Misrepresenting Rhematic And Ellipsed Subjects As Theme [2]

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 277):

Subsequently another marked theme shifts our attention to the waves' impact:

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The marked Theme In no more than 20 seconds highlights a temporal circumstance as the context for what follows as the body of the message.

[2] This is analysis misleading. On the one hand, since the first clause has a marked Theme, the Subject that peaceful scene is not thematic, but falls within the Rheme (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 105). 

On the other hand, the authors misconstrue an embedded clause serving as Qualifier, waving for help, as a ranking clause, and misrepresent its ellipsed Subject as Theme. To be clear, the absence of elements through ellipsis marks lack of textual prominence, and the analysis of ellipsed elements as Themes misrepresents them as textually prominent; see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 635).