Construing entities: types of structure
Over the past couple of years, Yaegan Doran, Zhang Dongbing and I have had the pleasure of editing three special issues of Word devoted to the analysis of nominal groups across a range of languages (including Dagarre, Lhasa Tibetan, Khorchin Mongolian, Korean, Serbian, Brazilian Portuguese, Old English, Ancient Greek, Pitjantjatjara, Tagalog, Mandarin Chinese, and Sundanese. In this talk I address some issues arising from this work, focusing on types of structure. In particular I will look at SFG's traditional distinction between multivariate and univariate structures and their association with non-recursive and recursive systems respectively (Halliday 1981, 1979). With respect to nominal group structure I'll suggest that the association of multivariate structure with non-recursive systems and univariate structure with recursive systems needs to be relaxed. Doing so makes room for recognition of non-iterative dependency structures, which I'll refer to as subjacency duplexes (first foregrounded as duplexes in Rose's work on Pitjantjatjara; 2001) – a structure which can be usefully applied to the analysis of what are often fudged as 'structure markers' in SFG descriptions of nominal groups – and elsewhere (i.e. adpositions and linkers).
References：
Halliday, M A K 1981 (1965) Types of Structure. M A K Halliday & J R Martin [Eds.] Readings in Systemic Linguistics. London:Batsford. 29-41.
Halliday, M A K 1979 Modes of meaning and modes of expression: types of grammatical structure, and their determination by different semantic functions. D J Allerton, E Carney, D Holcroft [Eds] Function and Context in Linguistics Analysis: essays offers to William Haas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 57-79
Rose, D 2001 The Western Desert code: an Australian cryptogrammar. Canberra:Pacific Linguistics.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, 'entity' here is a rebranding of 'participant' (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999) by Martin's student Hao.
[2] To be clear, Martin falsely claims that Halliday (1965) restricts multivariate structures to non-recursive systems and univariate structures to recursive systems. The truth is that Halliday (1965) associates multivariate structures with both non-recursive and cyclically recursive systems, and univariate structures with lineally recursive systems. Halliday (1981 [1965]: 45):
[3] The following are examples of Martin's 'subjacency duplex' structure:
The problems here are that a duplex is a two-unit complex, and a complex is an expansion of a rank scale unit, and Martin's proposed new structure violates both principles. That is, β# does not expand α, and α is not restricted to single rank unit.
Moreover, because a duplex is a two-unit complex, there should also be a subjacency simplex. Because this would be equivalent to the dominant unit (α) of the duplex, a subjacency simplex is subjacency duplex without the preposition or conjunction.
[4] This is misleading, because it is not true. Rose takes the term 'duplex' from Matthiessen (1995), where it just means a two-unit complex, which is how Rose also uses the term. Rose's work does not foreground Martin's mistaken notion of a subjacency duplex.
[5] This misleading, because it is untrue. there is no "fudging" involved in identifying 'structure marker' as the function of these forms.
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See also Some Problems With Martin's Notion Of A 'Subjacency Duplex Structure'
