Limiting All Classes Of Semantic Unit To Experiential Meaning

Fawcett (2010: 193-4):

Thus the Cardiff Grammar's approach to the concept of 'class of unit' in syntax is to recognise that each such class exists to express the specific array of meanings that are associated with each one of the major classes of entity in the semantics. For English these are what we might term situations, things, qualities (of both situations and things) and quantities (typically of things, but also of situations and qualities). English also has a semantic unit that can be termed a minor relationship with thing. Each of these semantic units corresponds directly to one of the five major classes of syntactic unit that are recognised in the present syntax of English. These are: 

clause,
nominal group, 

prepositional group, 

quality group, and 

quantity group.

 

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the classes of semantic unit in the Cardiff Grammar are all experiential meanings, despite the fact that the Cardiff Grammar locates the textual system of THEME and the interpersonal system of MOOD, along with the experiential system of TRANSITIVITY, at the level of semantics. This discrepancy is not addressed anywhere in this publication.