Blogger Comments:
Doran's paper is not concerned with modelling language, but with modelling one aspect of theory: SFL's model of structure.
Because Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory gives priority to the view 'from above', structure is seen as a means of realising meaning, with structure types varying with the metafunctional meaning they express. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 85):
Doran, however, is not concerned with structures as realisations of meaning, but with structures only, and his approach is to take a 'distinctive feature' ("factor") approach to classifying structures, the approach taken to classify phonemes in Formal phonology, limiting his attention to structure types favoured by the ideational metafunction.
The factors (features) he derives are [±iterative], [±nuclear] and [±linear]. Deriving the factor [+iterative] involved confusing iterative structures (logical metafunction) with segmental structures (experiential metafunction) that feature more than one occurrence of an element, such as Epithet.
The factors [+nuclear] and [+linear], however, unknown to Doran, are actually derived from Martin's misunderstanding of metafunctional structures, where Martin represents segmental structures as if hypotactic ("mono-nuclear"), and iterative structures as if paratactic ("multi-nuclear"):
Doran derives both [+nuclear] and [+linear] from Martin's orbital structure, with [+nuclear] corresponding to the relation between nucleus and satellite, and [+linear] corresponding to the relation between satellites.
The outcome of this distinctive feature approach is a table with cells that variously include whole structures, partial structures, and non-structures (cohesive relations, subjacency duplexes), with no suggestions as to the functions of the factors that classify them.
For the arguments on which these conclusions are based, see the individual posts, below.