The Need For A Theory Of Syntax For SFL: The Argument Summarised [2]

Fawcett (2010: 153):

4. However, Halliday's writings in the 1970s and 1980s have explored two approaches to modelling meaning in language. One of these involves treating the system networks for TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on as the level of semantics. In the second model these networks are considered to be, in some sense, at the level of form — though it is a 'form' that has been 'pushed in the direction of the semantics' (Halliday 1994:xix) — and there is (in principle) a higher stratum of even more 'semantic' system networks that correspond to each of the networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME, etc. I prefer the first (and simpler) of these two positions, and I consider that the phenomena for which Halliday sets up the second level of 'meaning' can be more appropriately accounted for in other ways (as argued in Sections 4.6 to 4.8 of Chapter 4).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in Halliday's superseded model, written between 1972 and 1976, structures produced by semantic systems were mapped onto units of the grammatical rank scale. By the 1980s, these semantic systems were reconstrued as lexicogrammatical systems, so as to account for grammatical metaphor.

[2] This is misleading on two counts. Firstly, in the second model — the current model — these systems are located on the stratum of lexicogrammar, not form; 'form' is a level in Fawcett's model only. In Systemic Functional Grammar, form is modelled as a rank scale of units, each of which serves as the entry condition to functional systems. Secondly, the quote from Halliday (1994: xix) is explicitly concerned with a functional grammar, not form:

[3] To be clear, 'I prefer' and 'I consider that…' are not reasoned argumentation based on evidence.

[4] This very misleading indeed. Fawcett provides no argument whatsoever in Sections 4.6 to 4.8 (pp53-70) for the "other ways" that grammatical metaphor can be "more appropriately accounted for". The only statement in this regard, in the entire three sections, is yet another bare assertion, and the promise of a still unpublished work, in footnote 7 on page 57:

I consider that the phenomena that have led Halliday to adopt his latest position are to be explained in other ways (one being to further semanticise some of Halliday's networks, e.g., that for MOOD). See Fawcett (forthcoming a) for a set of such semantic system networks.