David Rose Differentiating Grammatical Structures By Field, Mode And Tenor

David Rose wrote to asflanet on 24 Mar 2024, 08:45:

I’d kinda hoped it was obvious, a linguistic double entendre

But OK, it’s a pleasant Sunday morning exercise that someone may find useful, evaluating field, mode, tenor

The full arguments are in...

Martin, J. R., & Doran, Y. J. (2023). Structure markers: A subjacency duplex analysis. Language, Context and Text, 5(1), 16-48. 

This nom gp is ambiguous, with two different experiential interpretations. I offered three analyses...

1. Whose king’s hat? – counterexpectant interpretation

F: a traditional multivariate Hallidayan analysis of nom gp functions, but with all realising syntagms accounted for, using subj dupl labels, and possessive suffixes explicitly labelled as non-recursive #b

M: clearly displays each structure:syntagm cycle at each rank

T: authority of a ‘standard analysis’ plus, and it’s counterexpectantly funnier

2. Whose king’s hat?

F: a re-analysis of nom gp classifying function, as recursive subclassification at word rank, rather than multivariate group functions (Classifier Thing)

M: displays complementarity of subjacent and hypotactic word rank structures

T: more radical, but interesting, potentially inspiring further research

3. Whose hat? – expectant interpretation

F: more accurate than a ‘gamma beta alpha’ analysis, because this isn’t a hypotactic series. The Deictic is realised by an embedded nom gp [England’s king], which itself has a Deictic Thing structure

M: explicit syntagm labelling reveals this structuring

T: not as funny

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, field, mode and tenor do not distinguish these three analyses, because each analysis is in the same text of the same situation.

• The field is what's going on in the situation: linguistic analysis
• The mode is the role of language in the situation: dialogue on an email discussion list
• The tenor is who's taking part in the situation: linguists

None of Rose's "evaluations" bears the slightest resemblance to the field, mode and tenor of the situation of this text. See The Practice Of Public Bluffing In The SFL Community at What Lies Beneath.

[2] This is misleading because Martin & Doran (2023) does not provide any "full arguments" with respect to Rose's analyses. This can be verified by reading the review of Martin & Doran (2023):

Structure Markers: A Subjacency Duplex Analysis