Misrepresenting The Functional Range Of Verbs In Nominal Groups

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 188):

A lexical verb such as wrecked can function as the Event in a verbal group and as Epithet in a nominal group. In any particular instance the syntagmatic environment can be checked. For example, we find that for the example has been wrecked, wrecked is preceded by the auxiliary verb been, whereas in the example the wrecked car, it is preceded by the determiner the and followed by the noun car. This tells us that the first instance is an Event in a verbal group and the second is an Epithet in a nominal group.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is potentially misleading. To be clear, verbs can function in nominal groups as either Epithet or Classifier (Halliday 1994: 185-6).

[2] To be clear, the function of wrecked is 

Epithet if the wrecked car is agnate to the old car (cf. the very old car, the older car), but 

Classifier if the wrecked car is agnate to the abandoned car (not the very abandoned car, the more abandoned car).