"Foregrounding" Paradigmatic Relations

Martin (2013: 95):

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, in SFL Theory, priority is given to system over structure. Here Martin gives priority to structure over system by claiming that the purpose of paradigmatic relations is to account for structures, while simultaneously claiming the opposite: that this is "foregrounding" the paradigmatic.

Misunderstanding Word Rank Forms As Clause Rank Functions [1]

Martin (2013: 66-7):

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the basic descriptive challenge alluded to here is said to arise from Martin's self-contradiction of privileging system by using structure to motivate systems.

However, this is misleading, because privileging system poses no challenge for describing clause rank systems, since these phenomena are word rank markers of clause rank functions. It is not that the Subject agrees with the verb, but the form of the word serving as the Head of the nominal group serving as Subject agrees with the form of the verb serving as Finite of the verbal group serving as Finite + Predicator.

This misunderstanding arises from confusing ranks and again viewing the clause 'from below', how it is realised, instead of 'from above', what it means.

It will be seen in the following posts that this confusion of function and form across ranks as "syntagmatic dependency relations between functions" is a persistent source of confusion for Martin.

Privileging Structure While Claiming The Opposite

Martin (2013: 66):

Blogger Comments:

This is self-contradiction. Using structure to motivate systems is privileging structure, not system, and this is the direct opposite of SFL methodology.

Misrepresenting Others' Work As Martin's Invention

Martin (2013: 24-5):

We've adjusted the labelling for the paradigm below, to better capture the proportionalities involved. Instead of using traditional PERSON and NUMBER labels we've turned to discourse semantics, and chosen more transparent terms to capture what is going on. One problem with this for some linguists is that our labels now sound more contextual than grammatical, and formal grammarians might object to them on such grounds; and they are perhaps less familiar to linguists than the traditional ones, and so outsiders might find them harder to understand. …

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is very misleading indeed, because discourse semantics is Martin's model, and so claiming to be drawing on discourse semantics here is claiming that this labelling is Martin's work, whereas the truth is that it is not. On the one hand, the PERSON categories are from Halliday's lexicogrammar, not Martin's discourse semantics. For example, Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 40, 41):

… there is a system of PERSON, based (in English, as in most other languages) on the opposition of ‘you-&-me’ versus ‘everyone (and perhaps everything) else’, and then on that of ‘you’ as opposed to ‘me’ (see Figure 2-2). …

On the other hand, the NUMBER categories are derived from Martin's source, Schachter & Otanes (1972: 88), not Martin's discourse semantics:

The plural pronouns have, as a group, the meanings of the corresponding non-plural pronouns with the additional meaning 'and others' (or 'and another'): thus the first-person plural is literally 'I and others', the dual plural 'you (singular) and I and others', etc.

[2] To be clear, the claim here is that a problem with more transparent terms is that they might be harder to understand.

[3] Trivially, in SFL Theory, 'context' is the culture modelled as a semiotic system, and formal grammarians do not use 'context' in this sense, so the labels that Martin has falsely claimed to be his own would not look more 'contextual' to them, and so would not be their grounds for objecting to them.

Giving Priority To Structure And Form Over System And Function

Martin (2013: 21-2):

Once thou was lost, English speakers would have had to deploy alternative resources to negotiate their social relations. And this means that we need to revise our pronoun network for standard English, as outlined below (setting aside GENDER for the moment to simplify the presentation).

It might be objected that we should keep the same system we developed for Shakespeare's times, and simply allow you to realise both second person singular and plural; this is the grammarian's concept of neutralisation. But we're going to be very stringent in our introduction to axial relations here and argue that if there is no difference in structure then there is no difference in system. Accordingly, we oppose above first and third person pronouns that distinguish NUMBER to second person pronouns which don't. This illustrates a very important strategy for network drawing — namely, setting aside, as early in delicacy as possible, classes that in some sense lie outside the system. Since you is different from other pronouns, we set it aside, and then move on to capture the parameters that the rest of the system shares.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, interlocutors enact their social relations. A child does not negotiate her status or institutional role with a teacher. Negotiating propositions and proposals is a different matter.

[2] This is misleading. To be clear, it wasn't that thou was lost and speakers were forced to 'deploy alternative resources'. It was because speakers 'deployed alternative resources' that the use of thou diminished.

[3] To be clear, this is the methodology of SFL Theory, where priority is given to system and function over structure and form. Cf. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 62):

[4] To be clear, the relation between the axes is simply realisation.

[5] This is misleading. To be clear, this approach gives priority to structure over system, the exact opposite of SFL methodology. Martin (p10) has previously acknowledged SFL methodology:

so his contradiction here demonstrates that he does not understand what it means to give priority to system over structure. The misunderstanding also invalidates the fundamental premise of this monograph.

[6] This is misleading. To be clear, this is again giving priority to form (pronouns, classes) over function, the exact opposite of SFL methodology.

The Fundamental Misunderstanding Of Axis In This Monograph

Martin (2013: 19):

The realisation of this system in structure has also been specified, with the words I, thou and he following the downward slanting arrow angled from upper left to lower right (the arrow represents 'is realised by'). In this form the system network formalises both the paradigmatic relations and their structural consequences (i.e. the units realising them). This dimension of SFL analysis is called axis. Axis privileges system over structure, with features realised through structure and structure motivating system (in other words, if no structural consequence, then no system).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading because it is untrue. The network does not even specify any elements of structure, let alone structure. All it specifies is the grammatical form (pronouns) and their formal categories in terms of person. It even contradicts Martin's introduction which opposed words to structure; Martin (2013: 14):

To be clear, structure is constituted by the relationships among the functional elements. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 451):

A multivariate structure is a configuration of different functional relationships, like Theme + Rheme, Mood + Residue + Moodtag, or Actor + Process + Recipient + Goal. Note that, although it is the functions that are labelled, the structure actually consists of the relationships among them.

[2] This is misleading because it is untrue, since a formal unit realising a feature does not constitute a structure, as explained above. What is true is that the system of a unit, such as a clause, is realised by the structure of that unit.

[3] This is misleading because it is untrue. Axis is a local dimension of language with two orders, paradigmatic and syntagmatic, whose dimensions are system and structure, respectively (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 20, 32). Here Martin misunderstands axis as the systemic specification of syntagmatic units. As Halliday (2003 [1994]: 434) explains, such specifications are a component of systems, the paradigmatic order of axis only:

The system has one further component, namely the 'realisation statement' that accompanies each option. This specifies the contribution made by that option to the structural configuration; it may be read as a proposition about the structural constraints associated with the option in question.

[4] This is misleading because it is untrue. It is not axis that "privileges" system over structure but SFL Theory. Halliday (2003 [1994]: 433):

In Firth's system-structure theory, neither of these is given priority; and in scale and category grammar this perspective was maintained. In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms.

[5] This is potentially misleading, especially in this context. To be clear, individual features are not realised by structure; it is a system of features that is realised by the relationships among the functional elements of structure.

[6] To be clear, here Martin is giving priority to structure over system, thereby contradicting his own misunderstanding of axis, and taking the opposite perspective to that of SFL Theory.

[7] To be clear, Martin has already provided two networks that contradict this claim: the PERSON system above, and traffic light system (p3):

Moreover, as Halliday (2003 [1994]: 433-4) explains:

In systemic theory the system takes priority; the most abstract representation at any level is in paradigmatic terms. … This step was taken by Halliday in the early 1960s so that grammatical and phonological representations could be freed from constraints of structure.

Seriously Misunderstanding Hjelmslev On The Meaning Of 'Sign'

Martin (2013: 4):

Blogger Comments:

This is misleading because it seriously misunderstands Hjelmslev. The quote provided by Martin is part of an argument against the traditional view of the sign, where a sign is a sign for something outside itself: content-substance and expression substance. Hjelmslev (1961: 57-8)

If we now return to the question from which we began, concerning the most appropriate meaning of the word sign, we are in a position to see more clearly behind the controversy between the traditional and the modern linguistic points of view. It seems to be true that a sign is a sign for something, and that this something in a certain sense lies outside the sign itself. Thus the word ring is a sign for that definite thing on my finger, and that thing does not, in a certain (traditional) sense, enter into the sign itself. But that thing on my finger is an entity of content-substance, which, through the sign, is ordered to a content-form and is arranged under it together with various other entities of content-substance (e.g., the sound that comes from my telephone). That a sign is a sign for something means that the content-form of a sign can subsume that something as content-substance. 

Just as we felt before a need to use the word purport, not simply of the content, but also of the expression, so here again, in the interest of clarity, despite the time-honoured concepts whose shortcomings now become increasingly evident, we feel a desire to invert the sign-orientation: actually we should be able to say with precisely the same right that a sign is a sign for an expression-substance. The sound sequence [riᶇ] itself, as a unique phenomenon, pronounced hic et nunc, is an entity of expression-substance …

The sign is, then — paradoxical as it may seem — a sign for a content-substance and a sign for an expression-substance. It is in this sense that the sign can be said to be a sign for something. On the other hand, we see no justification for calling the sign a sign merely for the content-substance, or (what nobody has thought of, to be sure) merely for the expression-substance.

Hjelmslev (1961: 58) then supports Saussure's use of the word sign, interpreting signified and signifier as content form and expression form, respectively:

But it appears more appropriate to use the word sign as the name for the unit consisting of content-form and expression-form and established by the solidarity that we have called the sign function.

and argues (ibid.) that the traditional view of the sign gives rise to the view that Saussure argued against:

If sign is used as the name for the expression [signifier] alone or for a part of it, the terminology, even if protected by formal definitions, will run the risk of consciously or unconsciously giving rise to or favouring the widespread misconception according to which a language is simply a nomenclature or a stock of labels intended to be fastened on pre-existent things. The word sign will always, by reason of its nature, be joined to the idea of a designatum; the word sign must therefore be used appropriately in such a way that the relation between sign and designatum will appear as clearly as possible and not be subjected to distorting simplification.

In summary, Martin has not only misunderstood Hjelmslev to mean the opposite of what he wrote, but also supported the view that Saussure explicitly rejects, thereby contradicting his earlier claim of sharing Saussure's rejection of it. Martin (2013: 3):

This dual labelling means that we don't deploy terms that privilege either signifié of signifiant and so foster the misunderstanding of Saussure reviewed above (i.e. the idea that signs stand for concepts, or that signs are names for parts of the physical and biological world).