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Some Problems With Martin's Notion Of A 'Subjacency Duplex Structure'

Construing entities: types of structure

J. R. Martin

In this talk I address some issues arising from recent SFL work on language description, 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). Drawing on descriptions of nominal group structure (in English, Tagalog, Spanish and Korean), 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 structure, which I'll refer to as subjacency structure (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 (i.e. adpositions and linkers).

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, the notion of 'entity' in semantics is from Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 172):

The nominal group, as we have seen, construes an entity — something that could function directly as a participant.

[2] To be clear, on the one hand, Martin takes Halliday (1965) as his point of departure rather than more recent publications. On the other hand, it is simply not true that Halliday (1965) equates the univariate/multivariate distinction with the recursive/non-recursive distinction. Halliday associates univariate structures with lineal recursion and multivariate structures with both cyclical recursion and non-recursion. Halliday (1981 [1965]: 45):

[3] To be clear, the term 'subjacency' is from Chomsky (1973), and the term 'duplex' is from Matthiessen (1995: 161) and simply means a univariate complex of two units. In his talk, Martin attributed 'duplex' to Rose, instead of Matthiessen, and falsely claimed that it occurs all through Rose's thesis, whereas, in fact, it only occurs 4 times (pp367-8, 400), and is only applied to verbal group complexes.

More importantly, Martin's notion of a 'subjacency duplex' structure rests on the claim that it is 'non-iterative' — meaning that the structure cannot be further modified through lineal recursion. The final example that Martin used to illustrate this was:

To be clear, the reason why this 'subjacency duplex' cannot be further modified is that it is not a duplex. That is, it is not a 2-unit complex: it is neither a nominal group complex nor a 'clitic complex', and the clitic neither modifies (subcategorises) the nominal group — see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 389) — nor hypotactically expands the nominal group in terms of elaboration, extension, or enhancement.

Halliday (1979) On Logical Structure As Recursive

Halliday (2002 [1979]: 212, 213, 215):

In the logical mode, reality is represented in more abstract terms, in the form of abstract relations which are independent of and make no reference to things. …

Since we are claiming these structural manifestations are only tendencies, such an argument is only tenable on the grounds that the type of structure that is generated by the logical component is in fact significantly different from all the other three. The principle is easy to state: logical structures are recursive. …

True recursion arises when there is a recursive option in the network, of the form shown in Figure 14, where A:x,y,z… n is any system and B is the option ‘stop or go round again’. This I have called “linear recursion”; it generates lineally recursive structures of the form a₁ + a₂ + a₃ + . . . (not necessarily sequential):

… Logical structures are different in kind from all the other three. In the terms of systemic theory, where the other types of structure – particulate (elemental), prosodic and periodic – generate simplexes (clauses, groups, words, information units), logical structures generate complexes (clause complexes, group complexes, etc.) (Huddleston 1965). … While the point of origin of a non-recursive structure is a particular rank – each one is a structure “of” the clause, or of the group, etc. – recursive structures are in principle rank-free: coordination, apposition, subcategorisation are possible at all ranks.

Postscript:

In his seminar paper (13/8/21) on 'construing entities', Martin claimed that there are no recursive networks anywhere in the SFL literature. The network above occurs in one of the references he provided.

Why Martin's Notion Of 'Commitment' Is Theoretically Invalid

Martin's notion of 'commitment' is invalidated by the fact that it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the system network, namely: that a speaker can choose the degree of delicacy to be instantiated during logogenenesis. As Martin (2011: 255-6) explains:

Instantiation also opens up theoretical and descriptive space for considering commitment (Martin 2008, 2010), which refers to the amount of meaning instantiated as the text unfolds. This depends on the number of optional systems taken up and the degree of delicacy pursued in those that are, so that the more systems entered, and the more options chosen, the greater the semantic weight of a text (Hood 2008).

To be clear, a system network is not a type of flowchart, such that instantiation involves a movement through more and more delicate systems. A system network is a network of relations. In the case of lexicogrammar, the system specifies how all the features are related to each other, such that the instantiation of each lexical item in a text is the instantiation of all the features that specify it, from the most general all the way to the most delicate.

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Buyer Beware!

Teaching Science has been published.

Edited by Karl Maton, J. R. Martin and Y. J. Doran, this collection includes cutting-edge new ideas from SFL and LCT. That claim is made often about books, but it is true here. Papers in this collection are going to fundamentally shape SFL and LCT.

Chapters will advance the modelling of meaning-making in SFL into new areas and kickstart new forms of research into science discourse, including new ways of understanding field, ideational discourse semantics, and multimodal analysis.

Two chapters outline and illustrate concepts from the new LCT dimension of Autonomy to explain integrating mathematics into science and using animations in science teaching, and the method of constellation analysis is unleashed to show how relations among ideas in explanations can shape how they are taught.

And there’s a lot more!

Blogger Comments:

Scholars who are new to SFL Theory should be warned that the SFL papers in this new publication are written only by Jim Martin and his former students.

Evidence of Jim Martin's serious misunderstandings of SFL Theory is available here (English Text 1992), here (Working With Discourse 2007) and here (email list discussions).

A clear hint of the misunderstandings within the publication is provided by the title itself, which distinguishes knowledge from language. SFL Theory models knowledge as meaning, and language as the quintessential system-&-process of meaning.

The only way to get a solid grounding in Halliday's theory is to read Halliday (± Matthiessen).

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