Speaking of system v description, by the mid-90s we had the enormous advantages of Christian’s Lexico-Grammatical Cartography to compare grammatical systems and Jim’s English Text to compare discourse semantic functions, as well as Jim’s papers on Tagalog grammar to illustrate some outer bounds of variation. Once the corpus was assembled, with these tools The Western Desert Code took less than a year (with a bit of midnight oil) to describe at least 3 degrees of delicacy for clause and group systems, and included contrasts with English systems.
Now we have multiple descriptions showing us how to look for variation. We really have no reason to fear anglicisation, unless IFG is the only textbook on the office shelf.
Blogger Comments:
Appraised
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Appraisal
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Polarity
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Attitude
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Matthiessen's Lexicogrammatical Cartography
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positive
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appreciation: reaction
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Martin's English
Text
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positive
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appreciation: reaction
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Martin's papers on Tagalog
grammar
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positive
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appreciation: reaction
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Rose writing The Western Desert Code (his PhD) in
less than a year
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positive
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judgement: capacity
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For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Martin's English Text, see the clarifying critiques here.
For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Martin & Rose's Working With Discourse, see the clarifying critiques here.
For the theoretical misunderstandings and inconsistencies in Rose's posts to email lists, see the clarifying critiques here.
With regard to the theoretical consistency of Martin's work on Tagalog grammar, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504) diplomatically put it:
Martin, in his systemic treatment of processes in Tagalog (1996), offers a different interpretation of nuclear transitivity: he defines it in terms of orientation, rather than configuration, and hence operates with a significantly different concept of participant function.
To be clear, Rose is not concerned with the quality of the work, merely with the fact that it has been done.
