Fawcett (2010: 127, 127n):
Indeed, it is not even clear what it would mean to perform such a 'conflation'. For example, does it mean slicing the Rheme up into a number of pieces, and then conflating each of these with each of the Process, the Goal, and the Circumstance, thus: "Rheme/Process + Rheme/Goal + Rheme/Circumstance"? It is hard to imagine what other action could be performed that could conceivably be termed a 'conflation', but when this is done the effect is that the 'Rheme' is broken up into two or more bits, each of which matches the other 'functions' with which it is supposedly being 'conflated'. It would be a dismemberment of the 'Rheme' rather than its 'conflation' with something.
If this type of dismemberment really is what is intended, we have to ask if any insights follow from it. I can see none. Moreover, even if some insight could be identified, there remains the problem that any such rules would increase in complexity exponentially, once they were expanded beyond the needs of a 'toy' grammar. ⁸
8. For example, it is not the case that there is just one 'function' of 'Circumstance'; there are many different types (possibly around forty in all in English), each of which would have to be provided for separately in the grammar, in each of its various possible positions in the clause.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, if Theme conflates with Actor, then, by default, Rheme ("not Theme") conflates with the following "not Actor", that is, with Process, Scope and Extent. The metafunctional structures are integrated by the syntagm of the rank below: nominal group ^ verbal group ^ nominal group ^ nominal group, as previously explained. It will be seen in later posts that Fawcett argues against the theoretical need of a rank scale, the means of integrating structures.
[2] To be clear, any "pieces" here are not pieces of Rheme, but the three group rank units that realise Rheme: verbal group ^ nominal group ^ nominal group.
[3] To be clear, here Fawcett is failing to find an insight from his own misunderstanding of SFL Theory.
[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The types of circumstance are a matter of systemic selection, not structural configuration. There is no exponential increase in complexity, because if any such conflation rule were actually required, it would be located, as a realisation statement, in the network at a point more general than the sub-system that models the different types of circumstance. In Fawcett's model (Figure 4), on the other hand, where realisation rules are not located in systems, the solution may not be quite so simple and straightforward.
[2] To be clear, any "pieces" here are not pieces of Rheme, but the three group rank units that realise Rheme: verbal group ^ nominal group ^ nominal group.
[3] To be clear, here Fawcett is failing to find an insight from his own misunderstanding of SFL Theory.
[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The types of circumstance are a matter of systemic selection, not structural configuration. There is no exponential increase in complexity, because if any such conflation rule were actually required, it would be located, as a realisation statement, in the network at a point more general than the sub-system that models the different types of circumstance. In Fawcett's model (Figure 4), on the other hand, where realisation rules are not located in systems, the solution may not be quite so simple and straightforward.
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