Connexion: Lexicogrammatical Diversification

Ngo, Hood, Martin, Painter, Smith & Zappavigna (2022: 13-4):

CONNEXION comprises resources for relating discourse semantic figures (both occurrence figures and state figures) to one another in sequences (via additive, comparative, temporal and causal relations). In terms of lexicogrammatical diversification it allows us to connect figures to one another in a variety of ways:

(26) Due to him harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(27) Because he was harassing her, she left the parking lot.

(28) He harassed her, so she left the parking lot.

(29) He harassed her. Consequently she left the parking lot.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the use of the ideational semantics of Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) makes the use of Martin's CONNEXION redundant, since the former subsumes the latter by relating figures in sequences.

[2] To be clear, the reason why Martin's CONNEXION is only concerned with these particular expansion relations is because that was the state of development of Halliday's model of textual cohesive conjunction in Halliday & Hasan (1976) which Martin rebranded in Martin (1992) as his own model of logical discourse semantics. There is no projection in Martin's model of logical discourse semantics because projection is not used cohesively.

[3] To be clear, in (26) the first figure is realised metaphorically as a prepositional phrase. In (27) and (28), two figures are realised congruently as clause complexes, each clause structurally related through hypotaxis (27) or parataxis (28). In (29), the two figures are realised by two clauses that are not structurally related, but instead related textually through cohesive conjunction.