Fawcett's Summary Of His Comparison Of His Operations With SFL's Realisation Statements

Fawcett (2010: 185):

Let me summarise. Leaving aside the "Split" and "Expand" operations of the Sydney Grammar, which are either unworkable or unnecessary, the Sydney Grammar has an equivalent for every realisation operation in the Cardiff Grammar except the first (though these are not always in a one-to-one relationship, as we have seen). These realisation operations are important concepts in the theory, as their treatment in both Halliday (1993) and Fawcett, Tucker & Lin (1993) clearly demonstrates. 

However, these 'operation' concepts are a part of the grammar itself, so that they are relevant only indirectly to the outputs from the grammar — i.e., to a description of the structure of the text-sentences that are the instances of the potential specified in the grammar. Essentially, their function is to generate the relationships between the categories that we shall establish in Chapter 10. It is in Chapter 11 that we shall meet the relationships again. And it is perhaps significant that the first concept to be discussed there — that of 'rank' — has no equivalent among the realisation operations and will be rejected, while all of those to be considered in Sections 11.2 to 11.8 do have such a relationship.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue, as previously demonstrated.

[2] This is misleading, because it falsely presents Halliday's original model ("the Sydney Grammar") as if it were the derivative model (Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar).

[3] To be clear, this is both a non-sequitur and untrue. It is a non-sequitur because their being part of the grammar does not logically entail that realisation 'operations' are only indirectly relevant to the structures they specify; for example, the PROCESS TYPE system is also part of the grammar, and yet it is "directly relevant" to the experiential structure of the clause. And it is untrue because 'operations' (realisation statements) "directly" specify how system selections (paradigmatic axis) are realised structurally (syntagmatic axis).

[4] To be clear, here again Fawcett misunderstands the realisation relation between system and structure as the instantiation relation between system and instance — and he does so despite the fact that his term 'realisation operations' explicitly identifies the relation as realisation, not instantiation.

[5] To be clear, the claim that Fawcett's realisation operations (listed below) generate relationships between categories will be tested in the examination of Chapters 10 and 11.

1. Insert a unit (to fill an element). 

2. Locate an element at a place in a unit.

3. Conflate an element or Participant Role with an existing element. 

4. Expound an element by an item.

4a. Fetch a name to expound an element. 

5. Prefer certain features on re-entry to the system network , including preselection. 

6. For an element, re-enter the system network.

[6] To be clear, in SFL Theory, rank is not an "equivalent" of realisation statements. The rank scale provides the entry conditions to the systems of each rank, and realisation statements accompany features in those networks. Moreover, the rank scale is the means by which SFL Theory models form — i.e. syntax and morphology — and so is the theoretical dimension that makes Fawcett's model of syntax redundant. So it is hardly surprising that Fawcett rejects the 'concept' of rank.