On The 'Supposed' Vs The 'Implemented' Versions Of The Sydney Grammar

Fawcett (2010: 122-3):

We turn now to Question 1c. This was: 

1c. In the representation at the level of form, is the conflation that occurs between the realisations of the various strands of meaning a conflation of whole structures or a conflation of individual elements? 

Since this question concerns an issue that is internal to the representation of structure at the level of form, it might appear less important than the ones that we have just been considering. But it is in fact the key question for our present purposes, because the answer to it shows why it is necessary to question the status of the representations of functional structure in IFG. 

The reason for asking Question 1c is that we need a clear answer on the issue of precisely what the syntactic phenomenon is that actually gets conflated — i.e., is it whole, clause-length structures, or is it single elements of the clause? As we shall see, the theoretical status of the 'multi-strand' representations in IFG depends upon the answer.

To discover this answer we must look not in IFG but in the accounts by Halliday and others of work in the theoretical-generative strand of the theory. And we shall discover that, within the Sydney Grammar version of a SF grammar, there are two conflicting pictures of how the grammar works — and that only one of these has a sound theoretical base, so making it implementable in the computer. In what follows, therefore, I shall refer to the 'supposed' and the 'implemented' versions of the Sydney Grammar. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because 'the level of form' is a component of Fawcett's model only. In SFL theory, 'levels' can refer to strata or rank, and Fawcett's 'level of form' is theorised as the stratum of lexicogrammar, within which, lexicogrammatical form is theorised as a rank scale of units — clause, group/phrase, word, morpheme — each of which is the entry condition for a system of functions.

In SFL theory, a syntagm of units at a lower rank  — e.g group/phrase — is the means of integrating the three function structures of the rank above — for the clause: those of theme, mood and transitivity.  When one of those units, e.g. a nominal group, realises Theme, Subject and Actor, those three functions are said to be 'conflated'.  It is not the structures that are conflated, because a structure is actually the relations between the elements. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 83-4):

The significance of any functional label lies in its relationship to the other functions with which it is structurally associated. It is the structure as a whole, the total configuration of functions, that construes, or realises, the meaning. The function Actor, for example, is interpretable only in its relation to other functions of the same kind – other representational functions such as Process and Goal. So, if we interpret the nominal group I as Actor in I caught the first ball, this is meaningful only because at the same time we interpret the verbal group caught as Process and the nominal group the first ball as Goal. It is the relation among all these that constitutes the structure.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  In Halliday's theory, there is only one model of "how the grammar works", and Fawcett's reasons for believing otherwise are based on his own misunderstandings of the theory — such as those aspects of the theory described above in [1] — as will be seen in the unfolding of the posts that follow.