[27] Misrepresenting Halliday's Explanation of Ergative Nuclearity As Doran's Argument For Martin's Orbital Structure Model

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading in two ways. Firstly, Doran falsely presents Halliday's ideas as if they were his own. Halliday (1985: 146-7):

Except in the special case of the medio–receptive voice, the Medium is obligatory in all processes; and it is the only element that is, other than the process itself. … The Medium is also the only element that is never introduced into the clause by means of a preposition (again with the same exception of medio–receptives); … 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.

Secondly, Doran falsely presents Halliday's description of nuclearity — a nonlinear interpretation of the ergative model of transitivity — as if it were support for Martin's orbital model of structure.

Moreover, Doran shows no evidence of being aware of the elaboration of this model in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 165-176) as 'degree of participation' and 'degree of involvement'.

[2] Less importantly, contrā Doran, circumstances can occur as Subject, as demonstrated by circumstantial identifying relational clauses; Halliday (1985: 121):

[23] Misrepresenting SFL Theory On Hypotaxis

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] Doran's first point is misleading, because it is untrue. In SFL Theory, hypotaxis ("status differences") is a relation in iterative structures of the logical metafunction only. The source of Doran's confusion, as will be seen, is the model of structure in Martin (1996):

which unwittingly misconstrues the distinction between experiential and logical structure as the distinction between hypotaxis (the unequal status of nucleus and satellite) and parataxis (the equal status of multiple nuclei).

[2] As was the case with the multivariate vs univariate distinction, Doran again begins his argument on experiential structure with Halliday's first statement on the matter, instead of later revised theorising.

[3] To be clear, what Doran refers to as a 'flat' structure, Halliday (1979) terms a linear structure.

[20] The Original Sources Of 'Subjacency' And 'Duplex'

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Martin actually called these misconstrued structures 'subjacency duplexes':

[2] To be clear, Martin took the term 'subjacency' from Government and Binding Theory (Chomsky 1973), while Rose (2001) took the term 'duplex' from Matthiessen (1995), where it simply means a two-unit complex. However, Rose (2001) applied the term to verbal group complexes — and nothing else. On this basis, it can be said that Doran's wording above is misleading.

[3] To be clear, given the previous arguments, any use of 'subjacent structures' to describe any of the world's languages is the application of a theoretical confusion.

[15] Misconstruing "Iterated Elements" As Iterative Structure

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Doran's claim here is that a multivariate structure with multiple occurrences of a specific element is inconsistent with the notion of a multivariate structure, because Halliday (1965) stipulated that the elements of a multivariate structure occur only once. 

However, Halliday (1965) was his very first paper distinguishing multivariate and univariate structures, written at the time of Scale & Category Grammar, before the emergence of Systemic Functional Grammar. It also included the similarly mistaken claim that Modifier°Head structures are multivariate, rather than univariate. No paper in the 56 years since Halliday (1965) has claimed that the elements of a multivariate structure occur only once (with the sole exception of the current work of Doran and Martin).

However, what is truly astonishing here is Doran's assumption that Halliday — unlike Doran — would fail to notice that such structures contradict the notion of multivariate structure ascribed to him by Doran.

[2] To be clear, the data that Doran presents as evidence of his claim are artificial constructions, rather than attested examples in natural texts. But, in any case, none of the "iterations" constitutes an iterative structure, since iterative structures are unit complexes, formed out of logico-semantic relations, such as group complexes or clause complexes. That is, the three Epithets do form an "Epithet complex", the two Qualifiers do not form a "Qualifier complex" and the three Locations do not form a "Location complex".

[3] To be clear, the clause example does not support Doran's case, even in Doran's own terms, because it actually features one Location — not three — realised by a (textually motivated) discontinuous elaborating paratactic prepositional phrase complex:

 

Compare the textually agnate clause:

and the agnate clause that deploys embedding instead:

[14] Misrepresenting Korean Nominal Groups

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, it is not true that Korean nominal groups afford a maximum of only one Epithet. This claim is invalidated, for example, by the instance khu-n say chayk ‘big new book’, which appears in the paper Word Order and NP Structure in Korean: A Constraint Based Approach by Kim, Lee & Lee.

[2] To be clear, this example does not demonstrate that potential second Epithets can only be accommodated in Korean nominal groups "through complexing at the rank below".  There are two reasons for this. The first is that jeongi 'electricity' is a Classifier, not a potential Epithet, and the second is that the structure of the nominal group does not involve "complexing at the rank below"; it is simply structured as Epithet ^ Classifier ^ Thing:

[7] Misrepresenting "The Conflation Of Distinct Tiers Of Structure" As SFL Theory

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] These bare assertions are very misleading indeed, because on the one hand, there is no indeterminacy ("fuzziness") here — see the previous post — and on the other hand, there is no structure conflation in SFL Theory. As a consequence:

• this non-existent indeterminacy is not "often described in terms of conflation of distinct tiers of structure",
• conflation does not "work well in emphasising that there are tensions occurring between different strands of meaning",
• conflation does not "give us a tool for understanding how this non-existent fuzziness works, or the parameters of variation of this non-existent fuzziness",
• conflation does not "give us an explanation of why a structure occurs", and
• conflation is not relevant to "a description of what the structure is".

[2] And, to be clear, the reason why structure markers are "simply left out of any structural description" is simply that they are not units in unit complexes.

[6] Misrepresenting Structure Types As Indeterminate

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because there is no indeterminacy here. 

The experiential structure of the verbal group is clearly multivariate, because, like all multivariate structures, it is 'a configuration of different functional relationships' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 451): Finite vs Auxiliary vs Event. The number of Auxiliaries is irrelevant to this definition of a multivariate structure.*

The logical structure of the verbal group is clearly univariate, because, like all univariate structures, it is the iteration of the same functional relationship' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 451), in this case: modification (α is modified by β, which is modified by γ). The number of modifications is irrelevant to this definition of a univariate structure.

[2] To be clear, the English system of TENSE is realised by the logical structure only, not by the experiential structure (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 398).

* See the upcoming posts of 11 and 15 September.

[5] Misrepresenting SFL Theory On The Structure Marker 'Of'

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the structure marker of does not constitute evidence that the structure types in SFL Theory "don't quite account for everything we come up against". To explain:

Firstly, it is misleading to claim that the structure marker of is not accounted for in the SFL model of structure, because it is untrue. The structure marker of is analysed as a constituent of the embedded prepositional phrase serving as Postmodifier in the logical structure of a nominal group:

Secondly, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 394) point out, the preposition of is the generalised marker of a structural relationship between nominals. When it functions in this way, therefore, of is not functioning as a unit in a unit complex, and so to model it as such, as Martin does — see here — is to make a category error.

Moreover, contrary to Doran's claim, the 'structure marker' of is also pervasive in English, and the claim that its function is somehow "marginalised" — by not misinterpreting it as a unit in a unit complex — is not only a bare assertion, but also, as demonstrated above, untrue.

[4] Misrepresenting SFL On Structural Subtypes

Doran (2021):

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading, because it is not true. 

On the one hand, sixty years ago, SFL Theory did not exist. Halliday (1961) outlined Halliday's first theory, Scale & Category Grammar, and did not include any discussion of types of structure, though Halliday (1965) did introduce the distinction between multivariate and univariate structures, focusing on the latter. The first statement on structure types varying according to metafunction was Modes of meaning and modes of expression: types of grammatical structure and their determination by different semantic functions (Halliday 1979). An earlier paper on structure, Language structure and language function (Halliday 1970) did not propose such a structure typology.

On the other hand, a range of subtypes has not been proposed for any of the structure types. That is, a range of subtypes has not been proposed for culminative (textual), prosodic (interpersonal), segmental (experiential) or iterative (logical) structures. The relations in iterative structures have always been limited to either hypotactic or paratactic, and both relations may obtain within the same structure.