Misrepresenting Ellipsed Subjects As Unmarked Themes

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 282):

As noted above however, the text does feature a number of non-finite clauses, many with an implicit Subject/unmarked Theme. All except one (to be restored...) are imperfective and construct action that is underway and overlapping with the alpha clause on which they depend for temporal deixis (past) and to which they defer in terms of arguability (declarative). These clauses in effect help the text accelerate as a number of synchronous events are canvassed, thereby foregrounding the encompassing chaos of the waves' incursion and the cooperative intensity of the Bondi Boys' rescue.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. Ellipsed Subjects are not unmarked Themes. The absence of elements through ellipsis iconically marks lack of textual prominence, and the analysis of these elements as Themes misrepresents them as textually prominent. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 635):

Ellipsis thus assigns differential prominence to the elements of a structure: if they are non-prominent (continuous), they are ellipsed; if they are prominent (contrastive), they are present. The absence of elements through ellipsis is an iconic realisation of lack of prominence.

[2] To be clear, this is merely an impressionistic interpretation, unsupported by grammatical evidence. Synchronous events can be construed paratactically or hypotactically, and through finite or non-finite clauses. Moreover, foregrounding is a function of the textual metafunction, not of non-finite dependent clauses.