Misunderstanding Meronymy

Martin & Rose (2007: 90):

Wholes to parts

Likewise relationships of wholes to parts are also given various names in English, depending on the field, e.g. part, content, ingredient, constituent, stratum, rank, plane, element, factor, fitting, member, component, faction, excerpt, extract, episode, chapter, selection, piece, segment, section, portion, measure. 

In addition, facets name parts that are locations of wholes, e.g. the bottom of his soul, top, inside, outside, side, edge, middle, perimeter, environs, start, finish, beginning, rest. 

Measures name some portion of the whole, e.g. a cup of coffee, glass, bottle, jug, can, barrel, loaf mouthful, spoonful, ounce, pound, kilo, metre, acre. Again part-whole relations can be used cohesively between messages:

parts The chair's broken, – Which part?
facets Was it a good marriage? – Only at the start.
measures How much is petrol today? – More than a dollar a litre.

Technically whole-part relations are known as meronymy (mero- from Greek ‘part’).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Martin & Rose misconstrue the names of parts as names of part-whole relations.

[2] To be clear, the notion that a part is the location of a whole is nonsensical, as demonstrated by the simple fact that the side of a triangle is not the location of the whole triangle.

[3] To be clear, facets and portions serve as extended Numeratives in nominal groups such as the bottom of his soul, a cup of coffee; Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 395):

 

[4] More importantly, in the authors' terms, the concern here is meant to be the taxonomic relation of meronymy, as a feature within the experiential discourse semantic system of IDEATION.  Instead, however, the authors have again unwittingly confused two distinct metafunctional systems of lexicogrammar: nominal group (experiential) and lexical cohesion (textual).