Misrepresenting The Architecture Of SFL Theory As Modular

Fawcett (2010: 124-5):

In the 'structure conflation' model several sets of structures, one corresponding to each metafunction (or more accurately each 'strand of meaning') are first generated as separate structures, and then, by an additional stage in the process of generation which has not so far been described by any SF linguist — they are mapped onto each other to form a single, integrated structure. Halliday is clearly assuming some such model as this when he writes, as in the passage cited above, that "it is the function of the lexicogrammar to map the structures onto each other". And Matthiessen strikes a similar note when he talks of "the structural unification of the metafunctional strands" (1995:613). Indeed, the use of 'multiple structure' diagrams throughout IFG can be said to presuppose the 'structure conflation' model. 

Thus a model of language that posits a set of several different structures for a single clause must also provide a way to integrate them into a single output. As Halliday says in his introduction to IFG, "although each strand of meaning in the clause will be described independently in its own terms, [...] a clause is still one clause — it is not three" (1994:36). It is clear, then, that the next stage for the representations in IFG is that they should be 'conflated'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. There is no temporal sequencing of this sort in the architecture of SFL Theory, since it is relational in its organisation, not modular.  That is, the theoretical architecture maps the relations between all the options, across systems, ranks and strata, and the process of instantiation is the selection of a configuration of such relations.

Fawcett's model (Figure 4), on the other hand, is modular: it comprises a sequence of modules where one module produces an output as the input for the next module. Here again Fawcett is misrepresenting his own model as Halliday's.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. To be clear, this has been described, it is merely the case that Fawcett does not understand that the three metafunctional clause structures are integrated by the syntagm of group/phrase units that realises them.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. As previously noted, 'structure' conflation' is Fawcett's misunderstanding of the integration of metafunctional clause structures in their realisation as a syntagm of units of the lower rank.