem here is simply that Bartlett is unaware of the fact that he does not understand the theory sufficiently well to apply it to the data, and so, blames the theory.

[6] To be clear, by 'other ways of doing things' in SFL, other than IFG, Bartlett means doing things with the model he prefers, the Cardiff Grammar. With regard to the way the Cardiff Grammar models relational processes, like those under discussion, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504) write:

Fawcett incorporates into the "relational: possessive" category, processes of giving and acquiring; reduces the circumstantial to locational processes only; and includes within these, processes of going and sending (for discussion of this area, see Davidse, 1996b). As is to be expected, this alternative analysis embodies certain generalisations that are not made in our account of figures, and ignores certain others which are. (His abandonment of the distinction between attributive and identifying seems harder to motivate, since this cannot in fact be explained as a textual (thematic) system in the way that Fawcett proposes; cf. Davidse, 1996a.) 

For a thorough examination of the theoretical merits of the Cardiff Grammar, see the review here.