Misconstruing Hypotactic vs Paratactic Logical Structure As Experiential vs Logical Structure

Martin & Doran (2023: 25, 26):

Inspired by Halliday’s paper³ and by his own work on Tagalog grammar (e.g. 1995a) and English text structure, Martin (1988, 1995b, 1996a, 2000, 2004a, 2008, 2018) proposes the correlations between kinds of meaning and types of structure outlined in Figure 3. For particulate structure this means bringing nuclearity into the picture and re-interpreting multivariate structures as orbital (with satellites related to a single nucleus) and univariate structures as serial (i.e. multi-nuclear).

 

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[1] To be clear, Halliday updated his 1979 model in Halliday (1994: 36), and it remains so twenty years later in Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 85):

[2] To be clear, Martin's orbital structure for experiential meaning is inconsistent with the notion of multivariate structure. 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.

Martin's model, however, interprets the multivariate structure of the experiential metafunction as just one type of relationship: that between a nucleus and satellite. To the extent that a satellite is dependent on a nucleus, this is actually a model of a hypotactic univariate iterative structure of the logical metafunction.

On the other hand, Martin's serial structure for logical meaning is partially consistent with the notion of univariate structure. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 451):

A univariate structure is an iteration of the same functional relationship … . Such iterative structures are unique to the logical mode of meaning; they are, as noted, formed out of logico-semantic relations.

However, in giving each nucleus equal status, this is only a model of a paratactic univariate iterative structure of the logical metafunction.

In short, Martin's model misconstrues the difference between multivariate experiential and univariate logical structures as the difference between hypotactic and paratactic logical structures.