Misrepresenting The Tense Choices Of A Verbal Group

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 176):

However, the system of tense serialisation makes it possible to choose again from the tense type system to create a tense series of two to five tense choices. Thus the example above is built up as follows:

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Table 5.9 misrepresents the realisations of tense choices in this verbal group. The 2nd choice is secondary past have -en, the 3rd choice is secondary future be going to, and the 4th choice is secondary present be +V-ing:

The realisation of primary and secondary tenses is provided by Halliday (1994: 199):

and, importantly, the Event does not feature in the logical notation, for reasons given by Halliday (1994: 207):

A major point of difference between the verbal group and the nominal group is that the Event (unlike the Thing) is not the point of departure for the recursive modifying relationship. Hence it does not figure as an element in the notation.