The Full System For External Conjunction

Martin & Rose (2007: 132-3):

The full system for external conjunction is displayed in Table 4.4.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Trivially, this is not a system, but a hyponymic taxonomy presented as a table.

[2] As previously demonstrated, the authors' system of external conjunction is a confusion of two distinct grammatical systems, clause complexing (logical metafunction) and cohesive conjunction (textual metafunction) rebranded as a discourse semantic system of the logical metafunction.

Because the original intellectual source of this model is the system of cohesive conjunction in Halliday & Hasan (1976), the logical relations are not organised into the three main subclasses of expansion (elaboration, extension and enhancement), and all subclasses of elaboration and projection are entirely absent from the author's model.  This latter fact is a particularly serious deficiency, since, not only does the model fail to account for the semantics of elaboration and projection, but it disables any attempt to account for grammatical metaphor in which elaboration and projection are featured.

Moreover, as previously demonstrated, Martin & Rose misunderstand each of the seven types of conjunction — see the previous 20 posts — and this has the effect of differentiating their rebranded model from its intellectual source, thereby creating the false impression of original thought.