The 'Structure Conflation' And 'Element Conflation' Models

Fawcett (2010: 112-3):

In the latter paper, Halliday writes that 

the clause has a number of different but simultaneous constituent structures [my emphasis] according to which set of options [each of which corresponds to one 'metafunction'] is being considered. (1969/81:143) 

This concept of "simultaneous structures" is the concept that underlies the representation in Figure 7, and all of the similar representations in IFG and the many derived works. Notice, however, that the words "simultaneous structures" in the description of the clause cited above make a very much stronger claim about the size of the 'simultaneous' units than do the 'realisation statements' on the immediately preceding page of the same paper. Table 1 on page 142 of Halliday (1969/81) simply show that pairs and trios of 'functions' are sometimes brought together by a conflation statement to form a single element of the clause, the meanings of such elements being derived from two or three different 'metafunctions'. (It gives no rule that conflates whole structures.) Halliday describes this second and less ambitious type of 'conflation' lower on the same page as the quotation above when he says that 

each element [my emphasis] of [the] structure is a complex of functions, a set of structural 'roles' specified as realisations of the options selected [in the system network]. (Halliday 1969/81:143) 

These two statements correspond to two different models of 'conflation' that will be introduced later in this chapter, and we shall refer to them as the 'structure conflation' and the 'element conflation' models. The second concept could of course be included within the first, in principle — but we shall find that in practice this does not happen. This difference between the two types of 'conflation' will be crucial, as the argument to be presented in this chapter unfolds. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday (1969), Options and Functions in the English Clause, is a very early exploratory paper, published 31 years before the first edition of Fawcett's volume.

[2] To be clear, the 'simultaneous structures' of the clause are the three function structures, varying according to metafunction, that are integrated into a single syntagm — a syntagm being a string of clause constituents (different classes of group ± prepositional phrase).  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 74):

The clause, as we said, is the mainspring of grammatical energy; it is the unit where meanings of different kinds, experiential, interpersonal and textual, are integrated into a single syntagm.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 212) provides the following explanatory example:

[3] To be clear, the single "element" to which a complex of functions — a set of structural rôles — is assigned is a clause constituent, a group or phrase of the syntagm; see Figure 5-1 above. It is likely that it is Halliday's use of the term 'element' for 'constituent' in the 1969 paper that is Fawcett's motivation for citing such an early paper instead of a more recent, up-to-date one.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the rank scale unit 'clause' serves as the entry condition for three simultaneous metafunctional systems, each of which specifies a different structural realisation that is mapped onto a syntagm of units of the rank below (group/phrase).  On this model, there is no need for a "rule that conflates whole structures".

[5] To be clear, the notion of 'structure conflation' misrepresents Halliday's model; see [2] and [4] above.

[6] It will be seen in later posts that Fawcett's argument is invalidated by the confusion caused by its omission of the notion of a syntagm as integrating the different metafunctional meanings.