The Claim That The Outputs Of System Networks Are At The Level Of Form

Fawcett (2010: 58): 

Notice, moreover, that the outputs from any grammar with system networks of either type must be considered to be at the level of form, because they specify the sequence of the items that constitute the 'final' output ("final", that is, apart from specifying the output's spoken or written shape). And this is true of both the Sydney and the Cardiff Grammars, despite the differences between the types of representation that are found in each. (However, there are theoretical problems about the status of the Sydney Grammar representations, as we shall see in Chapter 7.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] As the term 'output' suggests, this misunderstands the notion of system in the architecture of SFL theory.  The process of selecting systemic features and activating realisation statements during logogenesis, the unfolding of text, is the process of instantiation, and so the relation between system and text is one of instantiation.   Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 51):

But ‘text’ is a complex notion. In the form in which we typically receive it, as spoken and written discourse, a text is the product of two processes combined: instantiation, and realisation. The defining criterion is instantiation: text as instance. But realisation comes in because what becomes accessible to us is the text as realised in sound or writing. We cannot directly access instances of language at higher strata – as selections in meaning, or even in wording. But it is perhaps helpful to recognise that we can produce text in this way, for ourselves, if we compose some verse or other discourse inside our heads. If you ‘say it to yourself’, you can get the idea of text as instance without the additional property of realisation.

[2] See the review of Chapter 7 for the theoretical misunderstandings on which this falsehood is based.