Fawcett's Rank Scale Of Functions

Fawcett (2010: 190-1):

The closest that it is possible to come to the 'rank scale' concept in the theory to be described here is to extract from a wider, probabilistic set of statements (which we shall come to in Section 11.2 of Chapter 11) a statement that the various classes of cluster always fill elements of groups (though they are in fact virtually limited to one class of group, i.e., the nominal group), and that groups quite frequently fill elements of clauses (though they also frequently fill elements of every class of group and cluster, and there is one class of group — the quantity group — which fills elements of groups very much more frequently than it fills an element of the clause). Or we might take a different approach and, ignoring the cluster, we might say that, for each word in a text that is being analysed, there is a fairly good possibility that it will be functioning as an element in a group (though many high frequency words such as forms of be function directly as elements of clauses), and also that, if one has identified a group, there is a fairly good possibility that it is functioning as an element of a clause (though many groups do not).

However, these heavily hedged statements are as far as one can go, in the present theory, in trying to state generalisations about the syntax of English in 'rank-like' terms. Notice, moreover, that we cannot turn such statements on their head and say, in the manner of "Categories", that clauses "consist of' groups and groups "consist of' clusters or words, because in the present model it is only some elements of clauses that can be filled by groups; it is only a very few elements of groups that are filled by a cluster (see Section 10.2.12); and it is only some elements of groups that are always expounded by words. (In any case, in the present theory we would not wish to say that groups "consist of' words, because the phenomena typically described as "words" are treated as a type of 'item', and so not as 'units'. See the discussion of this point in Section 10.5.) Thus, while some of the phenomena that originally gave rise to the concepts of a 'rank scale' of 'units' have their place in the new theory, the concept of the 'rank scale' itself plays no part in it.

 

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[1] To be clear, this demonstrates that Fawcett is operating with a rank scale of constituency, but one which involves internal inconsistencies and which violates the principle of exhaustiveness. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 84):

The general principle of exhaustiveness means that everything in the wording has some function at every rank (cf. Halliday, 1961, 1966c). But not everything has a function in every dimension of structure; for example, some parts of the clause (e.g. interpersonal Adjuncts such as perhaps and textual Adjuncts such as however) play no role in the clause as representation.

[2] To be clear, Fawcett's 'item' includes both 'word' and 'morpheme', and is said to lie 'outside syntax' in his model of syntax. Fawcett (p266):

The third of the three major categories in the present theory of syntax (with 'unit' and 'element') is the item. This term includes both 'word' (in its traditional sense) and 'morpheme'. Strictly speaking, the concept of 'item' lies outside syntax, since items are a different manifestation of meanings at the level of form from syntax.

Moreover, the 'item' is itself related to a rank scale of functions, on which 'element' is the lowest rank. Fawcett (p266):

In the present theory of syntax, the lowest syntactic category on each branch of the tree in a tree diagram representation of a sentence is an element (e.g., the head of a nominal group). And each such lowest element is expounded by an item — or as we shall see shortly, by items (in the plural).

That is, Fawcett's model also applies a model of formal constituency (rank scale) to functions (e.g. head of a nominal group), despite Fawcett denying that a rank scale is a component of the theory.