The Difference Between Martin's 'Activity Sequence' And Halliday's 'Sequence'

  Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 283-4):

Both effective and middle clauses interact with the temporal relations discussed above to construct the activity sequences comprising a disaster and rescue operation of this kind. A transitive perspective on what happened is presented in Table 7.3 below. The experiential grammar builds the figures (participant, process and circumstance configurations) which constitute the predictable sequences the story recounts. Once the waves roll in, there are no surprises, which accounts for the absence of external concessive relations in FitzSimon's article. For more on ideational semantics in relation to field, see Working with Discourse Chapter 3.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, clauses don't "interact" with temporal relations; temporal is one type of enhancing relation, structural or cohesive, between clauses.

[2] To be clear, Martin's 'activity sequence' is theoretically distinct from Halliday's 'sequence'. In Halliday's semantics (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 49), a sequence (of figures) is the ideational phenomenon that is congruently realised grammatically by a clause complex (logical metafunction). 

In Martin's model, an activity sequence is variously construed as a unit of field, misconstrued as register, misconstrued as context (Martin 1992), evidence here, or as an experiential unit of discourse semantics (Martin & Rose 2007), distinct from the logical system of conjunction; evidence here.

[3] To be clear, 'figure' is not a discourse semantic unit (Martin 1992; Martin & Rose 2007), but a phenomenon in Halliday's ideational semantics that is congruently realised grammatically as a clause (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 49).

[4] This confuses supposed reader reactions (surprise) to events in the text with the author's (FitzSimons') use of logical relations (concessive). On the one hand, what happened after the waves rolled in was surprising to this reader. On the other hand, the author simply chose not to use any concessive logical relations, such as although everyone was surprised by the sudden horror of the unfolding events, the rescue operation began almost immediately. 

[5] For a close examination of the experiential discourse semantics in Working with Discourse Chapter 3, see the clarifying critiques here.

Misrepresenting Internal Relations

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 282):

These internal relations, as we can see, tend to be realised between rather than within clause complexes and are oriented to phases of the generic structure of texts rather than what happened per se. Working with Discourse introduces conventions for analysing internal relations alongside external ones, rather than ignoring them (because they are between clause complexes) or subsuming some of them as delicate sub-types of expansion (inside clause complexes).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as previous posts have demonstrated, the authors mistake instances of continuity for instances of internal conjunction.

[2] This is misleading, because internal relations also obtain structurally within clause complexes as well as cohesively between them. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 484):

… the enhancing relation may be internal rather than external (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976: Ch. 5; Martin, 1992: Ch. 4; Mann & Matthiessen, 1991); that is, the β-clause may relate to the enactment of the proposition or proposal realised by the α-clause rather than to the figure that it represents. For example, if it is not too personal an inquiry, what limits do you set ... means ‘if it is not ..., I ask you ...’; that is, the condition is on the act of questioning, not on the content of the question.

[3] To be clear, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by evidence. In the data analysed by the authors, it was the continuatives, not internal conjunctions, that marked new turns in the text — as is their function.

[4] For a summary of the many misunderstandings of internal conjunction in Working with Discourse, see Theoretical Problems With The System Of Internal Conjunction.

[5] This is very misleading indeed, because it falsely implies that, in Halliday's original model, cohesive internal relations between clause complexes are ignored, and that structural internal relations between clauses have less explanatory power by being subtypes of expansion. Martin's logical discourse semantic system lacks the general category of expansion, and its three subtypes: elaboration, extension and enhancement, because it derives from Halliday & Hasan (1976), at which time Halliday had not yet devised these categories. 

Importantly, contrary to the impression given above, the distinction between internal and external relations originates in Halliday & Hasan (1976), and others, such as Martin (1992) and Martin & Rose (2007), are merely trying to use their ideas.

Failing To Distinguish Continuity From Conjunction

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 282):

Similarly Ah, but marks the resigned counterexpectation of shifting from viewing the image in the present to reconstructing events from the past – the meaning is something like ‘although we've been looking at the picture for a bit, it's time now to begin our tale’:

Ah, but those 35,000 Sydneysiders [[who were lying in those very spots on the afternoon of February 6, 1938]], surely felt equally at peace. |||

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the Ah and but in this clause serve different functions, as recognised graphologically by the intervening comma that assigns them to different information units. The Ah is a continuative, and its function is to signal a new turn in the discourse. The previous clauses had described a contemporary photograph of Bondi Beach, and the continuative signals the beginning of the historical recount:

And so there they lie, happily sweltering in the summer sun on Australia's most famous beach, just as they have for so many generations past. It is such a wonderfully peaceful scene – of people and nature as a happy whole – that it is simply unimaginable that in a few seconds nature could ever rear up and savage the lot of them.

Ah, but those 35,000 Sydneysiders who were lying in those very spots on the afternoon of February 6, 1938, surely felt equally at peace.

The but, on the other hand, is a conjunction, and its function is to cohesively relate its clause to the previous text in terms of a logical relation of concessive condition ('even so').

Misrepresenting Temporal Relations In A Text

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 279-80, 281):

As we might expect, successive (then, now, finally, after) and simultaneous (as, with) temporal conjunctions are used to time events; but there are many implicit temporal links with events connected 'neutrally' by simple juxtaposition, and, or the dependency of non-finite clauses on finite ones. The text, as do stories in general, thus takes advantage of field based understandings, in this case of what happens when big waves hit a beach and a rescue operation gets underway – a reasonable expectation in an article composed for beach-savvy Sydneysiders.

We can also note that many of these relations obtain between clauses inside clause complexes, and others between clause complexes – since successive and simultaneous temporal relations can be realised in either way. For example, the same phrase and then functions both within and between clause complexes during the waves' attack above, highlighting the borders of a purely grammatical approach to logical relations:

^ And then another wave hit, ||

^ and then another. |||

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because here the authors misunderstand with as marking a temporal (enhancing) relation, instead of an additive (extending) relation, despite having previously correctly identified it as extension in Table 7.1.

[2] This is misleading. Firstly, simple juxtaposition does not express an implicit temporal relation, as demonstrated by all the juxtaposed clauses that are not related temporally. Secondly, the only temporal relations marked by and are those marked by and then, and these are all 'explicit temporal links'. Thirdly, the dependency of non-finite clauses, in itself, does not mark a temporal relation, and in this text, as Table 7.1 shows, none of the dependent non-finite clauses are temporally related to their dominant clause.

[3] To be clear, the (second-order) field of this particular situation, the subject matter, is construed by the text itself. The text explicitly describes 'what happens when big waves hit a beach and a rescue operation gets underway'.

[4] To be clear, temporal relations that obtain within clause complexes are structural relations and function logically, whereas temporal relations that obtain between clause complexes are cohesive relations and function textually. This distinction is lost in Martin's discourse semantic model.

Misrepresenting IFG On Temporal Relations

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 280):

Since FitzSimons' text is a story of some kind, it is important to consider temporal relations in some detail (Martin & Rose 2007, Chapter 4). …  In part this is a question of delicacy, since temporal relations are just one kind of enhancement. Convention also plays a role since implicit temporal relations are not considered in IFG style clause complex analysis, so that relations marked by and are treated as extending rather than enhancing. In addition, relations between clause complexes are beyond the scope of the analysis. And from the perspective of genre, the fine distinctions between parataxis and hypotaxis are not immediately relevant to mapping the time line of events. Shifting our attention from grammar to discourse is one way to overcome these limitations.

For Martin & Rose the basic distinction⁵ as far as temporal relations are concerned is between simultaneous and successive relations.

⁵ Contrast IFG 3rd edition 542-3 which focuses grammatically on simple, complex and simple internal temporal relations, with several subdivisions within each of these; the opposition of successive to simultaneous events is not a major parameter.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because enhancement is not a system in Martin & Rose (2007), since this work presents the model in Martin (1992), which derived from Halliday & Hasan (1976), which preceded Halliday's formulation of the most general logico-semantic relations. For some of the problems with Chapter 4 of Martin & Rose (2007), see the close examination here.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. On the one hand, implicit temporal relations are covered by IFG — see Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 420, 422-6) — and on the other hand, relations marked by and are those of parataxis: extending or enhancing. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 422):

[3] This is misleading, because there are no limitations (see above). Clearly, the misrepresentations above are a pretext for using Martin's derived model instead of Halliday's original model.

[4] This is misleading. For simple and simple internal temporal relations, the principal subtypes are following, simultaneous, preceding, conclusive:

This is an elaboration of Halliday (1994: 237):