The nom gp discussion in IFG starts off as a list of functions, from Deictic to Qualifier, including a rich description of items serving as Deictic. It’s not until the section on Thing, that we get an inkling that nom gps are orbitally structured, and that there are three types... ‘Thing is the semantic core of the nominal group. It may be realized by a common noun, proper noun or (personal) pronoun’.What has been described to this point is the potential of nom gps with common noun as Thing. In contrast there is next to no discussion of the other types, although surely pronoun as Thing is the most frequent nom gp type in discourse?If the chapter were organised systemically, it could start with a description of pronoun as Thing, that might be a more pedagogically friendly introduction (less dense), and would surely include demonstratives and possessive substitutes ‘yours/mine...’ as Thing. (Aren’t these types of pronouns?) As it is you have had to search the book to find scant mentions.It could then describe noun as Thing, followed by the other functions that orbit it... perhaps a less anglocentric perspective?
… It so happens that the systemic organisation of nom gps as naming, pronominal and non-pronominal appears to be general across lgs, as does their orbital structuring with Thing as core function.In contrast, textual ordering from Deictic to Qualifier is a descriptive detail of English, which is strongly foregrounded by organising the nom gp description as a list of functions.
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[1] This is misleading. To be clear, the nominal group discussion in IFG starts off with the experiential structure of the nominal group, and because a structure is the relationships among the functions (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 451), it then goes on to discuss each of the functions that are related in this structure.
[2] This is very misleading indeed, and deliberately so, because it surreptitiously replaces Halliday's model of structure with Martin's misunderstanding. According to Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 85), experiential structures are segmental (based on constituency). The orbital model is Martin's misunderstanding of experiential structure. It is a misunderstanding because the Nucleus°Satellite relation is univariate instead of multivariate, like the Head°Modifier relation in hypotactic logical structures.
[3] This is misleading. These are word classes that serve as Thing, not types of Thing. Because Thing is a function, types of Thing are types of that function, not classes of form.
[4] This is misleading. The potential of the nominal group is modelled as a system network. What has been described as 'to this point' are the functional elements that relate to the Thing in nominal group structure.
[5] This is misleading. On the one hand, proper nouns and pronouns serving as Thing are clarified on page 384. On the other hand, as it is pointed out there, proper nouns and pronouns 'usually occur without any other elements of the nominal group', and so offer limited scope for describing the structure of nominal groups.
[6] This misleading, because it repeats the misunderstanding of word classes as types of Thing; see [3] above.
[7] This is misleading. The description of English in IFG is 'anglocentric' because English is the language being described. Halliday (2002: 415):
Thus while the theory as a whole is logocentric, the description of each language is what we might call “glottocentric”: it privileges the language concerned. The description of English is anglocentric, that of Chinese sinocentric, that of French gallocentric and so on. (Note that the theory is not anglocentric; the description of English is.)
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