Misrepresenting New Information

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 169):

Qualifiers are typically realised by ‘downranked’ units – embedded clauses or prepositional phrases, and this is one reason why they occur after rather than before the Thing. Another reason derives from the textual management of the ‘flow of information’ within the nominal group. As we noted above, the Deictic is a kind of nominal group Theme analogous to a clause Theme. Similarly, the other end of the nominal group, where the Qualifier occurs, has the potential for providing new information just as the end of the clause is the location for the New.

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading. The end of the clause is the unmarked location of New information, in the case of unmarked information distribution (coterminous clause and information unit). To be clear, information can be highlighted as New anywhere in the clause, and information units can be less or more extensive than a single clause.

If this seems a trivial point, Martin's model of New information  — partially a misunderstanding of Fries' 'point' — depends on this false claim. Martin (1992: 452, 454):

Taking New as the final clause constituent in [6:36] displays the same difference in the range of realisations noted for the spoken text considered above. The Theme grounds the genre, anchoring it to just a few meanings and the News articulate the field …

This complementarity of hyper-Theme predicting a text's method of development and hyper-New accumulating its point is outlined in Fig. 6.11.