Misconstruing Grammatical Features As Semantic

Fawcett (2010: 194, 194n):

I have just stated that each semantic unit has an associated "array of meanings". Such arrays of meaning are in effect the 'elements' of the higher unit that is constructed in the planner and that corresponds to each syntactic unit. They are realised — though not in a one-to-one relationship — in the different elements of structure of which the syntactic unit is composed.⁵

⁵ One example of the lack of a one-to-one relationship between the higher units in the planner and syntactic units of English is that a single element of the nominal group (the head) typically realises the two semantic variables of (1) the 'cultural classification' of things (which are realised by the 'common nouns' of a language) and (2) 'number' (i.e., 'mass' or 'count' and, if 'count', 'singular ' or 'plural', to slightly oversimplify).

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[1] As the term 'planner' makes clear, Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar is a model of text generation by computer, not a theory of language as embodied in human interactants.

[2] To be clear, like common noun, the categories of mass noun, count noun, singular noun and plural noun are grammatical, not semantic. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 75):

Consider for example the class of ‘noun’ in English. A general definition would involve both grammatical and semantic considerations, with some of the grammatical features having an overt manifestation and others not:

(semantic:) expresses a person, other being, inanimate object or abstraction, bounded or unbounded, etc.

(grammatical:) is either count or mass; if count, may be either singular or plural, plural usually inflected with -s; can be made possessive, adding -’s/-s’; can take the in front; can be Subject in a clause, etc.

See also Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 384-6).