David Rose On Layers Of Subjacency

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

In IFG there’s an analysis of adv gp as recursive hypotaxis... 

 

This misses the interplay of comparison, intensification and negation in this adv gp. e.g. intensification ‘very much’; comparison ‘not so very much’. Here as layers of subjacency... 

not	so	very	much	more	easily
b comp					a
b intens				a
b comp		a
b neg	a	b intens	a

and again on 13 Feb 2024, 13:32:

Here again with formal function labels. Each function is realised by a subjacency duplex, i.e. by the a b relation. 

not	so	very	much	more	easily
Comparison
b					a
Degree
b				a
Comparison
b		a
Negation		Degree
b	a	b	a

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Rose simply rebrands logical structure as 'subjacency duplex'. More importantly, none of these satisfy its defining criterion of not being modifiable more than once.

[2] To be clear, as Halliday's analysis makes clear, there is only one level of modification in this adverbial group; that is, there is no internal bracketing. Moving from right to left in the structure simply involves increasing subcategorisation (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 389). So

How easily? more easily [comparison]
How more easily? much more easily [intensification]
How much more easily? very much more easily [intensification]
How very much more easily? so very much more easily [comparison]
How so very much more easily? not so very much more easily [negation]