"Sweeping Structure Markers Under The Carpet"

Martin & Doran (2023: 17):

As Fontaine (2017:280) comments, “It is well known that of-expressions are problematic…”. McDonald (2017:263) similarly expresses concern about the need to account “for a structural marker that is not itself part of a structure, such as of in English, de in French, zhi in classical Chinese or de in modern Chinese, or no in Japanese”. …

As SFL addresses an ever-wider range of languages and extends descriptions to include group/phrase and word rank systems and structures, sweeping structure markers under the carpet becomes less and less tenable. Thus in this paper we  focus on these structure markers and suggest how to deal with them. In doing so we re-visit SFL’s conception of types of structure and suggest a generalisable account of structure markers which makes room for their analysis in tables or trees.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Fontaine's comment is an example of the logical fallacy known as Argumentum ad populum:

appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because a majority or many people believe it to be so.

And Martin & Doran's use of Fontaine's comment is an example of the logical fallacy known as Ipse dixit (bare assertion fallacy):

a claim that is presented as true without support, as self-evidently true, or as dogmatically true. This fallacy relies on the implied expertise of the speaker or on an unstated truism.

[2] To be clear, 'structure marker' is precisely how such items are accounted for. If they are not part of a structure, then they cannot be interpreted as part of a structure. Nevertheless, this is precisely what Martin & Doran propose in this paper.

[3] To be clear, this is an example of the logical fallacy known as Red herring:

introducing a second argument in response to the first argument that is irrelevant and draws attention away from the original topic

since it makes the further claim that accounting for such items as structure markers is 'sweeping them under the carpet'; see [2]. This red herring then serves as a fallacious straw man to be defeated by the authors in this paper.