Fawcett (2010: 148):
It is an important feature of the analysis that there is no expectation that each vertical column should be filled by a label for each strand of meaning. In other words, the analysis does not reflect the view embodied in IFG that a clause consists of a conflation of several different structures. Instead, a clause is regarded as the realisation, in a single, integrated structure, of the various types of meaning that are modelled in the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on.
Blogger Comments:
[1] As previously observed, the semantic analysis in Figure 10 confuses structural elements (overt agent, overt affected, information-giver, subject theme, unmarked new) with systemic features (repeated past, social action, periodic frequency, positive, unassessed) and thereby assigns features of the clause as a whole to individual elements of structure.
[2] This is misleading, because it is a misrepresentation. As previously demonstrated, in SFL Theory, a clause does not consist of "a conflation of several different structures". Instead, the three metafunctional structures of a clause are integrated in the syntagm of group/phrase rank units that realise them. As previously explained, Fawcett's misunderstandings arise from confusing formal constituents with structural elements, and from viewing structure as a sequence of isolated elements, rather than as the relation between elements.
[3] To be clear, this construes the clause as a syntactic structure that realises semantic systems, rather than as a systemic feature that serves as the entry condition to grammatical systems that (a) realise semantic systems, and (b) are realised in grammatical structures.
[4] To be clear, the features in the analysis (Figure 10) do not reflect those of the systems of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD and THEME — see Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 355, 162, 106) — and Fawcett provides neither his semantic systems of features nor, consequently, the means of deriving his structure from his systems.
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