Confusing Nominal Group Structure With Lexical Cohesion

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 284-5):

Tables 7.2 and 7.3 have introduced the three major participants in FitzSimons' text, namely the waves, their victims and the Bondi Boys. Each of these entities has to be constructed grammatically in nominal groups, so let's look more closely at how this is done, beginning with the waves – this time taking into account the whole of the article. 

Experientially, the basic pattern here is to realise the waves as Thing and deploy Epithets to describe their size. From a discourse semantic perspective relations between Things are meronymic (part/whole relations): we have nature, including oceans, involving surf, consisting of waves, made up of water (Working with Discourse Chapter 3). Taken together the Epithet Thing structure of nominal groups and their meronymic relations to one another tell us what we are talking about.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the nominal group is the congruent grammatical realisation of a participant.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, meronymic relations obtain between lexical items — rather than grammatical Things — as one type of lexical cohesion. The function is thus textual, rather than experiential. Martin's (experiential) discourse semantic system of IDEATION is a rebranding of Halliday & Hasan's (textual) lexical cohesion, confused with logical relations between transitivity elements. Evidence here.

[3] For the theoretical problems with Chapter 3 of Working With Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007), see the clarifying critiques here.

[4] Clearly, the vast majority of speakers do not need to be told what they are talking about.

The Difference Between Martin's 'Activity Sequence' And Halliday's 'Sequence'

  Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 283-4):

Both effective and middle clauses interact with the temporal relations discussed above to construct the activity sequences comprising a disaster and rescue operation of this kind. A transitive perspective on what happened is presented in Table 7.3 below. The experiential grammar builds the figures (participant, process and circumstance configurations) which constitute the predictable sequences the story recounts. Once the waves roll in, there are no surprises, which accounts for the absence of external concessive relations in FitzSimon's article. For more on ideational semantics in relation to field, see Working with Discourse Chapter 3.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, clauses don't "interact" with temporal relations; temporal is one type of enhancing relation, structural or cohesive, between clauses.

[2] To be clear, Martin's 'activity sequence' is theoretically distinct from Halliday's 'sequence'. In Halliday's semantics (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 49), a sequence (of figures) is the ideational phenomenon that is congruently realised grammatically by a clause complex (logical metafunction). 

In Martin's model, an activity sequence is variously construed as a unit of field, misconstrued as register, misconstrued as context (Martin 1992), evidence here, or as an experiential unit of discourse semantics (Martin & Rose 2007), distinct from the logical system of conjunction; evidence here.

[3] To be clear, 'figure' is not a discourse semantic unit (Martin 1992; Martin & Rose 2007), but a phenomenon in Halliday's ideational semantics that is congruently realised grammatically as a clause (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 49).

[4] This confuses supposed reader reactions (surprise) to events in the text with the author's (FitzSimons') use of logical relations (concessive). On the one hand, what happened after the waves rolled in was surprising to this reader. On the other hand, the author simply chose not to use any concessive logical relations, such as although everyone was surprised by the sudden horror of the unfolding events, the rescue operation began almost immediately. 

[5] For a close examination of the experiential discourse semantics in Working with Discourse Chapter 3, see the clarifying critiques here.

Misrepresenting The Ergative Model As The Transitive Model

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 283):

With all this activity going on, it is worthwhile exploring who is doing what to whom. An ergative analysis of transitivity reveals 14 effective clauses with an Agent impacting on a Medium. Agency is shared between the waves and the Bondi Boys, both of whom affect people. The main participants, in other words, don't act on one another; this is not a struggle between man and nature. Rather nature savages people, and then other people rescue them. In effect we have two protagonists, not a direct showdown with nature (antagonist) overcome by Bondi Boys (protagonist).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This confuses transitivity with ergativity. The 'impact' model is that of transitivity — Actor on Goal — not ergativity. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 334):

… the transitive model is based on the configuration of Actor + Process. The Actor is construed as bringing about the unfolding of the Process through time; and this unfolding is either confined in its outcome to the Actor or extended to another participant, the Goal. The Goal is construed as being impacted by the Actor’s performance of the Process.

In the ergative model, on the other hand, a Process is actualised through a Medium, and there may be an additional participant functioning as an external cause: an Agent; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 342). That, is an Agent does not impact on a Medium; an Agent is the external cause of a Process that is actualised through a Medium.

[2] To be clear, if nature affects/savages people, then nature (Actor) is acting on people (Goal). What is true is the vacuous observation that people don't 'act on' three enormous ocean waves and overcome them.