David Rose On Voice And Notional Reasoning

David Rose replied to David Banks on SYSFLING on 6 Mar 2022, 22:20:

… ‘reversible’ means operative/receptive:

[identifying] ‘a happy mother is made by a happy baby’

[attributive] ‘a mother is happy’/*’happy is a mother’ (except poetically)

‘Notional reasoning’ here means deriving grammatical categories from lexical notions. …

and to Tom Bartlett on SYSFLING on 6 Mar 2022, at 22:43:

… Features like [identifying] and [attributive] are defined in relation to each other (eg by your examples), not by dictionary-like glosses. Notional reasoning imagines such glosses.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the agnation here is in terms of thematicity, not voice. What Rose presents as the poetic 'receptive voice' agnate is actually a 'marked thematicity' agnate:

Even in assigned attributive clauses, which do admit a voice contrast, Attribute can never conflate with Subject:

[2] This misunderstands the meaning of 'notional reasoning'. In grammatical analysis, 'notional reasoning' means arguing for a analysis solely on the basis of the meanings being construed, without grounding the analysis in the lexicogrammatical systems of the wording, as exemplified by the previous two posts by David Banks. As Halliday (1985: xx) explains:

If we simply took account of differences in meaning, then any set of clauses or phrases could be analysed in all kinds of different ways; there would be no way of preferring one scheme over another. The fact that it is a 'functional' grammar means that it is based on meaning; but the fact that it is a 'grammar' means that it is an interpretation of linguistic forms. Every distinction that is recognised in the grammar — every set of options, or 'system' in systemic terms — makes some contribution to the form of the wording.

David Banks On Process Type Criteria

David Banks replied to David Rose on SYSFLING on 6 Mar 2022, at 20:40:

With all due respect:

A happy baby makes a happy mother.

You say this must be identifying, so the baby and the mother refer to the same entity - that can't be right.

It's simple present — I see no reason why a simple present cannot be material: physical actions are material whether they are habitual or not.

"'I walk on the beach every day".

And you say it's reversible: this is perhaps true in the pragmatic sense that if the mother is happy the baby probably will be too, but that's not what the clause says, and "A happy mother makes a happy baby" is not the same thing as "A happy baby makes a happy mother". What about 

"A sunny day makes a happy tourist"?

What have I missed?

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 276):

In the ‘identifying’ mode, some thing has an identity assigned to it. What this means is that one entity is being used to identify another: ‘x is identified by a’, or ‘a serves to define the identity of x’. Structurally we label the x-element, that which is to be identified, as the Identified, and the a-element, that which serves as identity, as the Identifier.

Cf. the identifying clauses:

• Peter owns the house and 
• asbestos dust causes mesothelioma

[2] This misses the point. It is not a question of whether or not the simple present tense can be used in material clauses, but whether or not it is the marked or unmarked option. Because the simple present tense is the marked option for material clauses, but the unmarked option for relational clauses, it is one diagnostic tool for distinguishing these two process types.

[3] To be clear, the 'reversibility' is one of voice:

• A happy baby makes ('produces') a happy mother [operative]
• A happy mother is made ('produced') by a happy baby [receptive]

and it distinguishes (reversible) identifying relational clauses from (non-reversible) attributive relational clauses. 

[4] See above.