Fawcett's Notion Of 'Conceptual' Representations In A Belief System

Fawcett (2010: 196-7):

In the present theory, then, the decision to recognise a possible class of unit is dependent on the recognition of the semantic similarities between configurations of functionally motivated elements, based on the comparison of large numbers of instances in texts of potential members of that unit. However, we should also note that it is not the case that a syntactic unit always corresponds in a one-to-one manner to the event or object etc. to which it refers, i.e., to its equivalent 'conceptual' representation in the belief system. In a slowly evolving construct such as a natural human language (as opposed to an artificial language such as a logic) we should expect to find quite frequent cases of the lack of a one-to-one fit of this type. (For some typical cases such as that of 'nominalisation', see Section 10.2.10.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. Fawcett classifies units by their structural similarities ('from below'). In Fawcett's model (Figure 4), such structures are syntactic, not semantic.

[2] To be clear, Fawcett here refers to the model given in Figure 12 (p210):

As can be seen, Fawcett's model reduces all meaning to ideational meaning, and reinstates the meanings of language (event, object) outside language. This is fundamentally inconsistent with the epistemological assumptions on which SFL Theory has been constructed. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 2-3):

In modelling the meaning base [i.e. ideational semantics] we are building it 'upwards' from the grammar, instead of working 'downwards' from some interpretation of experience couched in conceptual terms, and seen as independent of language. We contend that the conception of 'knowledge' as something that exists independently of language, and may then be coded or made manifest in language, is illusory.