Seriously Misrepresenting The Logical Structure Of A Verbal Group

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 175):

From a logical point of view, the verbal group is just a series of related elements: in a finite verbal group, the ‘Head’ is the first element, the Finite, and the remaining elements constitute a series of ‘Modifiers’; for example:

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Here the authors again repeat their misrepresentation of the experiential structure of this verbal group. As previously noted, according to SFL Theory, the experiential structure is:

But more importantly, the authors seriously misrepresent the logical structure of this verbal group. According to SFL Theory, the logical structure is:

Crucially, as Halliday (1994: 198) explains, secondary tense is realised by two forms in the verbal group:

Consider the verbal group has been eating. This actually makes three separate tense choices: (1) present, expressed by the -s in has (i.e. by the fact that the first verb is in the present form); (2) past, expressed by the verb have plus the -en in been (i.e. plus the fact that the next verb is in the past/passive participle form v-en); (3) present, expressed by the verb be plus the -ing in eating (i.e. plus the fact that the next verb is in the present/active participle form v-ing).