Fawcett's Summary Of His Answers To His First Two Difficult Questions For The Cardiff Grammar

Fawcett (2010: 150):

We can summarise this section by answering Questions la to lc with respect to the Cardiff Grammar. Firstly, in a full account of the analysis or generation of a text, we need to show representations at the levels of both meaning and form. Secondly, the multifunctional nature of language is most appropriately shown at the level of meaning. Thirdly, conflation occurs between individual elements, as exemplified in the relations between the Subject and Agent in Figure 10, and not between clause-length structures.

But what about Question 2? How complete are the Cardiff Grammar's descriptions of English (or any other language) at each of these two levels? And how available are they for general use in analysing texts? The first part of the answer is that the description and computer implementation of the lexicogrammar of English is very large indeed. Moreover, it has the advantage over other SF models that its system networks have been developed to function explicitly at the level of semantics, so that there is no need for a further level of analysis, e.g., as suggested in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the Cardiff Grammar's levels of meaning and form are inconsistent with SFL Theory, which operates with three levels of language: meaning, wording and sounding/writing.

[2] To be clear, the Cardiff Grammar violates this principle by including "the multifunctional nature of language" at the level of form (Agent and Affected are experiential, Subject and Complement are interpersonal).

[3] This is misleading. As previously seen, Fawcett has repeatedly misrepresented Halliday's version of his own theory as involving the conflation of structures, rather than elements.

[4] This is misleading. The size of the Cardiff Grammar's description of the lexicogrammar of English, even if substantiated, is not a measure of the completeness of its description — just as the size of a beheaded statue is not a measure of its completeness.

[5] To be clear, these systems do not appear in this publication, and the only system that does, Figure 1 of Appendix A, violates the principles of a system network, as previously demonstrated. Moreover, the promised work:

• Fawcett, Robin, forthcoming a. Functional Semantics Handbook: Analysing English at the Level of Meaning. London: Continuum

remains unpublished 20 years after the first edition of this publication (2000).

[6] To be clear, this is a non-sequitur. Even if Fawcett has developed semantic networks, this does not entail that the model of semantics in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) is unnecessary.

[7] To be clear, the model of semantics in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) provides the means of accounting for grammatical metaphor in a systematic fashion, and grammatical metaphor is the major means by which meaning potential is expanded.