a) She tore up the letter, which upset me (because it was from someone I once loved).b) She tore up the letter which upset me (because it was from someone who was blackmailing me.)In b) the clause is indubitably rankshifted: it's a post-modifying qualifier in a nominal group--no different from "of England" in "the King of England's crown".But why can't I consider the clause in a) to be a Circumstance of "She tore up" or some way of complexing the verbal group in the main clause? Why do I have to consider it a ranking clause in its own right?
I don't get why you are changing the subject, though. The question is about rank, The issue is whether the clause is part of a nominal group or part of a verb complex or (the standard interpretation) a clause complex. …
I do not analyse the instance as a verbal group complex. In truth, I don't see any ambiguity whatsoever: one is a nominal group complex and the other is a hypotactic clause.
If, however, I were applying Merge (or "subjacency"), I would have to argue that "which" is a merged conjunction and pronoun, and therefore the sentence is agnate to "She tore up the letter and upset me", which is a verbal group complex. One more reason for preferring the SFL account.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, (a) is a hypotactic clause complex in which the elaborating dependent clause is a non-defining relative clause:
The fact that the relative clause is ranking, and not a constituent of the primary clause is demonstrated by the fact that, unlike true constituents, it cannot be made Theme of that clause.
[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, (b) is a single clause in which the Qualifier of a nominal group is a defining relative clause, shifted to word rank:
[3] To be clear, the elaborating relative clause cannot serve as a clause circumstance because it is not a clause constituent — it cannot be thematised — and it does not serve as a Role, the only type of elaborating circumstance.
When confronted with the problems facing his 'circumstance' analysis, Kellogg falsely accused CLÉiRIGh of changing the subject (see here), and at the same time, without acknowledging the fact, moved the goalposts (a logical fallacy) so his claim now became that the relative clause is part of a nominal group, The problem here is that it treats a non-defining relative clause the same as a defining relative clause:
The problem here is that complexing is only possible with units of the same rank, and in hypotactic nominal group complexes, this means with adverbial groups or prepositional phrases. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 564):
While the dominant element has to be a nominal group, dependent elements can be adverbial groups or prepositional phrases.
[4] To be clear, after twice proposing a verbal group complex as a possible analysis, Kellogg owns that this is not his analysis. He then goes on to claim that She tore up the letter and upset me features a verbal group complex. However, in SFL Theory, a verbal group complex serves a single Process. In this instance, there are two distinct Processes, one material and one mental, so it is a clause complex, not a verbal group complex:
