Fawcett's Third Reason Why IFG-Style Multiple Structures Have Become So Widely Assumed To Be A Central Part Of The Theory

Fawcett (2010: 143):

The third reason why the representations used in IFG have become so widely accepted as an integral part of the theory is that IFG does not invite its readers to consider the problems of how these very different structures are to be conflated into a single, unified structure. There is no reason, of course, why Halliday should have addressed this question in IFG, since its aim is to provide an insightful model for describing texts, rather than to show how a SF grammar works. But the result is that vital questions about this important aspect of the theory have long remained both unasked and unanswered — and it is upon the validity of the theory that the validity of the description ultimately rests.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it misrepresents SFL Theory. To be clear, the reason why the question of structure conflation has long been unasked and unanswered is that it is neither a feature, nor a requirement, of SFL theory, as many of the previous posts have explained. This issue only arises through Fawcett's own theoretical misunderstandings, principally his confusion of formal constituency (the rank scale) with function structure (at clause rank).

[2] This is true.