David Rose Misconstruing Nominal Groups, A Subjacency Duplex, And 'Instantiate'

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 11 Feb 2024, at 15:08:

Subjacency duplexes are dependency structures that are not recursive (not hypotactic series)

 

Proportionality first...

some days ago : some of those days long ago ::

adv gp : nom gp 

Also...

a little while ago : an example of those days a little while ago ::

adv gp : nom gp

 

Adverbial group structure is Modifier^Head 

long	ago
b	a

This is a subjacency duplex with adverb as Head. (Ago can only instantiate the Head.)

 

The Modifier can be an embedded nom gp 

[a little while]	ago
b	a
nom gp

Here [a little while] specifies how long ago.

 Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, these are nominal groups and cannot be adverbial groups (see [4]).

[2] To be clear, even if subjacency duplex were a valid type of structure, this does not satisfy its condition of not being expandable beyond a single modifier, e.g. not so very long ago. In SFL terms, this is simply an adverbial group 'with adverb as Head'. 

[3] This seriously misunderstands 'instantiate'. Instantiation is the relation between potential and instance. The relation here is between a word and its function as Head at group rank, which is realisation.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the Premodifier of an adverbial group cannot be an embedded nominal group because it is inconsistent with the characterisation of an adverbial group having no lexical premodification. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 419-20):

The adverbial group has an adverb as Head, which may or may not be accompanied by modifying elements. … Premodifiers are grammatical items like not and rather and so; there is no lexical premodification in the adverbial group. … The items serving as Premodifiers are adverbs belonging to one of three types – polarity (not), comparison (more, less; as, so) and intensification.