Doran (2021):
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, in this early, first exploration of structure types by metafunction, Halliday (1979) considered three non-linear representations of experiential structure (in addition to the linear):
[2] Importantly, 'dependency construct' refers to a tree structure schema, not to interdependency in the sense of tactic relations between units. It will be seen in future posts that Doran confuses the two.
[3] To be clear, the notion of a clause nucleus was taken up in Halliday (1985: 147) — and every edition of IFG since — but applied to the ergative model, not the transitive model, of clause transitivity:
The Process and the Medium together form the nucleus of an English clause; and this nucleus then determines the range of options that are available to the rest of the clause. Thus the nucleus ‘tear + cloth’ represents a small semantic field which may be realised as a clause either alone or in combination with other participant or circumstantial functions.
Matthiessen (1995: 197) then developed this as a cline of nuclearity/peripherality of involvement:
which was then greatly elaborated in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 165-176) as degree of participation and degree of involvement, and used to relate participants and circumstances in terms of logico-semantic relations:
