Seriously Misleading Misrepresentations In Exercise 8: Discriminating Verbal And Agentive Identifying Clauses

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 149):

Analyse the following clauses as verbal or relational identifying, assigning Assigner + Value (+Token) or Sayer roles as appropriate. See Section 3.6 (vi) for agentive identifying clauses. For example:

 

1. She demonstrated that that was the case.

2. She asserted that it was obvious.

3. She proved her point.

4. The map indicates that this is the way.

5. Her actions confirmed their suspicions.

6. He confirmed he’d be there by six.

7. The report proves that the best solution.

8. Their reply shows that to be the point.

9. Their efforts ensured a quick result.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this exercise on discriminating verbal and agentive identifying clauses includes three clauses that are neither. The genuine verbal clauses are 1, 2, 4 & 6, and the genuine assigned identifying clauses are 7 & 8. However, clauses 3, 5 & 9 are attributive clauses in which the Process conflates with the Attribute (see Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 269):

This problem is compounded by the fact that the clause intended to exemplify an assigned identifying clause is also actually an assigned attributive clause:

though, perhaps, a case can be made for interpreting this as a verbal projection nexus, agnate to the results reported that E = mc²: