Fawcett's First Difficult Question For The Cardiff Grammar

Fawcett (2010: 146):

Let us now ask the same difficult questions in relation to the Cardiff Grammar that we asked about the Sydney Grammar. 

The first was 'Is it desirable — or indeed necessary — to have representations of a text at the levels of both form and meaning?" The answer is clear: In this model of language it is both necessary and desirable, and the model operates with the two representations of texts implied by the model of language summarised in Figure 4 in Section 3.2 of Chapter 3 — both in the description of texts and in text generation. Thus, if our goal is the full analysis of a text, it is necessary to provide representations of a text in terms of (1) the features that define its meaning potential and (2) the single functional structure that integrates the various different types of meaning (as in Figure 10).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the "difficult" question Fawcett poses for his own model is merely one that elicits his own modal assessment ("desirable"/"necessary") regarding its usage, rather than a question as to the validity or consistency of the model. Moreover, it is simply a question of whether both levels of his model should be used in text analysis, to which Fawcett's own assessment is a resounding 'yes', though he provides no reasoned argumentation for his answer. The vacuousness of the question and answer can be made more obvious by considering the alternative response: that only one level, either form or meaning, should be deployed in text analysis.

[2] As previously argued here, and in many posts since, the model of language summarised in Figure 4 is invalidated by its internal inconsistencies. Reminder (p36):

[3] The use of thus here gives the false impression that premisses of an argument have been presented, and that a reasoned conclusion follows, whereas in fact, Fawcett's modal assessment has merely been been asserted before and after the thus.

[4] Here again Fawcett confuses meaning potential (language as system) with meaning (the semantic stratum). The meaning (semantics) of a text is instantial, not potential. But more importantly, despite arguing for the importance of the level of meaning for text analysis, Fawcett provides no genuine systems of semantic features in this entire publication. As previously observed, his one system (Appendix Figure 1) is largely grammatical and presents lexical items as more delicate features of the noun categories 'mass' and 'count'. Reminder (p298):

[5] As previously observed, Fawcett's functional structure at his level of form — a contradiction in itself — confuses functional elements (Subject/Agent, Operator, Complement/Affected, Adjunct) with a class of form (Main verb). Moreover, as previously observed, Fawcett's semantics confuses elements of syntagmatic structure (overt agent, overt affected, information giver, subject theme, unmarked New) with paradigmatic features (repeated past, social action, periodic frequency, positive, unassessed) and, as a consequence, ascribes the paradigmatic features to elements of clause structure, rather than to the (entire) clause as a unit. Reminder (p148):