Friday, 23 February 2024

David Rose On 'Ago' And Premodified And Postmodified Adverbial Groups

By ‘surface syntax’ do you mean the syntagm face of our structure-&-syntagm (function-&-class) pairings? If so, Qualifier is realised by an embedded clause or prep phrase, which excludes adverbs like ago. From above, the Qualifier function defines its Thing, probed by which (Thing)?, which also excludes adverbs like ago. This was Pin’s point, not subjectively perceived, but a consistently recurring functional criterion. I think you’re right that we need to be ‘strictly consistent about doubled-up Function-and-Class labelling’

For interest here’s another adv gp analysed in this way... 

 

IFG also discusses a type of comparative adv gp, that is post-modified with an embedded clause or phrase. It is isn’t named but I’ve used ‘esphoric’ here by analogy with esphoric reference in nom gps, like the children [in blue hats]

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In the nominal group some 4,600 million years ago, the Thing years is characterised by the embedded adverbial group ago. The fact that ago can be premodified demonstrates that ago is the Head of an adverbial group.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In the nominal group some 4,600 million years ago, the Thing years is characterised by the embedded adverbial group ago rather than the embedded adverbial group hence; that is, the Thing is characterised as 'in the past' rather than 'in the future'. See the examination of Pin Wang's argument here.

[3] This is true.

[4] To be clear, on the model of Halliday (1994), there is no submodification in this adverbial group. So:


That is, Rose proposes internal bracketing, or nesting, where there is none, giving the analysis:
α(β(βα)α)β 
which can be expanded as 
αββ ^ αβα ^ αα ^ β
Rose then compounds the error by misinterpreting the nesting as the double embedding of adverbial groups within the adverbial group, without realising that they must be embedded on this analysis. And, again, on the belief that the adverbial groups are not embedded, incongruously proposes 2-unit complexes (duplexes) consisting of units of different ranks: group and word.

[5] To be clear, 'esphora' is Martin's (1992: 123) rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (1976) structural cataphora. See The Inconsistencies Created By Rebranding Structural Cataphora As Esphora.

[6] To be clear, on the model of Halliday (1994), there is no submodification in this adverbial group. So:


That is, Rose proposes internal bracketing, or nesting, where there is none, and includes the Postmodifier in the dependency relations, giving the analysis:
β(β(βα)α)α 
which can be expanded as 
βββ ^ ββα ^ βαβ ^ βαα ^ α
Rose again compounds the error by misinterpreting the nesting as the triple embedding of adverbial groups within the adverbial group, without realising that they must be embedded on this analysis. And, again, on the belief that the adverbial groups are not embedded, incongruously proposes 2-unit complexes (duplexes) consisting of units of different ranks: group and word.

And, even in terms of his own approach, Rose has neglected to analyse his final adverbial group so much as the subjacency duplex #βα.