On The Impossibility Of Structural Conflation Rules

Fawcett (2010: 127-8, 127-8n):

In other words, the rules in such a 'mapping' component would need to be able to map all possible sequences of all possible 'functions' in each of six (and sometimes more) lines of structure onto each of the other five (or more) such lines of 'functions'. They would be incredibly complicated.⁹

In other words, the representations of structure used in IFG, which show many non-coterminous elements in different lines of structure, are easy to draw but probably impossible to implement in a theoretical-generative model.

9. Trying to solve this problem would in fact bring grammar-modelling back to the basic question of how to handle economically the great variation in the sequence of elements in English clauses. This was the problem that defeated the early 'phrase structure' grammars of the formalist type, and which led directly to the introduction of the concept of the syntactic transformation. It is also the problem to which the combination of the system network and its associated realisation rules has proved a more enduring response. But the new problem would be far more difficult than the old one, because there is not just one string of symbols with a variable sequence of elements, but six or more lines of analysis. If there were six, this would multiply the problem by a factor of 720 (i.e., 6X5X4X3X2). As if this was not enough, an additional problem for any such structure conflation rules would be the relative frequency (compared with other analyses) of discontinuity which Halliday's type of analysis engenders (especially in MOOD structures, e.g., Halliday 1994:81, 83, 86). 

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, such rules only arise from Fawcett's misunderstanding of element conflation and structural integration.

[2] As previously explained, even if such rules were required, they would be located at the least delicate end of systems, thus covering all the more delicate choices in the system. This solution is not so easily available to Fawcett, since he locates realisation rules outside systems, at a lower level of abstraction (Figure 4).

[3] As previously explained, the reason Fawcett misrepresents the three metafunctional lines of meaning in the clause as six is because he erroneously includes information as a system of the clause, and counts each of the textual and interpersonal structures as two lines of analysis.

[4] To be clear, discontinuous structures pose no such problem because all clause structures are integrated by the one syntagm that realises all of them. As Tolkien never said:

One syntagm to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.