and again at 12:45:Qualifiers specify a Thing, so the semantic probe (from ‘above’) is which or whose Thing?Which year?The year [1920]Which city?The city [of Rome]
Focus attends to some aspect of the Thing – a facet, part, class or group. The Thing doesn't specify the Focus. Focus is realised by an embedded nom gp, usually linked to the nom gp by the structure marker ‘of’.[green leaves of] the trees, [some historic buildings of] RomeQualifier is realised by an embedded clause or prep phraseIn The city [of Rome], ‘of’ is a preposition, specifying which city.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, the Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, Classifier all serve to characterise the Thing (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 382), so the probe 'Which Thing?' does not uniquely identify a Qualifier. For example,
- which year? this year: Deictic
- which year? the third year: Numerative
- which year? a good year: Epithet
- which year? a leap year: Classifier
Likewise
- which city? her city: Deictic
- which city? the next city: Numerative
- which city? a polluted city: Epithet
- which city? the eternal city: Classifier
[2] To be clear, 'Focus' is Martin's use of a textual concept to rebrand embedded experiential elements preceding the Thing in a nominal group.
[3] This should go without saying, since it is the Thing that is characterised in a nominal group.
[4] To be clear, these are simply nominal groups with Qualifiers:
- green leaves [of the trees]
- some historic buildings [of Rome]
[of the trees] qualifies leaves in terms of type, [of Rome] qualifies buildings in terms of location.
[5] Trivially, Qualifier is also realised by an embedded adverbial group, as in
- some 4,000 million years [ago]
[6] Clearly, the structure-marking preposition of does not specify which city:
- which city? of.
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