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’).