Misconstruing A Substitute As A Continuative

Martin & Rose (2007: 125):

Of course the flipside of contrast is similarity, using like, as if:

The criminal and civil liability of the perpetrator are expunged as if the offence had never happened.

Here Tutu uses as if to suggest that liability expunged is in some way similar to the offence never happened. A cohesive conjunction that can express external similarity is similarly:

Helena's first love worked in a top security structure. Similarly her second love worked for the special forces.

Similarity can also be expressed by the continuative so, with Subject-Finite inversion:

I was torn to pieces. So was he.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, similarity is the "flipside" of difference.  In SFL Theory, the logical meaning of comparison is 'N is like M', and the relation is marked by and + similarly; (and) so, thus, as, as if, like, the way, like (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 477).

[2] To be clear, the logical meaning of this clause complex is: The criminal and civil liability of the perpetrator are expunged is like the offence had never happened.

[3] To be clear, in SFL theory, cohesive conjunction is a grammatical system of the textual metafunction. Here Martin & Rose blend it with the logical grammatical system of clause complexing, and rebrand the confusion as logical discourse semantics.

[4] To be clear, in this instance, the word so is a substitution for the Residue of the clause — not a continuative.  In SFL Theory, genuine continuatives are items such as well, oh, oh no etc.