Tilting Towards Grammatical Metaphor

The instances above demonstrate a developmental path toward mastering grammatical metaphor. The Year 7 student has produced a congruent realisation of a sequence, a clause complex, but moved towards the grammatical metaphor of adult language by using an anaphoric reference item (that) as Token of the primary clause. The next step is to replace the reference item with the referent, thereby creating a metaphorical clause simplex in which an act is decoded by reference to a fact:

The verb mean can serve as the 'sign' subtype of intensive identifying process, like indicate, suggest, imply, show, betoken, mark, reflect, or as the 'symbol' subtype, like express, signify, realise, spell, stand for (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 269). Here it serves as as the 'sign' subtype.

(The Fact That) The Bus Is 10 Minutes Late

The bus is 10 minutes late. This means that we won't be able to make it.

this (the fact that the bus is 10 minutes late)	means ('entails')	that we won't be able to make it
Token: reason	Process: identifying	Value: result

i.e. resolving the reference reveals this as a circumstantial relational clause of cause, which means it is metaphorical.  A more congruent agnate is:

Because the bus is 10 minutes late, we won't be able to make it.

Particularising Clarifying Elaborating Conjunctive Adjunct

in particular	when	they	are	committed	as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes
conjunctive Adjunct		Subject	Finite	Predicator	circumstantial Adjunct

How do we know that in particular doesn't modify when?

Because, like a conjunctive Adjunct, it can occur at different points in the clause:

• when, in particular, committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes
• when committed, in particular, as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes
• when committed as part of a plan or policy or as part of a large-scale commission of such crimes, in particular