Marked Textual Structure Of A Nominal Group

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 387, 397):

Textual meaning is embodied throughout the entire structure, since it determines the order in which the elements are arranged, as well as patterns of information structure just as in the clause (note, for example, that the unmarked focus of information in a nominal group is on the word that comes last, not the word that functions as Thing. This means that there is a certain potential for assigning experientially similar meanings different textual statuses within the structure of the nominal group. …

Initial position is thematic; and the natural theme of a process or participant is its relation to the here-and-now. Final position is informative; and the newsworthy component of a process or participant is some aspect of its lexical content. So the structure of groups recapitulates, in the fixed ordering of their elements, the meaning that is incorporated as choice in the message structure of the clause.

Descartes' Reification Of Sensing

An Enclosed Structurally Unrelated Clause

Mr Minter, 'Call me Ted', was  a large, untidy, perpetually smiling man with the look of an astute rabbit.

— John Mortimer Rumpole And The Asylum Seekers

One way to analyse the enclosed clause as structurally related is to take the view from below. Because it is realised as its own tone group (TONALITY) and realised by tone concord with what precedes (TONE), the enclosed clause is realised as if it were in non-defining elaborating relationship with the surrounding clause. Such an interpretation, though, requires treating the clause that projected it as ellipsed.

Nominal Group As Qualifier

Embedded Nominal Group As Deictic vs Qualifier

Chemical Symbolism vs Chemical Names

Chemical Equations

Adverb As Head Of Nominal Group Serving As Manner Circumstance

Verbal Group As Head Of Nominal Group

Adverb As Head Of Nominal Group

Alternatively:

Prepositional Phrase As Nominal Group Post-Deictic

cf.

Decoding A Text By Reference To A Variety Expression

'Smattering' As Numerative

Classifying Registers By The Context Features They Realise

Language — Not Context

In The Absence Of Isochronicity Or Synchrony

This question was asked by Jim Martin on the asflanet discussion list. Strangely, he received no replies. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 272): 

So the more the extent of grammatical metaphor in a text, the more that text is loaded against the learner, and against anyone who is an outsider to the register in question. It becomes elitist discourse, in which the function of constructing knowledge goes together with the function of restricting access to that knowledge, making it impenetrable to all except those who have the means of admission to the inside, or the select group of those who are already there. It is this other potential that grammatical metaphor has, for making meaning that is obscure, arcane and exclusive, that makes it ideal as a mode of discourse for establishing and maintaining status, prestige and hierarchy …

How SFL Theory Accounts For The Structure Marker 'Of'

The structure marker of is analysed as a constituent of the embedded prepositional phrase serving as Postmodifier in the logical structure of a nominal group:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 425):

We noted above that prepositional phrases serve either as Adjunct or as Postmodifier. The exception is prepositional phrases with of, which normally occur only as Postmodifier; the reason is that they are not typical prepositional phrases, because in most of its contexts of use of is functioning not as minor Process/Predicator but rather as a structure marker in the nominal group (cf. to as a structure marker in the verbal group).

Korean Nominal Group With 2 Epithets

Solar Electron Neutrinos

Serbian Nominal Groups