conclusion relation

[John Bateman]

Some important basic issues of description coming up in
this interesting discussion: that hasn't happened for a while
in RST! :-)

A comment:

> Now my question: When one works with a set of labels that are 
> hybrids, then how can one describe the situation when only one 
> metafunction alone obtains, if there is no 'pure' label for the 
> relation found there?  I.e., all relations one would tend to place 
> there also bring in connotations from the other metafunction(s)?  (In
>  other words, how does one in practice bring out one of the
> concurrent relations?)

technically this cannot occur . For 'one metafunction alone' to apply
would violate the sense of metafunctions: they must all apply.
*Alternatively* one could choose not to work with
the hybrid relations, but with the individual
metafunctional contributions instead. The latter would then be free
to provide a description that is specific to particular metafunctions
leaving others unspecified.

This is then much closer to Ed's:

> It seems to me the analyst has more freedom to describe the interplay
> of levels (= metafunctions) when he/she can describe each relation
> separately, using an 'exhaustive' set.

The drawback is that many of the constraints that come from
RST (nuclearity, adjacency) begin to be weakened and one is
more or back with something that looks like a conjunctive
relation analysis, which is significantly underconstrained
structurally.

Both cases are were explored in Bateman/Rondhuis, Discourse
Processes,  1997, using both hybrid labels composed out of contributions
from different metafunctions and explicit specification of individual
metafunctions. Pretty schematic though.

John B.