In contrast to his starting point with grammatical systems in Chapter 2, here he begins with text: and, in particular, a brief text written by a 7 year old illustrating various discourse semantic deficiencies (with respect to the adult language) in the construction and selection of its nominal groups — most particularly, problems in signalling recoverability. It is clear that the child has grasped the options that the grammatical system makes available and so the problems strongly suggest that the remaining difficulties are of a semantic nature. The precise details of the semantic discourse options motivating the textually appropriate selection of primarily nominal group grammatical options is then the goal of the chapter. “The focus will be on how English is structured to refer to participants, not simply on how it is used to do so.’’ [p95]
Blogger Comments:
[1] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that the child's 'problems in signalling recoverability' are not problems of reference in the child's text, but problems in Martin's analysis of the reference in the child's text. See Misunderstanding The Use Of Reference In A Child's Text.
[2] The thought that didn't occur to Bateman here is that, because grammatical reference is not a system of the nominal group, its semantic counterpart, IDENTIFICATION, is not realised by features of nominal group systems. Moreover, Martin's IDENTIFICATION system takes 'participant' as it entry condition, but its features do not elaborate the participant (cf. clause systems), but instead elaborate potential relations between participants.
[3] Some of the thoughts that didn't occur to Bateman here are that:
- grammatical reference is not a structural system;
- participants are not the only potential referents;
- participants are clause rank experiential functions;
- Martin's "structures" are not structures of units, but relations between units;
- Martin's 'referring to participants' is ideational denotation, not textual reference.
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