Misunderstanding The Basis Of Nuclearity

Martin & Rose (2007: 92):

The Medium may be affected by the process, but the Agent is left implicit, as in I’m going to be haunted, amnesty was refused. As Agent and Beneficiary may be left out of the clause, they are relatively marginal in terms of nuclear relations. 

How do these grammatical functions interact with the lexical elements that instantiate them in particular texts?

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, on the ergative model, the Medium is participant through which the Process is actualised; on the transitive model, in contrast, the Goal is the participant that is impacted by the Process.

[2] To be clear, the clause amnesty was refused is middle (medio-receptive), not effective.  That is, the clause lacks the feature [agency], so it does not feature an Agent, implicit or otherwise.

amnesty	was refused	by the Commission
Range	Process	Medium

[3] This seriously misunderstands nuclearity.  Agent and Beneficiary, as participants, are "marginal" in the sense of their participation in the Process, not because they can be left out.  The problems with 'omittability' as a criterion include:

• the omission of a participant serves a textual function, not an experiential function; and
• even the most nuclear participant, the Medium, can be omitted, as demonstrated by the medio-receptive clauses such as amnesty was refused, you were seen!  What was said?

It will be seen later that Martin & Rose contradict their own principle by interpreting 'Range: process' — e.g. a song in he sang (a song) — as central, despite the fact that it can be omitted.

[4] The notion of grammatical functions interacting with lexical items betrays the Martin's (1992) misunderstanding of the dimensions of SFL theory as the interaction of modules; see the clarifying critiques here.

To be clear, the relation between grammatical functions and lexical items involves both delicacy and realisation, since each lexical item is the synthetic realisation of the most delicate features of lexicogrammatical systems.

[5] The notion of lexical items instantiating grammatical function confuses instantiation — the relation between potential and instance — with delicacy (and realisation), as explained above in [4].

∞

Importantly, none of this is

1. discourse semantic,
2. beyond the clause, or 
3. the authors' original theorising.