Verbal And Mental Projections Of Proposals

Halliday (1994: 271):

Blogger Comments:

For 'affective' read 'desiderative'.

Fact Nouns Of Modulation

Halliday (1994: 268-9):

The Typical Environment For A Fact

Halliday (1994: 266):

Why Facts Are Embedded

Halliday (1994: 264, 266):

Embedded Projections

Halliday (1994: 263):

The Function Of A Prepositional Phrase: 'Of' Phrases

Halliday (1994: 213):

The Function Of The Qualifier

Halliday (1994: 188):

Qualifier

Halliday (1994: 187-8):

Difficulties In Identifying Circumstances: Prepositional Phrase As Qualifier

Halliday (1994: 160):

Logical vs Experiential Manifestations Of Expansion

Halliday And Matthiessen (2014: 666-7):

… the three subtypes of expansion (elaboration, extension and enhancement) combine with tactic relations to link one clause to another in the formation of clause complexes. The same pattern was found to operate in the formation of group and phrase complexes. In clause complexes and in group/phrase complexes, expansion is manifested within the logical mode of the ideational metafunction.

But we had already met two experiential manifestations of expansion within the system of transitivity. On the one hand, expansion is manifested in the augmentation of the clause by circumstances: these circumstantial augmentations cover all three types of expansion, with enhancement being the most highly developed one. On the other hand, expansion is manifested in the process of a ‘relational’ clause: ‘intensive’ clauses embody elaboration, ‘possessive’ clauses extension, and ‘circumstantial’ clauses enhancement. In the domain of the nominal group, there are also various manifestations of the three types of expansion. Thus the Qualifier may elaborate, extend or enhance the Thing;

Discontinuous Elaborating Nominal Group Complexes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 561):

In an elaborating nominal group complex, the secondary nominal group may be used to include an embedded clause as Qualifier:

||| Near the San Diego Freeway interchange is the huge Shell Chemical Company plant, part of an industrial district [[[ that was established || before the plain became almost covered with tract housing]]] . |||

Note also that the secondary nominal group may be delayed for textual reasons, giving rise to a discontinuous complex:

While each of these elements is absolutely essential, || one must come first – people.

As with elaborating complexes in general, this is spoken on two tone groups, with tone concord.

The Projection Of Goods-&-Services (Proposals)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 548):

Parallel to projected information (propositions) is the projection of goods-&-services (proposals), which likewise may be paratactic, hypotactic, or embedded as Qualifier to a noun; and again the phenomenon may be verbal (locution, projected by the processes offer, command, suggest/suggestion, etc.) or mental (idea, projected by intend/intention, wish, hope, etc.). The difference in the mental processes is that propositions are projected by cognitive processes whereas proposals are projected by desiderative ones.

Projected vs Embedded Proposals

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 546-7):

Like a proposition, a proposal may either be embedded as Qualifier to one of these nouns, as in the examples above, or may function on its own as a nominalisation e.g.

You’ve said that one of your editorial rules is [[not to publish your buddies]].
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]] ]] ]] ]] ]].
The title for king fell out of use because its final requirement was [[ that the man [[ who aspires to be king]] would first pay all the debt [[ owed by every single man and every single woman in the community]] ]]

and we can construct similar pairs, for example

(a) ||| he insisted || that they had to wait in line |||
         α                  ‘β

(b) ||| he resented (the rule) [[that they had to wait in line ]]

where in (a) it is the ‘mental’ clause he insisted that does the projecting, while in (b) the projected clause is embedded. The ‘mental’ clause with the embedded fact clause is of the ‘emotive’ subtype, just as with propositions. But the ‘mental’ clause projecting the idea clause in (a) is not a ‘cognitive’ one but rather a ‘desiderative’ one. With ‘mental’ clauses, the general principle is that embedded fact clauses serve as Phenomenon in ‘emotive’ clauses, whether the facts are propositions or proposals; and that propositions are projected by ‘cognitive’ clauses whereas proposals are projected by ‘desiderative’ ones.

Blogger Comments:

Note that insisted here serves as a verbal Process (projecting a locution clause), not a mental one (projecting an idea clause).

The Typical Environment For A Fact

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 540):

Other than with impersonals such as it is said, it is rumoured, it seems, the typical environment for a fact is a ‘relational’ process clause of the ‘intensive’ type, either ‘attributive’ or ‘identifying’, e.g.

[attributive] 

Earl Russell says it is inevitable, though profoundly regrettable, [[that the agitation against the Polaris base has generated some antagonism to the policy of the United States]].

In that article, it’s no coincidence [[that I have a big fight with Twain and Eliot]], || because I disagree with them on issues [[that concern all of us]].

Until 1940 it was an observable fact [[that there were composers whose music was highly prized in some countries and entirely neglected by their neighbours]], and this was explained by the difference in national characters.

It is clear [[that the Princess and her husband are settling down in London]] and for this purpose, Kensington Palace is well suited.

[attributed variant] 

The Federal Government has made it clear [[that it would have no part in any project for the development of long-range missiles – which in any case would contravene the provisions of the Brussels treaty]].

[identifying] 

The third reason is [[that the supreme interest for the whole world – East and West and uncommitted nations – is the prevention of nuclear war]].

The lesson [[that’s learned]] is [[that they aren’t Kangan]]; Kangan is everybody, as represented by the people gathered in Beatrice’s apartment at the end of the novel. [Text 16]Perhaps the most important point of all is the fact [[that capital was available for expansion as required]].

The plain fact is [[[that it is extremely difficult [[for MPs to accept invitations from foreign Governments, or from public relations organisations [[working for them]] ]], || without being compromised]]].

[identifying clause of proving] 

But the fact [[that they are caught]] proves [[that they do not lift above the headline]].

Here the fact is an embedded clause standing as a nominalisation on its own, functioning as the realisation of an element in the relational process clause (Carrier or Identifier/Token, in these examples).³³ Since it is embedded, there is always an agnate version where the fact clause serves as a Qualifier of a noun of the ‘fact’ class, e.g. the fact that Caesar was ambitious.

∞

³³ Strictly speaking the embedded ‘fact’ clause functions as Head of a nominal group which, in turn, functions as an element in the ranking clause. This analysis shows how clauses serving as Head are agnate with clauses serving as Postmodifier in nominal groups with a fact noun as Head: that Caesar was ambitious is obvious: the fact that Caesar was ambitious is obvious. But since a fact clause functioning as Head takes up the whole of that nominal group we can just as well leave out that stage in the structural analysis and show it as directly embedded into the clause.

A Fact Clause Serving As Head In A Nominal Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 538-9):

A fact clause serving as Head in a nominal group without a fact noun can be related to the first class of fact noun – that of ‘cases’, since such a fact clause is always agnate with an expanded nominal group with fact as Head. Whether the nominal group has a fact noun as Head or not, the fact clause is embedded. Because there is no projecting process involved, to which it could be paratactically or hypotactically related, a fact can appear only in embedded form: either as Qualifier to a ‘fact’ noun, or as a nominalisation on its own (Figure 7-23); for example:

Historically, the fact is [[[that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the most popular novel of the nineteenth || century and had a huge effect on American history]]].

Facts: Prepackaged Projections

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 537):

There is one other type of projection, where the projected clause is not being projected by a verbal or mental process with Sayer or Senser, or by a verbal or mental process noun in a metaphorical nominal group, but comes, as it were, ready packaged in projected form. We refer to this type as a fact. For example:

The irony is even further compounded by the fact [[that while every people must have those [[[who say, || ‘Here I stand,’]]] the fact is [[[Okonkwo loses a child to the forces of Christianity, || and Ezeulu loses his community to Christianity]]] ]].

The fact [[that fourteen of the original eighteen Julian Ashton nudes still decorate the Marble Bar’s walls]], perchance contributed to the bar winning Australian Playboy’s survey for Best Bar in Australia in 1986.

The fact [[that Lear never even alluded to that at the end]] is a sign [[that he didn’t learn very much through the course of the play]].

He’s trapped by the fact [[that the river flows south]].

Here a ‘fact’ noun serves as the Head/Thing of a nominal group with a projected clause as Postmodifier/Qualifier. Consider That Caesar was dead was obvious to all. Here that Caesar was dead is certainly a projection; but there is no process of saying or thinking which projects it. Its status is simply that of a fact; and it can indeed function as Qualifier to the noun fact, e.g. the fact that Caesar was dead was obvious to all.

An Embedded Projection Defines Its Noun Of Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 535):

… the noun is the name of a locution or an idea, and the clause that it projects serves to define it in exactly the same way that a ‘restrictive’ relative clause defines the noun that is expanded by it. Hence any noun that belongs to a projecting class may be defined (restricted) in either of these two ways, either by projection (e.g. the thought [[that she might one day be a queen]]) or by expansion (e.g. the thought [[that came into her mind]]). This leads to ambiguities such as the report [[that he was submitting]].

Embedded Projections In The Creation Of Discourse

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 534-5):

The fact that the projected clause is embedded as the Qualifier in a nominal group means that it can occur in a range of grammatical environments not open to non-embedded, tactically related projected clauses. This is important in the creation of discourse; one of the central uses of nominal groups with embedded projections is in the representation of arguments, as in newspaper reports and scientific discourse:

There is bitter opposition to his proposal [[that Palestinians renounce their demand [[for more than three million refugees to return to areas inside Israel that were abandoned in the 1948 war]] ]]. 

Israelis have rejected Mr Clinton’s proposal [[that they give up control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, the holiest place in Judaism and the third most sacred in Islam]].

Boyle’s tentative suggestion [[that heat was simply motion]] was apparently not accepted by Stahl, || or perhaps it was unknown to him.

Here proposals and demands are opposed, renounced and rejected. The contribution to the creation of discourse is further enhanced by the fact that such nouns of projection can be used anaphorically to refer back to propositions and proposals already established in the discourse:

The Labour Party opposed Thor missiles, because, he said, they were out of date and vulnerable and would attract enemy action. That argument did not apply to the Polaris submarine.

The cohesive effect is similar to that created by text references achieved by means of this, that, it:

The talks lasted for three hours. This was a surprise, for they had only been scheduled to last two hours.

(cf. it was a surprise that the talks lasted for three hours with a fact clause; but nouns of projection make it possible to construe the class of projection explicitly.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, here Matthiessen seriously misrepresents Halliday's model of cohesive reference.  It is not the noun of projection (argument) that makes anaphoric reference, but the reference item that precedes it (that). It would appear that Matthiessen has been fooled by the misunderstanding of Halliday in Martin (1992).  For evidence that Martin misunderstands the principles on which reference is theorised, see any of the 153 posts here.

All Embedded Projections Are Metaphorical

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 534):

The structure of a nominal group with an embedded projection is shown in Figure 7-22, part [i].

Such instances are still projections; but here the projecting element is the noun that is functioning as Thing, in this case assertion. … such instances of projection are all metaphorical: a projecting sequence is realised congruently as a clause nexus of projection – part [ii] of Figure 7-22, but it may alternatively be realised metaphorically as a nominal group – part [i] of Figure 7-22. When we align them as in Figure 7-22, we see how the nominal group construction with an embedded projection clause is agnate with a clause nexus of projection: the nominal group is a metaphorical, nominalised version of the clause nexus; and the noun assertion serving as Head/Thing is in fact a nominalised variant of the verb assert serving as Process in the agnate clause. The congruent Sayer may be left out in the nominal group; or it may be represented either as the Deictic (their assertion that ...) or as a Qualifier (the assertion by the government that ...). Part of the rhetorical power of the metaphorical group is the potential for leaving the Sayer unspecified.

Embedded Locutions And Ideas

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 533-4):

Like the three types of expansion, both locutions and ideas can be embedded. Besides entering into paratactic and hypotactic clause nexuses, they can be ‘rankshifted’ to function as Qualifiers within a nominal group, as in:

Leaders of both a publicly-funded project and a competing private company issued statements Friday [[that they jointly would announce the status of their work on Monday]].

I was very intrigued by your take on Huck Finn in that piece, and your argument [[that the great American novel of that century was Uncle Tom’s Cabin]].

To what extent do you buy into the belief [[[that if the individual becomes enlightened, || that adds to the betterment of the universe in and of itself]]]?

AT&T’s stock slid 14 percent Tuesday as the company issued its first profit warning under chief executive C. Michael Armstrong, fuelling worries about [[whether his radical remake of the nation’s largest long-distance company will succeed]]. 

The man was impressive in some ways, Oxford educated, very twenties British bohemian, a great dancer and seducer of women, who suppressed his wife’s desire [[to be a ‘real’ archaeologist]] and whose own career really was a joke up until his early death from a sudden illness.