Sunday 12 April 2020

Introducing Other People

Martin & Rose (2007: 158):
Moving on to her second love, Helena introduces him as follows:
I met another policeman.
Another identifies him in two ways. First an is indefinite like ‘a’, so we know we can’t assume this identity; secondly other tells us that he is different from the first policeman. These two meanings (indefiniteness and difference) are fused together as another. …
A third man whom she briefly marries is introduced indefinitely as someone, i.e. nobody we know; and is also distinguished from her first love as someone else:
An extremely short marriage to someone else

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is self-contradiction. To be clear, if no identity is recoverable, then there is no identification.

[2] To be clear, other and else are markers of comparative reference, where what is presupposed is another referent of the same class. Contrary to Martin's model of identification, the 'semantics of reference', the domain of comparative reference is not restricted to nominal groups. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 633):

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