Confusing Concessive 'But' With Adversative 'But' And Using Ambiguous 'However' To Disambiguate The Two

Martin & Rose (2007: 129):

But the most common realisation of concessive cause is but:

He tried to hide his wild consuming fear,
but I saw it 

I can't handle the man anymore!
But I can't get out

However but can also realise comparison:difference, which can be confusing. We can test whether the relation is concession by trying to substitute but with hypotactic or concessive conjunctions that we know realise consequential meanings, such as although however:

Although he tried to hide his wild consuming fear,

I saw it. 

I can't handle the man anymore!
However I can't get out.

If we substitute conjunctions that realise contrast, they don’t make as much sense (*I can’t handle the man anymore! In contrast I can’t get out. *Whereas he tried to hide his wild consuming fear, I saw it).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the relation in this instance is concessive condition, not concessive cause.  Its meaning is if P then contrary to expectation Q:

• if he tried to hide his wild consuming fear then contrary to expectation I saw it

That is, Martin & Rose have misunderstood Halliday's concessive condition as concessive cause, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's grammatical system of clause complexing as Martin's discourse semantic system of conjunction.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the relation in this instance is adversative addition, not concessive cause. Its meaning is X and conversely Y:

• I can’t handle the man anymore and conversely I can’t get out

Compare a concessive misinterpretation:

• * if I can’t handle the man anymore then contrary to expectation I can’t get out

That is, Martin & Rose have misunderstood Halliday's adversative addition as concessive cause, and rebranded their misunderstanding of Halliday's textual grammatical system of cohesive conjunction as Martin's logical discourse semantic system of conjunction.

[3] As previously demonstrated, Martin & Rose misunderstand Halliday's adversative addition (extension) as a type of comparison (enhancement), variously labelled as different/difference or contrast.

[4] To be clear, the conjunctive Adjunct however, like but, can mark either relation, and so is no guide to disambiguation.  Moreover, in this example, it marks adversative addition ("comparison: difference/contrast"), not concessive condition ("concessive cause") — the opposite of the authors' claim.

[5] To be clear, this is the opposite of what is true.  The relation here is adversative addition (see [2]), which can be rendered cohesively as:

• I can’t handle the man anymore! On the other hand, I can’t get out.