On Nuclearity And Expansion Relations

Bateman (1998: 19):

To unpack the relations underlying such cohesive ties, Martin uses the complexing relations set out by Halliday in IFG — elaboration, extension and enhancement — in order to provide an abstract classification. This then provides another perspective on notions of ‘peripherality’, and extends to net in participants and circumstances. A network of available options is given in Figure 5.23 with a substantial set of examples.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the expansion relations between lexical items (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 644) and the expansion relations between grammatical functions of the clause are distinct metafunctional manifestations of the 'fractal type' expansion, the former textual, the latter ideational.  Moreover, lexical items and grammatical functions are lexicogrammatical, not discourse semantic.

[2] To be clear, Martin's discourse semantic network is concerned with grammatical units (clause, verbal group, nominal group) and falsely presents the exemplifying instances as realisation statements.  More importantly, the network is based on multiple misapplications of expansion categories and grammatical structure.  This can be demonstrated by considering the table presented by Bateman:

• Process and Medium form the clause nucleus, and it is this that is related to other functions; i.e. the Medium does not extend the Process.
• The relation between frying and pan is enhancement (purpose), not elaboration.
• The nominal group frying fish is Classifier^Thing, not Epithet^Thing; Epithets can accept degrees of comparison or intensity (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 377), whereas Classifiers, like frying, cannot.
• The relation between frying and fish is elaboration, not extension, since Martin (p312) glosses it as 'a fish that is frying'.
• The relation between the Epithet difficult and Thing group is elaboration, not extension; the Epithet further specifies the Thing.
• The particle of a 'phrasal verb' is not a constituent of the verbal group, and so does not elaborate the Event of a verbal group.  The 'particle', is either a preposition group or adverbial group that realises a clause Adjunct.
• The wording try (to) shoot is a verbal group complex, not a verbal group.

This small sample gives some indication of the extent of misunderstandings of expansion and grammatical structure in Martin's model of "discourse semantic" nuclear relations.