Tom Bartlett's Reasons For Not Identifying 'Accompaniment'

In reply to Annabelle Lukin's query on sysfling on 27 October 2017 at 11:40:

How about this:

There have been more clashes between Iraqi and British forces

The process type is simple. But what kind of circumstance is "between Iraqi and British forces"?

Tom Bartlett wrote on 27 October 2017 at 15:37:

I'd say it's a qualifier in the ngp.

and on 2 November 2017 at 16:35:

My feeling here is that it could usefully be analysed as a marker of reciprocality, i.e. where processes are two way, such as:

they married/fought/loved/hated each other 

These have nominal equivalents of

the marriage/fighting/love/hate between them

For that reason I would also stick with the qualifier analysis. 

It's a bit difficult to talk about agency though as love and hate are non-agentive processes (just Medium and Range).

Blogger Comments:

[1] The question of whether the prepositional phrase between Iraqi and British forces functions as a circumstance or a Qualifier is one of constituency: does it realise an element of clause structure (circumstance) or does it realise an element of group structure (Qualifier)?  Halliday and Matthiessen (2014: 270-1) provide a simple means of determining this:

To differentiate [circumstance from Qualifier] in analysis, we can apply textual probes: in principle, being an element of the clause, a circumstance is subject to all the different textual statuses brought about by theme, theme predication and theme identification. … In contrast, a Qualifier cannot on its own be given textual status in the clause since it is a constituent of a nominal group, not of the clause; so it can only be thematic together with the rest of the nominal group it is part of.

Bartlett's analysis of the prepositional phrase as Qualifier is ruled out by the textual agnate:

it is between Iraqi and British forces that there have been more clashes.

cf the Location agnate:

it is between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that there have been more clashes.

[2] This confuses reciprocality with joint participation in a process.  On the basis of Bartlett's examples, the omitted clause they clashed each other falsifies the interpretation as reciprocality.  On the other hand, a more congruent agnate of Lukin's clause

Iraqi and British forces have clashed again

demonstrates that the circumstance between Iraqi and British forces is agnate to joint participation in a process.  The type of circumstance that is agnate to joint participation is Accompaniment.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 324):

Accompaniment is a form of joint participation in the process and represents the meanings ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ as circumstantials;

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 174):

The circumstance of Accompaniment does not correspond to any one particular participant rôle. Rather, it corresponds to an extending of the participant itself, by addition or variation… Grammatically, the analogous type of participant is one represented by a nominal group complex.

A transitivity analysis of Lukin's clause can be viewed on the Sysfling blog here.  Other instances of non-spatiotemporal uses of 'between' can be viewed on the Sys-Func blog here.

[3] These nominal groups provide no grammatical reasoning for interpreting Lukin's clause, since they are not agnate to it.  Being nominal groups, they are merely instances in which the prepositional phrase does actually function as a Qualifier.  As an argument, this can be seen as an example of the logical fallacy known as begging the question.

[4] To be clear, emotive mental Process clauses are potentially 'two-way': emanating ('like' type) or impinging ('please' type).  It is only the emanating type that is 'middle' in terms of agency ("just Medium and Range").  Impinging mental Process clauses are 'effective' in terms of 'agency'.  However, 'effective' agency can also be realised in analytical causatives, as in you made me love you:

you	made	me	love	you
Agent	Pro…	Medium	…cess	Range