Misunderstanding Clause Ergativity And Misapplying It To Data

Martin & Rose (2007: 93):

Within the field of granting amnesty, people participate in each activity, as Medium, Agents or Beneficiaries, i.e. as nuclear or marginal elements of the activity. To show their lexical relations we can use:

• symbols for nuclear relations: ‘=’ for central, ‘+’ for nuclear, and ‘x’ for marginal (following Halliday’s 1994/2004 symbols for logical relations),
• lexical rendering of pronouns and implicit elements,
• ‘=’ for relations between processes that are parts of a field, as follows:

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here again Martin & Rose confuse context (field) with language (clause functions).  In SFL theory, field is the ideational dimension of context (the instantiation cline from culture to situation).  In contrast, the ergative functions of Process, Medium, Agent and Beneficiary are features of language: semantic distinctions that are realised in the grammar of the clause.  That is, the authors confuse what's going on, culturally, in the creation of text, with what's going on in the text itself.

[2] To be clear, relations between elements of clause structure are grammatical relations, not lexical relations.

[3] To be clear, the claims here are that:

• the relation between the centre (Process) and itself is elaboration (=);
• the relation between the centre (Process) and the nucleus (Medium) is extension (+);
• the relation between the centre (Process) and the margin (Agent or Beneficiary) is enhancement (x).

Only the last of these three claims demonstrates an understanding of Halliday's model.  Of the first claim, it will be seen later here that Martin & Rose also include Range: process within the centre — though they also include intensive and possessive Attributes such as (be) an Englishman and (have) the guts, while, at the same time, excluding intensive and possessive Attributes such as (going) mad and (had) another lover.

Of the second claim, the notion that the Medium extends (adds to) the Process is inconsistent with the definition of the Medium as the participant through which the Process is actualised.  In Halliday's original model, the Process and Medium together form the experiential Nucleus of the clause.

[4] To be clear, relations between Processes of different clauses are neither lexical relations, nor nuclear relations within the clause. Moreover, in the examples provided, the relation between applying for and (not) giving is not one of elaboration, since the relation is not one of partial identity: i.e. one does not restate or clarify the other.

[5] Here again Martin & Rose misconstrue the realisation relation between two levels of symbolic abstraction, context (field) and language (processes), as one of composition ('parts of') at the same level.

[6] To be clear, the authors' schema of "lexical" relations not only misunderstands Halliday's ergative model but misapplies it to the data, misinterpreting the Medium (police officers, the Commission) as Agent, and misinterpreting the Range (amnesty) as Medium.  This can be made explicit by comparing the authors' analysis:

Margin	x	Centre	+	Nucleus	x	Margin
Agent		Process		Medium		Beneficiary
		granting		amnesty
police officers		apply for		amnesty
the Commission		gives		amnesty		to those who plead guilty
the Commission		gives		amnesty		to innocent people
the Commission		not give		amnesty		to those who claim to be innocent
the Commission		refused		amnesty		to the police officers who…

with an application of Halliday's ergative model:

Range	=	Nucleus		x	Beneficiary
		Medium	Process
amnesty		police officers	apply for
amnesty		the Commission	gives		to those who plead guilty
amnesty		the Commission	does not give		to innocent people
amnesty		the Commission	does not give		to those who claim to be innocent
amnesty		the Commission	refused		to the police officers who…