Misrepresenting Extending Grammatical Relations As Elaborating Lexical Relations

Martin & Rose (2007: 88):

Many such antonyms are construed in the principles motivating the Reconciliation Act, with the contrast emphasised by negative polarity not, and the contrastive conjunction but:

SINCE the Constitution states that there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation;

Blogger Comments:

In terms of SFL theory, Martin & Rose here misconstrue extending relations between grammatical units as elaborating (antonymic) relations between lexical items (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 644).  In each of these instances, a variation: replacive relation (op. cit.: 471) obtains between two prepositional phrases in an embedded complex:

for understanding	but not for vengeance
for reparation	but not for retaliation
for ubuntu	but not for victimisation
1	+ 2