David Rose On The Logical Analysis Of Nominal Groups As Unnecessary

David Rose replied to Beatriz Quiroz on SYSFLING on 29 Dec 2024, at 14:18:

I think you’re right that systems have to be the starting point, rather than structures.

Hence my suggestion to start from types of nom gp...naming, pronominal and non-pronominal. That was Christian’s systemic approach in his 1995 LGC, which he named individuation. He also proposed the nom gp function Facet, in place of Pre-Deictic and Pre-Numerative, realised by an embedded nom gp. That was renamed Focus in Martin, Matthiessen and Painter 2010. It replaces the need for a dual analysis of Head dissociated from Thing (which isn’t systemically motivated). That’s what I mean by simpler.

So no, ‘Head’ doesn't come into my reasoning. Simply different realisations of Thing... proper nouns specify an entity uniquely, pronouns specify by person, proximity, number, nouns need specifying... hence deixis, epithesis etc.

 

Martin, Doran and Zhang (2021) is far more than an introduction to the Word issues on nom gps. It explains all this and lots more.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is also the modus operandi of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 49):

Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning – it is a semanticky kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself. Giving priority to the view ‘from above’ means that the organising principle adopted is that of system: the grammar is seen as a network of interrelated meaningful choices. In other words, the dominant axis is the paradigmatic one: the fundamental components of the grammar are sets of mutually defining contrastive features. Explaining something consists not in stating how it is structured but in showing how it is related to other things: its pattern of systemic relationships, or agnateness…

However, in Systemic Functional Grammar: A Next Step Into The Theory — Axial Relations (Martin 2013), Rose's mentor takes the opposite view and derives systems from structures. Evidence here.

[2] To be clear, pronominal and non-pronominal are not types of nominal group, but classes of the form that serve as the Thing of nominal groups.

[3] This is misleading, because it is the opposite of what is true. The Facet/Focus function is an element of experiential structure when the experiential Thing and logical Head do not coincide. Determining this fact requires the analysis of both logical and experiential structures, and Matthiessen (1995: 653-63) and Martin et al (2010: 169-70) provide both analyses.

[4] And vice versa 😎

[5] As previously noted, Martin, Doran & Zhang (2021: 271) create descriptive inconsistencies by misconstruing a structure marker as a structural unit, in an unranked form they invent called a 'subjacency duplex':

For the inconsistencies introduced by the notion of a subjacency duplex, and the misunderstandings on which it is based, see the very detailed review of Martin & Doran (2023):

Structure Markers: A Subjacency Duplex Analysis

David Rose On Nominal Group Structure

David Rose replied to Christian Matthiessen on SYSFLING on 14 Apr 2024, at 08:36:

here are some of the examples from your nom gp table described as Focus structures. From above the types of Focus are semantic categories (class/part/facet/group), from around they are compared with agnate examples, from below they are all linked by the structure marker ‘of’.

class (+/- attitude)

[my hero] of a friend

[my kind] of a friend

[that genius] of a student

[that type] of a student

part

[the city] of Rome

[the suburbs] of Rome

facet (abstract)

[the concept] of friendship

[the reality] of friendship

My own preference for this analysis is its simplicity, compared with a double experiential/logical analysis with moveable Head. My students also find it relatively simple. Their main difficulty is distinguishing ‘of’ as structure marker of Focus, from ‘of’ as preposition in Qualifier.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 394):

[2] To be clear, the experiential function that Martin merely rebrands with the textual term 'Focus' was previously described as

• Pre-Deictic and Pre-Numerative in Halliday (1985, 1994),
• Facet in Matthiessen (1995), and
• Extended Numerative in Halliday & Matthiessen (2004, 2014).

[3] To be clear, 'part' is a relation of extension, whereas the relation here is elaboration.

[4] To be clear, the 'Focus' analysis is an experiential analysis. It doesn't dispense with the need for a logical analysis. On the contrary, the analysis only arises from comparing the experiential and logical functions.

[5] To be clear, the logical Head does not move. In the above examples, it is always served by the word that precedes the structure marker of. What varies here is the experiential function that conflates with the logical Head.

[6] Trivially, of is both a structure marker and preposition in both cases.

David Rose Endorsing Jim Martin's Misunderstandings Of Structure ("Subjacency Duplexes")

 David Rose wrote to sys-func on 13 Aug 2021, at 20:35:

Thank you to Jim for challenging our thinking again. Although you downplay it as just ‘relaxing’ the associations of multivariate and univariate structures, the idea of subjacency actually looks like a pretty big claim that could resolve a lot of conflicts, contradictions and blindspots in lg description. When I looked at Pitjantjatjara again recently, it was everywhere at group and word ranks.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In the seminar (13/8/21), Martin falsely claimed that Halliday (1965) associated recursive systems with univariate structures and non-recursive systems with multivariate structures, despite producing a diagram from Halliday (1965) that associated recursive systems with both multivariate and univariate structures:

[2] In the seminar, Martin presented a new type of structure, a subjacency duplex, which he claimed is a univariate structure that realises a non-recursive system, thus violating the association he falsely ascribed to Halliday (1965); see [1]. However, the claim does not survive close scrutiny.

To be clear, the term 'subjacency' is from Chomsky (1973), and the term 'duplex' is from Matthiessen (1995: 161) and simply means a univariate complex of two units. In his talk, Martin attributed 'duplex' to Rose (2001), instead of Matthiessen, and although Rose (2001) acknowledges Matthiessen, Rose did not correct Martin on the point during the seminar, or in this public response.

Martin presented the following as an example of a duplex structure:

Here Martin interprets the structure marker, of, as a clitic, and interprets the clitic and the preceding nominal group as a hypotactic duplex. Martin provided no argument in support of this interpretation. The problems here are as follows.

Firstly, the preposition of is the generalised marker of a structural relation between nominals (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 394). In this instance, it marks a structural relation between the nominals two litres and water. In Martin's analysis, however, of is misinterpreted as a Modifier of just one of those two nominal groups.

Secondly, the preposition of does not function as a Modifier, because it does not subcategorise the nominal group two litres; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 389). Nor does of hypotactically expand the nominal group in terms of any other subtypes of elaboration, extension, or enhancement.

Thirdly, the nominal group two litres and the structure marker of do not form a duplex (a 2-unit complex). That is, they do not form a nominal group complex, a structure marker complex, a clitic complex, or any other type of complex.

In short, the reason why this type of univariate structure is not generated by a recursive system, is simply that it is not a univariate structure in the first place.

Martin then went on to compound the error by interpreting both the multivariate structure of prepositional phrases and paratactic nominal group complexes in terms of his subjacency duplexes:

∞

In the same seminar, Martin claimed that a nominal group with multiple Epithets is a multivariate structure realising a recursive system, thus also violating the association he falsely ascribed to Halliday (1965); see [1]. His supporting argument was that each Epithet is independently related to the Thing:

The major theoretical problem here is that, in SFL Theory, recursive systems specify an iterative relation between formal units (e.g words), not functional elements (e.g. Epithets). The logical structure of the nominal group construes it as a group of words, rather than as an organic configuration, such that α is modified by β, which is modified by γ, which is ... , where the α word serves as the Head of the nominal group, and the series of subcategorisations of the Head serves as its Modifier. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 389):

However, there are also problems in using Martin's model of structure to make the argument:

The problem here is that Martin's structural distinction between experiential and logical meaning actually construes the distinction between unequal status (of nucleus vs satellite) and equal status (of multiple nuclei). That is, Martin's structure typology misconstrues the metafunctional distinction between experiential (multivariate) and logical (univariate) as the interdependency distinction between hypotaxis and parataxis.

So, in interpreting the nominal group as an orbital structure, Martin is not actually interpreting it as a multivariate structure, but as a univariate structure, with each Epithet hypotactically related to the Thing.

A final internal inconsistency is that, in applying his model of orbital structure, Martin reverses the direction of the relation from nucleus to satellites to satellites to nucleus (Epithets to Thing), because it suits his argument to do so.