Chapter 3 on IDENTIFICATION [pp93–157] considers the role of nominal groups in the construction of text; it is well known that nominal groups do more than just pick out entities in the ‘world’, the many possibilities for forming nominal groups involve a range of ‘text-building’ devices, most of which have been described grammatically in Halliday and Hasan (1976). Martin turns here to their semantic description, emphasising the perspective of reference as a semantic choice of the speaker.
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[1] To be clear, Martin's focus on nominal groups in his chapter on 'reference as semantic choice' arises from several serious misunderstandings of the SFL model of textual reference.
Most broadly, Martin confuses Halliday & Hasan's textual reference with Frege's reference (bedeutung), which is concerned with reference to meanings held to be transcendent of language. On the one hand, this is ideational denotation, not textual reference, which is why an experiential category, participant — realised by a nominal group — is the unit and entry condition to the textual system of IDENTIFICATION. On the other hand, Frege's reference is inconsistent with SFL theory, since the latter holds that all meaning is confined to semiotic systems (immanent).
Related to this, Martin confuses identifiability — 'the textual status at issue in the system of reference' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 623) — with identification, in the ideational sense, which is why the chapter is concerned participant identification and the tracking of participants (realised by nominal groups).
Related to this, Martin mistakes the non-structural (cohesive) system of reference to be a system that is realised in the nominal group structure. He does this by confusing textual reference with a genuine system of the nominal group, interpersonal deixis. To be clear, reference items appear in two grammatical domains, nominal group and adverbial group, but their reference function is not an element of group structure.
[2] Here Bateman uncritically follows Martin. To be clear, in SFL theory, nominal groups do not "pick out" entities in the 'world', since this the transcendent view of meaning exemplified by Frege's reference (bedeutung).
[3] Here Bateman follows Martin in confusing the structurally realised systems of the nominal group with the non-structural (cohesive) systems whose grammatical domains include the nominal group.
[4] This is true. Martin's work derives from Halliday & Hasan (1976), but misunderstands it, relocates it to his stratum of discourse semantics (misunderstood as a 'module'), and rebrands the relocated misunderstandings as his system of IDENTIFICATION.
[1] To be clear, Martin's focus on nominal groups in his chapter on 'reference as semantic choice' arises from several serious misunderstandings of the SFL model of textual reference.
Most broadly, Martin confuses Halliday & Hasan's textual reference with Frege's reference (bedeutung), which is concerned with reference to meanings held to be transcendent of language. On the one hand, this is ideational denotation, not textual reference, which is why an experiential category, participant — realised by a nominal group — is the unit and entry condition to the textual system of IDENTIFICATION. On the other hand, Frege's reference is inconsistent with SFL theory, since the latter holds that all meaning is confined to semiotic systems (immanent).
Related to this, Martin confuses identifiability — 'the textual status at issue in the system of reference' (Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 623) — with identification, in the ideational sense, which is why the chapter is concerned participant identification and the tracking of participants (realised by nominal groups).
Related to this, Martin mistakes the non-structural (cohesive) system of reference to be a system that is realised in the nominal group structure. He does this by confusing textual reference with a genuine system of the nominal group, interpersonal deixis. To be clear, reference items appear in two grammatical domains, nominal group and adverbial group, but their reference function is not an element of group structure.
[2] Here Bateman uncritically follows Martin. To be clear, in SFL theory, nominal groups do not "pick out" entities in the 'world', since this the transcendent view of meaning exemplified by Frege's reference (bedeutung).
[3] Here Bateman follows Martin in confusing the structurally realised systems of the nominal group with the non-structural (cohesive) systems whose grammatical domains include the nominal group.
[4] This is true. Martin's work derives from Halliday & Hasan (1976), but misunderstands it, relocates it to his stratum of discourse semantics (misunderstood as a 'module'), and rebrands the relocated misunderstandings as his system of IDENTIFICATION.
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