David Rose Misunderstanding Textual Prominence

 After BEATRIZ QUIROZ asked on SYSFLING on 18 Mar 2023, at 02:19:

How would you analyse the following clauses in terms of the ideational (transitivity) and textual metafunctions:

Those who have guns have them legally, …

the majority of people who have guns have them to protect themselves

(no any other punctuation in the original clauses found on the internet)

If “those who have guns” and “the majority of people who have guns” are [nominal groups with] embedded clauses realising a Participant within their respective single clauses, what is the function of “them”? a[s] an Attribute in a attributive possessive clause picking out “guns” from the embedded clause realising the Carrier (IFG4, p. 289)? Or is this some kind of structure giving special textual prominence to “those who have guns” and “the majority of people who have guns”? Or both?

 

David Rose replied on SYSFLING on 18 Mar 2023, 10:07:

Here’s my auty answer. First question -Yes. Second question -No. The Qualifiers function to specify the Carriers’ identity, not to mark them textually. So much of this has been worked out or flagged for further work in English Text, which continually acknowledges the work of others who went before it. ...

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the 'special textual prominence' of those who have guns and the majority of people who have guns, that Quiroz seeks, is simply that each of these unmarked Themes is also coterminous with an information unit:

(The information analysis is based on the tonic falling on the first have and legally in the first clause, and on majority and protect in the clause complex.)

The important difference between the two is that the first has unmarked information structure (Given^New), whereas the second has marked information structure (New^Given).

[2] To be clear, on the one hand, the question is about the nominal groups serving as Carrier, not about the Qualifiers of such nominal groups, and on the other hand, a Qualifier relates to the Thing of the nominal group, so it does not "specify the Carrier's identity".

[3] To be clear, "so much of this" was first "worked out" by Halliday. English Text (1992) is merely Martin's later misunderstanding of Halliday's original theorising, as demonstrated here.

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. See David Rose Positively Judging Martin (1992).