Friday 21 June 2019

Four Degrees Of Nuclearity In The Clause Schematised

Martin & Rose (2007: 95):
For our analyses of nuclear relations in clauses, we can distinguish four degrees of nuclearity: centre, nucleus, margin and periphery, schematised in Figure 3.12. The centre of the clause is occupied by the Process, and it may also include a Range:process, class or part, e.g. do a dance, be an Englishman, have the guts. The nucleus includes the Medium and any Range:entity, quality or possession. The margin includes Agents and Beneficiaries. And the periphery is occupied by Circumstances.


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[1] To be clear, as demonstrated in the preceding 17 posts, this model is invalidated by all of the misunderstandings of SFL theory on which is based.  Moreover, it is a model of wording within the clause, not "meaning beyond the clause" (the gloss of discourse semantics in the title of this publication).

By way of contrast, a theoretically coherent model, based on the same intellectual source, Halliday's model of ergativity, and additionally organised in terms of the relations of expansion and projection, was provided in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 174):

[2] Trivially, this form of representation first appears in Cléirigh (1998: 346-8), where it is used to model clause and group structure as a scalar field.

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