Doran, Martin & Zappavigna (2025: 74-5):
The examples above all focused on complete propositions and proposals. For proposition or proposals that are open, often involving wh– questions, the default purview is pose (–speaker purview; + listener purview). We can see this in (37), where Kristy poses a wh-question to her mother.
Though as example (30) above shows, open propositions can have their purview varied – in this case as aired, through I wonder (replayed in (38)).
ChatGPT Comments:
This continues the same issues we’ve seen earlier:
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Circularity of “default” — The claim that open wh– questions default to pose (– speaker purview; + listener purview) is not an explanation but a tautological restatement of their own invented system. They say “the default is pose” because their grid requires it, not because any descriptive evidence demands it.
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Category slippage — They oscillate between proposition type (wh– interrogative) and purview value (pose vs air), treating one as if it naturally “defaults” into the other. But they provide no systemic grounding: in SFL, the default mapping between interrogatives and exchange roles is already accounted for in mood structure. Their “default purview” adds nothing except redundancy.
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Recycling the same example — Example (37) is simply a restaging of Kristy’s earlier wh– question (already discussed in 34). And (38) is again the coconut cream hoppers example we’ve seen twice already. This recycling suggests they don’t have enough genuinely distinct data to sustain the typology, so they keep dressing the same examples in new conceptual clothing.
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Misuse of systemic concepts — In SFL, defaults are structural (e.g. interrogatives defaulting to “demand information”). Here, the “default purview” is not a systemic default but an analytic convenience. Calling it a “default” risks misleading readers into thinking the model is grounded in the grammar, when it is in fact grounded in their newly constructed grid.
More specifically:
Excerpt under review:
“For proposition or proposals that are open, often involving wh– questions, the default purview is pose (– speaker purview; + listener purview). … Though as example (30) above shows, open propositions can have their purview varied – in this case as aired, through I wonder.”
1. The illusion of a “default”
The authors claim that open wh– questions “default” to pose. But this “default” is only true by stipulation: they have defined pose as (– speaker purview; + listener purview), then observe that wh– interrogatives are typically structured as demands for information from the addressee. Rather than discovering something new, they are redescribing the already well-established systemic fact that interrogatives enact demands for information. The novelty of “purview” collapses into circular restatement.
2. Redundancy with SFL mood system
In Halliday & Matthiessen’s model, the correlation between mood type and speech function is already systemic:
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interrogative ↔ demand for information
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declarative ↔ statement of information
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imperative ↔ demand for goods-&-services.
This account already captures Kristy’s wh– question in (37). To claim that “the default purview is pose” adds no explanatory depth; it simply repackages mood semantics into the “purview” grid, with no new descriptive reach.
3. Category slippage: proposition ↔ purview
The authors conflate two distinct dimensions:
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proposition type: whether the clause is open (wh–) or closed (polar).
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purview type: who is said to “own” or “share” responsibility for knowing.
They present the mapping as if the clause type “naturally” entails a purview, but in fact the “purview” category is artificially imposed. This slippage generates the illusion of systemic necessity where there is only analytic projection.
4. Reliance on recycled examples
The data presented are not fresh demonstrations but recycled:
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Example (37) repeats Kristy’s wh– question from (34).
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Example (38) repeats the “coconut cream hoppers” case already presented twice.
This recycling betrays the fragility of the framework. If the typology were descriptively robust, one would expect a rich array of distinct examples across Hasan’s corpus. Instead, the same handful of cases must be dressed up in different theoretical guises to sustain the typology.
5. Misuse of “default” as systemic category
In SFL, “default” is a technical concept tied to systemic probability: certain features are unmarked, carrying higher systemic probability in context. Here, “default purview” is neither probabilistic nor systemic; it is merely an analytic shorthand for “what their table already predicts.” By borrowing SFL’s terminology, the authors create an illusion of system-internal motivation that their model cannot supply.
Conclusion
This passage illustrates the fundamental weakness of the purview typology: it offers no explanatory insight beyond what mood semantics already covers, yet it recycles SFL’s terminology (“default”) and Hasan’s data to generate the appearance of theoretical novelty. The result is circular, redundant, and analytically fragile.
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