Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 209, 210):
We suggested above that the nominal group is organised as a move along two semantic dimensions: the elements become increasingly stable in time, and increasingly complex in their taxonomy of features. Lexicogrammatically, this corresponds to a move from grammatical items (determiners, determinative adjectives such as usual, same, typical, cardinal and ordinal numerals) to lexical items (adjectives [in general], and nouns); that is, a move from closed systems to open sets.The former are taxonomically simple (although they are notoriously difficult to interpret in lexical glosses); they include specific/non-specific; personal/demonstrative; near/far, total/partial &c (see Haliiday, 1976:131-5, for the systems). In contrast, elements at the latter end tend to be construed in complex taxonomies. That is, greater experiential complexity is handled by means of greater taxonomic complexity.The semantic movement in the nominal group is summarised in Figure 5-12. Qualities lie at different places along these various dimensions; hence they vary in their potential for taking on roles in different types of figure.
