Joint Participation As Accompaniment

There	have been	more clashes	between Iraqi and British forces
	Process: existential	Existent	Accompaniment: comitative

This clause is agnate with:

Iraqi and British forces	have clashed
Actor	Process: material

Iraqi forces	have clashed	with British forces
Actor	Process: material	Accompaniment

British forces	have clashed	with Iraqi forces
Actor	Process: material	Accompaniment

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.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 324):

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

See also Degree of Involvement.

Marked Information Focus

Any allegations of nonconsensual sex	are	unequivocally	denied	by Mr. Weinstein
Theme	Rheme
		New	Given
Subject	Finite	mood Adjunct: intensity: degree: total	Predicator	Adjunct
Mood			Residue

In this analysis, the tonic prominence is assumed to fall on unequivocally, thereby textually highlighting the interpersonal intensity as the marked Focus of New information.

cf Geoff Pullum:

But it’s a key fact about passives in English that you don’t put older information in the by-phrase when there’s newer information in the subject. … Here that information-structure constraint is oddly violated by putting Mr. Weinstein in the by-phrase.

On clauses, like the above, that are marked for both voice and information, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 282) write:

The reason for choosing the ‘receptive’ in English is to get the desired texture, in terms of Theme-Rheme and Given-New; in particular, it avoids marked information focus (which carries an additional semantic feature of contrast).  Here, however, the ‘receptive’ has the opposite effect; it actually leads to a marked focus of information (New before Given); hence the resulting form is doubly marked, both for information and for voice. Such a form is by no means impossible; but the meaning is such that it assumes a highly specific context.