David Rose Misunderstanding Delicacy And Instantiation

David Rose replied to Beatriz Quiroz on Sysfling on 9 Sept 2023 at 18:50:

The more delicate a system, the more instantial it is, so the more it couples features from multiple systems, eg DEIXIS and IDENTIFICATION

The IFG discussion of DEIXIS is interesting as it shifts back and forth between LG and DS

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. It is the whole system, along the dimension of delicacy, that is located on the cline of instantiation from potential to subpotential/instance type to instance. Clearly, the more delicate system of attributive and identifying process types, for example, is not more "instantial" than the system that includes material and mental process types. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 219).

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 327):

Instantiation is the relation between the system and the instance. When we shift attention along this scale, we are moving between the potential that is embodied in any stratum and the deployment of that potential in instances on the same stratum (between the climate and the weather, to use the analogy from our illustration below). Again, this move can be made at any degree of delicacy. 

Delicacy is the relation between the most general features and the most specific. When we shift attention from, say, 'recreation' to 'hockey' at the level (stratum) of context, or from 'syllable' to long open nasal syllable' to /pã:/ in phonology, we are moving in delicacy. Again, we can do this at any point along the instantiation scale.

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue. The number of co-selected ("coupled") features from different systems does not increase down the cline of instantiation. What is true is that the co-selection of features differs at points of variation along the cline of instantiation. That is, registers (subpotentials) differ from one another in which features are co-selected; texts (instances) differ from one another in which features are co-selected.

[3] To be clear, DEIXIS is a system of the nominal group, whereas IDENTIFICATION is Martin's misunderstanding of REFERENCE — Halliday & Hasan's system of grammatical cohesion — relocated to his stratum of discourse semantics and rebranded as his own system. Evidence here.

[4] This is misleading because it is untrue. Unsurprisingly, the discussion of DEIXIS in IFG is only concerned with Halliday's lexicogrammar, not Martin's discourse semantics. This deception is merely an attempt to legitimate Martin's model by incorporating it into Halliday's exposition of the grammar.