Sunday 31 May 2020

Personal Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 626-7, 628):
In personal reference, the category of person is used to refer: we described the basic principle in the previous subsection, suggesting that non-interactant personal pronouns and possessive determiners have come to be used primarily in anaphoric reference. The personal reference items of English are set out in Table 9-10. They are either ‘determinative’ or ‘possessive’. If ‘determinative’, they are personal pronouns serving as Thing/Head in the nominal group (as in a velveteen rabbit ... he). If ‘possessive’, they are determiners serving as Deictic in the nominal group and are conflated with either Head or Premodifier (as in a velveteen rabbit ... his coat).

Saturday 30 May 2020

Co-Reference vs Comparative Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625-6):
Exophora and endophora are different directions of pointing – either to referents in the environment outside the text, or to referents introduced in the text itself before or after the reference expression. But how does this reference expression achieve the effect of ‘pointing’? All such expressions have in common the fact that they presuppose referents; but they differ with respect to whether what is presupposed is the same referent (co-reference) or another referent of the same class (comparative reference): see Table 9-9.
 

Friday 29 May 2020

Structural Cataphoric Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625):
Cataphora is quite rare compared with anaphora. The only exception is structural cataphora (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 72), which is common. Here the reference is resolved within the same nominal group where the reference item appears; a Deictic the or that/those is used to indicate that the Qualifier of a nominal group is to be taken as defining. For example:
The age was one of transition as much as of transformation, the ongoing process or movement that has led all of us today to use the expression “What’s new?” as a common and casual greeting. Those who were opposed and fearful, as well as those who were excited and hopeful, recognised that the key to an understanding of the age was change.

Thursday 28 May 2020

Cataphoric Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625):
Alternatively, endophoric reference may point ‘forwards’ to the future of the unfolding text, that is, to a referent that is yet to be introduced. Thus in the following example, this guy indicates that more about this referent is to come:
||| One day I was sitting in the Dôme, a street café in Montparnasse quite close to [[ where we were living]] , || and this guy walked up || and said, || “I met you in 1948 or 1949. ||| My name is Harold Humes.” ||| He said || he was starting a new magazine, The Paris News-Post, || and would I become its fiction editor. |||
This type of endophoric reference is called cataphora, or cataphoric reference.


Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the cataphoric reference here is made by the demonstrative reference item this, not by the nominal group this guy.

Wednesday 27 May 2020

Anaphoric Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625):
Endophoric reference may point ‘backwards’ to the history of the unfolding text, that is, to a referent that has already been introduced and is thus part of the text’s system of meanings. … This type of endophoric reference is called anaphora, or anaphoric reference, and the element that is pointed to anaphorically is called the antecedent.

Tuesday 26 May 2020

Endophoric Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 625):
Endophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from within the text itself – or, to be more precise, from the instantial system of meanings created as the text unfolds. As the text unfolds, speakers and listeners build up a system of meanings – this is part of the process of logogenesis… . Once a new meaning has been introduced, it becomes part of that system, and if it is the right category of thing, it can be presumed by endophoric reference.

Monday 25 May 2020

Exophoric Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 624-5):
Exophoric reference means that the identity presumed by the reference item is recoverable from the environment of the text… . Here the reference links the text to its environment; but it does not contribute to the cohesion of the text, except indirectly when references to one and the same referent are repeated, forming a chain. Such chains are common in dialogue with repetition of references to the interactants by means of forms of I, you, we…

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the cohesive reference relation obtains between a reference item and its (endophoric) referent, not between reference items or between referents. A chain of reference items does not represent the cohesive relations of a text.

Sunday 24 May 2020

The Different Kinds Of Pointing, Or Phora

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 624):
It will be helpful to introduce the technical terms for the different kinds of pointing or phora: see Table 9-8. The basic distinction is between pointing ‘outwards’ and pointing ‘inwards’ – between (i) exophora and (ii) endophora.

Saturday 23 May 2020

From Deixis To Reference

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 624):
… it seems quite likely that reference first evolved as a means of linking ‘outwards’ to some entity in the environment. So, for example, the concept of ‘he’ probably originated as ‘that man over there’ – a reference to a person in the field of perception shared by speaker and listener. In other words we may postulate an imaginary stage in the evolution of language when the basic referential category of PERSON was deictic in the strict sense, ‘to be interpreted by reference to the situation here and now’. Thus I was ‘the one speaking’: you, ‘the one(s) spoken to’; he, she, it, they were the third party, ‘the other(s) in the situation’. The first and second persons I and you naturally retain this deictic sense; their meaning is defined in the act of speaking. The third person forms he, she, it, they can also be used in this way; … But more often than not, in all languages as we know them, such items point not ‘outwards’ to the environment but ‘backwards’ to the preceding text … – or, in effect, [to] the instantial system of meanings that is built up by speaker and listener as the text unfolds.

Friday 22 May 2020

Cohesive Reference: Identifiability

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 623):
The textual status at issue in the system of reference is that of identifiability: does the speaker judge that a given element can be recovered or identified by the listener at the relevant point in the discourse or not? If it is presented as identifiable, then the listener will have to recover the identity from somewhere else (for a systemic description of this as a semantic system, see Martin, 1992). If it is presented as non-identifiable, then the listener will have to establish it as a new element of meaning in the interpretation of the text.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin (1992) misunderstands the notion of cohesive reference, confusing it with nominal group deixis and reference in the sense of ideational denotation. Moreover, it is not a semantic description, but merely a relabelling of (misunderstandings of) Halliday & Hasan's (1976) grammatical system. Evidence:
  1. here: English Text (Martin 1992)
  2. here: Bateman's 1998 review of English Text, and
  3. hereWorking With Discourse (Martin & Rose 2007)

Thursday 21 May 2020

The Term 'Reference'

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 623n):
Note that the term ‘reference’ has been used in different ways. For example, in philosophical and formal semantic works on meaning it indicates ideational denotation, as when expressions are said to refer to phenomena. (In such contexts, reference (or extension) and sense (or intension) are often taken as complementary aspects of meaning, going back to Frege’s distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung.) Here we are using the term in the way it has been used in functional work (e.g. Halliday & Hasan, 1976) to indicate the textual cohesive strategy discussed in this section.

Wednesday 20 May 2020

Resources For Marking Textual Status: Structural vs Cohesive

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 623):
By textual statuses, we mean values assigned to elements of discourse that guide speakers and listeners in processing these elements. We have, in fact, already met two kinds of textual status – thematicity and newsworthiness. Theme and New are processed quite differently when interactants manage the flow of text; while Theme is the point of departure for integrating the information being presented in the clause, New is the main point to retain from the information presented. But whereas Theme and New are parts of textual structures – Theme ^ Rheme in the clause and Given + New in the information unit, respectively, the textual statuses that come under the heading of cohesion, REFERENCE and ELLIPSIS, are not. That is, while an element is marked cohesively as identifiable by means of a grammatical item such as the personal pronoun they, or as continuous by means of a grammatical item such as the nominal substitute one, the textual statuses of identifiability and continuity are not structural functions of the clause or of any other grammatical unit. They can occur freely within Theme or Rheme, and within Given or New (although there are certain unmarked associations).

Tuesday 19 May 2020

The Absence Of Explicit Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 621, 622):
One question that arises in the interpretation of a text is what to do about a conjunction that is implicit. It often happens, especially with temporal and causal sequences, that the semantic relationship is clearly felt to be present but is unexpressed; … 
It is perhaps as well, therefore, to be cautious in assigning implicit conjunction in the interpretation of a text. It is likely that there will always be other forms of cohesion present, and that these are the main source of our intuition that there is a pattern of conjunctive relationships as well. (For example, when a lexical relation of hyponymy obtains between lexical items in two successive Themes, a relation of elaboration such as exemplification can often be inferred, as would typically be the case in taxonomic reports.) 
Moreover the absence of explicit conjunction is one of the principal variables in English discourse, both as between registers and as between texts in the same register; this variation is obscured if we assume conjunction where it is not expressed. It is important therefore to note those instances where conjunction is being recognised that is implicit; and to characterise the text also without it, to see how much we still feel is being left unaccounted for.

Monday 18 May 2020

*Enhancing* Conjunction: Types Of Matter Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 620):
Here cohesion is established by reference to the ‘matter’ that has gone before. As noted earlier, many expressions of matter are spatial metaphors, involving words like point, ground, field; and these become conjunctive when coupled with reference items. The relation is either (i) positive or (ii) negative. Examples:
(i) positive:
||| Without chlorine in the antarctic stratosphere, || there would be no ozone hole. ||| (Here “hole” refers to a substantial reduction below the naturally occurring concentration of ozone over Antarctica.) |||
(ii) negative: in other respects, elsewhere
||| The serial dilutions of the serum are made in AB serum || and the standard cells are suspended in 30 per cent bovine albumin. ||| In all other respects the method is identical with technique No. 17. |||

Blogger Comment:

* Strictly speaking, 'matter' is a category of projection, not expansion: enhancement.

Sunday 17 May 2020

Enhancing Conjunction: The Three Types Of Condition Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 620):
Conditionals subdivide into (i) positive, (ii) negative and (iii) concessive. Examples:
(i) positive:
[S02:] ||| That’s the DEET account. ||| Well there must be more money coming from that. ||| Do they tend to pay – || how do they – ||| – [S04:] ||| Per issue. ||| – [S02:] ||| Per issue. ||| Well in that case do they pay after the issues come out? |||
(ii) negative:
||| “I mustn’t say anything about it. ||| Otherwise, I’ll get shot by the lady [[ who just shut the door]] ,” || Holm said, || referring to a publicist [[ who had just left the room]] . |||
(iii) concessive:
||| The outstanding performance of U.S. and other NATO military units has enabled SFOR to fulfil the military tasks [[spelled out in the Dayton Accords]] . ||| Nevertheless, success [[ in achieving the civil, political, and economic tasks [[ identified at Dayton]] ]] has been slower in coming. |||

Saturday 16 May 2020

Enhancing Conjunction: Types Of Cause Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 619):
In many types of discourse the relation of cause figures very prominently as a cohesive agent. Some cause expressions are general, others relate more specifically to result, reason or purpose. Examples:
(i) general:
||| We understand it still || that there is no easy road to freedom. ||| We know it well || that none of us [[ acting alone]] can achieve success. ||| We must therefore act together as a united people, for national reconciliation, for nation building, for the birth of a new world. |||
(ii) specific
[a] result:
||| Now prices have sunk for secondary schools || and experienced secondary inspectors are shifting into primary and special schools with minimal training. ||| As a result, primary schools and teachers are being judged ‘failing’ by inspectors [[[ who have never taught younger children, || but only watched a couple of lessons on video during their training]]] ! |||
[b] reason:
||| But you wouldn’t marry me? || – No. ||| I’m not your type. ||| I’d make you miserable. ||| I mean that. ||| I’d very probably be unfaithful || and that’d kill you. ||| Then I’d be unfaithful too, || to teach you a lesson. ||| It wouldn’t work. ||| You’d do it || to spite me. ||| I would never do it for that reason. |||
[c] purpose:
Laertes: ||| I will do’t! ||| And for that purpose I’ll anoint my sword. ||| 
||| In 2011 the SUN Road Map will be translated into action || with a view to helping countries [[ affected by under-nutrition]] to achieve long-term reduction in under-nutrition || and realise the first Millennium Development Goal, || and to start demonstrating this impact within three years. ||| For that purpose the SUN Road Map envisages an open system of support to the implementation of SUN efforts by countries. |||

Friday 15 May 2020

Enhancing Conjunction: The Two Types Of Manner Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 618-9):
Manner conjunctives create cohesion (i) by comparison, (ii) by reference to means. Comparison may be (a) positive (‘is like’), or (b) negative (‘is unlike’).
(i) comparison:
||| One area [[ that holds considerable promise for RC involvement]] is Information Operations. ||| By exploiting the technical skills [[ that many reservists use on a daily basis in their civilian jobs]] , || the military can take advantage of industry’s latest techniques [[ for protecting information systems]]. ||| Similarly, [[ defending our homeland from terrorism || and responding to chemical attack]] are natural roles for our Guard and Reserve forces. ||| [positive]
(ii) means:
||| Chert originates in several ways. ||| Some may precipitate directly from sea water in areas [[ where volcanism releases abundant silica]] . ||| Most comes from the accumulation of silica shells of organisms. ||| These silica remains come from diatoms, radiolaria, and sponge spicules, || and are composed of opal. ||| Opal is easily recrystallised to form chert. ||| Thus much chert is recrystallised, || making the origin difficult to discern. |||
Expressions of means are however not often conjunctive; those that are are usually also comparative, e.g. in the same manner, otherwise.

Thursday 14 May 2020

Simple Internal Temporal Conjunction Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 618):
simple internal
||| Organisationally, there are equally strong imperatives and challenges. ||| Again, a first requirement is [[to do no harm to organisational frameworks [[that, through years of evolution, are finally at the stage [[where they are supporting programs [[that are actually helping us to get on with the business of increasing understanding]] ]] ]] ]] . ||| Second, having ensured [[that we do as little harm as possible]], || we must make sure [[that the interdisciplinary linkages [[mentioned earlier]] do not fall between organisational stools]] . ||| Third, we must take steps to ensure [[that the organisations [[we do have in place]] do not impede research [[that is crossing over their historical boundaries of self-definition]] ]] . ||| Finally, the ultimate challenge is [[to identify which, if any, new organisational frameworks would make a positive contribution to our ability [[to get on with the substantive work of [[understanding global change]] ]] ]]. ||| [following; conclusive]

Wednesday 13 May 2020

Temporal Conjunction: Internal vs External

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 618):
Many temporal conjunctives have an ‘internal’ as well as an ‘external’ interpretation (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976: Ch. 5; Martin, 1992: Ch. 4; cf. also Mann & Matthiessen, 1991); that is, the time they refer to is the temporal unfolding of the discourse itself, not the temporal sequence of the processes referred to. In terms of the functional components of semantics, it is interpersonal not experiential time. Parallel to the ‘simple’ categories above we can recognise the simple internal ones. These play an important role in argumentative passages in discourse. …
These shade into temporal metaphors of an expanding kind such as meanwhile, at the same time (meanwhile let us not forget that ... , at the same time it must be admitted that ... )

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Martin (1992) misunderstands Halliday & Hasan's internal vs external distinction; evidence here.

Tuesday 12 May 2020

Temporal Conjunction Exemplified: Simple vs Complex

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 617-8):
(i) simple
||| “I am Real!” || said the little Rabbit. ||| “The Boy said || so!” ||| Just then there was the sound of footsteps, || and the two strange rabbits disappeared. ||| [simultaneous] 
||| The Atlantic took a second story, || and I got an agent. ||| Then I started my first novel || and sent off about four chapters || and waited by the post office || for praise to roll in, calls from Hollywood, everything. ||| Finally my agent sent me a letter [[ that said || “Dear Peter, James Fenimore Cooper wrote this a hundred and fifty years ago, || only he wrote it better. ||| Yours, Bernice.”]] ||| [following; conclusive] 
Interviewer: ||| When did you first feel a sense of vocation about being a writer? ||| – Smiley: ||| Probably when I was a senior in college. ||| I had done well in creative writing classes before that, so I signed up for the senior creative writing class and I started writing a novel. ||| [preceding]
(ii) complex
||| Kukul fought bravely, || at times at the very front. ||| But wherever he was, || not a single weapon fell on him. ||| Chirumá observed this. ||| “The gods must watch out for Kukul,” he thought to himself. ||| All at once, Kukul saw an arrow flying straight toward Chirumá, || and Kukul positioned himself like a shield in front of his uncle. ||| [immediate] 
||| In another story [[that we recently published]], Robert Olen Butler’s “Titanic Victim Speaks through Waterbed,” a midlevel colonial official [[who is on the Titanic]] falls in love with a woman || as the ship is about to sink. ||| He has led a dry life until then, || and the whole story is told through the eerie perspective of this guy after death, || as he continues to float around in water, at various times in the ocean, in a cup of tea, a pisspot, and finally a waterbed. ||| [terminal] 
||| Place the aubergine slices in a colander, || sprinkle with salt || and leave || to drain for 10 minutes. ||| Rinse and dry thoroughly. ||| Meanwhile, mix the flour with the cayenne pepper in a bowl. ||| [durative]

Monday 11 May 2020

Enhancing Conjunction: Temporal

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 617, 618):
Temporal conjunction covers a very great variety of different relations; we can distinguish between (i) simple and (ii) complex ones. They are important in registers where sequence in time is a major organising principle – narratives, biographies, procedures. … Those that are called ‘complex’ are the simple ones with some other semantic feature or features present at the same time.

Sunday 10 May 2020

Enhancing Conjunction: Spatial

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 617):
Place reference may be used conjunctively within a text, with here and there, spatial adverbs such as behind and nearby, and expressions containing a place noun or adverb plus reference item, e.g. in the same place, anywhere else. Here spatial relations are being used as text-creating cohesive devices. 
Note however that most apparently spatial cohesion is in terms of metaphorical space; for example there in there you’re wrong; cf. expressions like on those grounds, on that point. These are actually expressions of Matter. 
Many conjunctive expressions of the expanding kind are also in origin spatial metaphors; e.g. in the first place, on the other hand (hand involves a double metaphor: ‘part of the body’ – ‘side’ [on my right hand] – ‘side of an argument’).

Saturday 9 May 2020

The Four Categories Of Enhancing Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 617):
The various types of enhancement that create cohesion are (a) spatio-temporal, (b) manner, (c) causal-conditional and (d) matter.

Friday 8 May 2020

Extending Conjunction: The Three Types Of Variation Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 617):
(i) replacive:
||| Assad, a career air force officer [[ who took power in a bloodless coup in 1970]] , has been grooming Bashar for future leadership, || but the British-educated ophthalmologist has held no major political office. ||| Instead, Bashar has been going abroad as his father’s special envoy. |||
(ii) subtractive:
||| Naturally though, it has to be within walking distance of Mayfair, || but, apart from that, an attic with only a shower and a gas ring will suffice. |||
(iii) alternative:
||| If there’s still time, || you may wish to round off the day with a visit to Fort Denison [[ conducted by the Maritime Services Board]] . ||| Tours leave from Circular Quay at 10.15am, 12.15am and 2.00pm Tuesday to Sunday, || although you will certainly need to book in advance || by ringing Captain Cook Cruises on 2515007. ||| Alternatively, if you’ve had enough of colonial relics, || a Captain Cook Cruise can be booked on the same number. |||

Thursday 7 May 2020

Extending Conjunction: The Three Types Of Addition Exemplified

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 616-7):
(i) positive:
||| The ozone amount was also the lowest on record at all latitudes south of 60°S latitude in 1987. |||
Furthermore, the occurrence of strong depletion was a year-long phenomenon south of 60°S || and was not confined to the spring season as in preceding years, || although the greatest depletion occurred during the Southern Hemisphere spring. |||
(ii) negative:
||| When Kukul awoke, || he saw [[ that the feature was gone]]. ||| He searched everywhere, || but he could not find it. ||| Nor could he remember the words of the priest on the day [[ he was born]] . ||
(iii) adversative:
||| After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he said ruefully, || “It would have been better || if we had left it to James Bond.”
||| On the other hand, his reputed attempts [[ to get Castro to extinguish himself with either an exploding cigar or a poison pen]] may have owed all too much to Bond. |||

Wednesday 6 May 2020

The Two Categories Of Extending Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 616):
Extension involves either addition or variation. Addition is either positive and, negative nor or adversative but; but since the adversative relation plays a particularly important part in discourse it is best taken as a separate heading on its own. Variation includes replacive instead, subtractive except and alternative or types.

Tuesday 5 May 2020

Elaborating Conjunction: Clarification

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 616):
Here the elaborated element is not simply restated but reinstated, summarised, made more precise or in some other way clarified for purposes of the discourse. There are seven subtypes (corrective, distractive, dismissive, particularising, resumptive, summative, verifactive), realised by different sets of conjunctions; they are set out in Table 9-6, and illustrated below:
Calculations by Anderson show that ozone depletion at the 410- and 420-K isentropic surfaces between August 23 and September 22 can be almost entirely explained by the amount of ClO present if one assumes that the ClO-ClO mechanism is effective. At the 360-K surface, the calculated ozone loss is somewhat less than the observed loss. At least we can say that above about the 400-K level, there does seem to be enough ClO to explain the observed ozone loss. [corrective] 
Customer: What’s pepperoni? – Operator: Pepperoni? It’s a round, it’s a pork product. – Customer: Is it? Oh okay. No I don’t want that. Anyway, um – can I have one of them? I’ll pay the two dollar extra: the – what do you call it? the seafood.[dismissive] 
Interviewer: You grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, went to Vassar as an undergraduate, and then came back to Iowa for your graduate work. – Smiley: Actually, there was a year in there where after I finished Vassar I went to Europe with my then husband and we hitchhiked around, wondering what to do. [verifactive]

Monday 4 May 2020

Elaborating Conjunction: Apposition

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 615):
In this type of elaboration some element is re-presented, or restated, either (i) by exposition, the ‘i.e.’ relation, or (ii) by example, the ‘e.g.’ relation.
(i) expository:
I guess the main editorial rule that we work by is to treat all manuscripts equally. I mean, it doesn’t make any difference who the author is. 
(ii) exemplifying:
Our humour is founded on very close observation, very, very close observation of reality. You find some humorous proverbs, for instance, and the humour is that whoever made these proverbs was not going around the world with his eyes closed. For example, the dog says that those who have buttocks do not know how to sit.

Sunday 3 May 2020

The Two Categories Of Elaborating Conjunction

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 615):
There are two categories of elaborating relation, (a) apposition and (b) clarification. The overall range is the same as that of paratactic elaboration; but the category of apposition used here groups exposition and exemplification together.

Saturday 2 May 2020

Internal Elaborating Conjunctive Adjuncts And Mood Or Comment Adjuncts

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 614-5, 616n):
Certain items that serve as ‘elaborating’ conjunctions that are ‘internal’ only in orientation may also serve as modal adverbs (e.g. actually, in fact, indeed, as a matter of fact), functioning either as mood Adjuncts of intensity or as comment Adjuncts of factuality. In fact, these are related historically through processes of grammaticalisation: starting from an experiential source, items such as these tend to develop into textual conjunctions, and by a further step into interpersonal modal adverbs…
Some of the items that are used as conjunctions with verifactive senses also have assessment senses and serve as mood or comment Adjuncts: actually, in fact, indeed – (i) verifactive (‘in reality’), (iia) intensity: counterexpectancy (‘even’), and (iib) factual (speech functional comment: ‘really’); as a matter of fact – (i) verifactive (‘in reality’), and (ii) factual (speech functional comment: ‘really’). The link between the verifactive and assessment senses is the orientation towards the interpersonal: in their assessment senses, these items are, of course, purely interpersonal; and in their verifactive senses, they are internal in orientation (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1976: 240ff.): the clarification relates to the speech function rather than to the experiential content of the proposition or proposal being exchanged – ‘I’ll tell you by way of clarification of what I said before’. Thus in the following example, in fact serves as a cohesive conjunctive Adjunct and actually as a mood Adjunct: But that basic training helped me in the part. In fact, when Tom Quayle (Tom Jennings) actually did knock me down in the fight scene, I saw red and had to take a few deep breaths and hold myself back. Traugott (1997) shows how both indeed and (during a later period in the history of English) in fact developed (in our terms) from items serving as circumstantial Adjuncts, to items serving as interpersonal Adjuncts and also to items serving as conjunctive Adjuncts. They follow one of the grammaticalisation paths she has identified.

Friday 1 May 2020

Extending The Conjunction System In Delicacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 612, 614):
This interpretation of conjunction as a system embodying two variables brings out the underlying principle. However, the two systemic variables are not entirely independent of one another. The ‘elaborating’ type tends to be ‘internal’ rather than ‘external’, and while ‘extending’ and ‘enhancing’ relations can be either ‘internal’ or ‘external’, particular conjunctions may be either one or the other. Thus when we extend it in delicacy, we would need to take account of the all the possible combinations of type and orientation: (i) a number of conjunctions can be used to mark either external or internal relations, but a number of other conjunctions can be used only to mark either (ii) external or (iii) internal relations. For example:
(i) external/internal: and, or, but, however, then, next, so, therefore
(ii) external: just then, previously, soon, meanwhile, next time
(iii) internal: in fact, actually, incidentally, in short, briefly, finally, in conclusion, furthermore, moreover, in this respect, otherwise