Confusing Systemic Features With Structural Elements

Fawcett (2010: 118):

Let us begin with Halliday's own description of the status of the analyses offered in IFG. He writes: 

This book [...] presents the structures which are the 'output' of the networks — which collectively realise the sets of features that can be chosen. (Halliday 1994:xxvii) 

So far so good; this is indeed what the analyses of texts in IFG does, in Halliday's terms. But a few lines below that he adds that 

all the structural analyses [given in IFG] could be reinterpreted in terms of the features selected [my emphasis]. (Halliday 1994:xxvii) 

The significant thing about these passages is that they show that Halliday recognises that there are, in principle, two types of representation for each clause. The first type corresponds to those in IFG, and these are presented to us as instances at the level of form. However, since these "realise the sets of features than can be chosen" (in the 'meaning potential'), it is clear that there is also, in principle, a second type of representation — one that is expressed in terms of the systemic features from which the structure is generated. It is a pity that Halliday does not give an example of what he thinks such representations might be like, but I shall give an example of one possible way of such showing such representations in Section 7.8.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the two types of representation of a clause differ in terms of axis: paradigmatic system vs syntagmatic structure.   That is, one type represents the clause as features of systems, whereas the other represents the clause as structures.

[2] This is misleading, because it misrepresents Fawcett's model ("instances at the level of form") as Halliday's model.  Halliday (1994) presents structures at the stratum of lexicogrammar.

[3] As previously noted, Fawcett misunderstands Halliday's 'meaning potential' — language as system — as just the semantic system, or, in terms of his own model (Figure 4): potential at the level of meaning.  In Halliday's model, SFL Theory, the systems that specify grammatical structures are grammatical systems.

[4] Examples of what "such representations might be like" were given in Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) for clause rank textual feature selections (pp101-3), interpersonal feature selections (p169) and experiential feature selections (pp304-5).

[5] To be clear, the example representation that Fawcett provides in Section 7.8, Figure 10, presents his clause features as if they were (features of) structural elements of the clause. Fawcett (2010: 148):