Misrepresenting Halliday (1963) On Class

Fawcett (2010: 199):

So far as I am aware, Halliday has never shown why facts such as those described above are not counter-examples to his claim. However, he has commented in an interesting manner on a partly similar set of examples in Halliday (1963/76). Here he addresses the fact that a nominal group such as this morning functions as an Adjunct just as naturally as it functions as a Subject or Complement (and far more frequently). Here he reaches the conclusion that

this morning "clearly resembles other nominal groups (the morning, this man, etc.) rather than other adverbial groups (quickly, on the floor, etc.) and this can be allowed to determine its primary syntactic assignment [my emphasis]. (Halliday 1963:6)

How does this acknowledgement of the facts affect his view of the criteria for recognising units? The answer is that it appears to remain unchanged, on the evidence of the criteria used for recognising units in IFG. But if the criterion of the internal structure applies in the above case, one asks, why not in all cases?

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as the previous post demonstrates, these "facts" are misunderstandings on Fawcett's part, and so do not constitute counter-examples to the criteria used in SFL Theory for classifying units.

[2] This is very misleading indeed. As demonstrated in a previous post, this highly selective excerpt from Halliday (1963) is concerned with explaining the alternative criteria for classifying units that, unlike Fawcett, he himself does not adopt. Halliday (2002 [1963]: 95-7):

I have assumed, for the purpose of the main points made in the paper, that this category of “class” is to be defined syntactically. By this I mean that the concept is introduced into the description of a language in order to bring together those sets of items that have the same potentiality of occurrence; in other words, sets of items which are alike in the way they pattern in the structure of items of higher rank. Thus, to take a typical instance from grammar, we may have morpheme classes defined by word structure, each such class being one set of morphemes having a given value in the structure of words: as, for example, the morphemes of inflexion in Latin nouns. Likewise we might have word–classes defined by group structure, or clause–classes by sentence structure.

This use of the term “class”, to name a category defined in some way by its relationship to a higher structure, is by no means universal in linguistics; but it would probably be granted that some such category is necessary to linguistic description whatever name we choose to adopt for it. Syntactic classification (sometimes referred to as “functional classification”, in what is perhaps a rather misleading opposition of “form” and “function”) is a central feature of linguistic method, and one which it seems appropriate to discuss in the present context.

The alternative to this use of the term “class” is to consider morphological classification. Here “class” would be the name given to a set of items which are alike in their own structure: that is, in the way that they themselves are made up of items of lower rank. A word–class would then be a set of words having a certain similarity in their own formation out of morphemes. In this usage there are no morpheme classes, since “morpheme” is the name given to the smallest unit in grammar, which by definition has no structure: its relation to items abstracted at other levels, such as phonemes, is not one of structure, but involves the interrelation of different dimensions of abstraction.

It is important to notice that this is in the first instance a terminological alternative, not necessarily implying a different theory. It is not the case that the linguist has to choose between two different kinds of classification, the syntactic and the morphological; he has in fact to recognise both kinds of likeness. Moreover, the sets of items identified on these two criteria often coincide: we may recognize a syntactic class “noun”, for example, defined as “that class of word which operates as head of a nominal group”, and find that the items grouped together on this criterion will be the same set as would be grouped together on a morphological criterion such as “that type of word which is made up of a stem morpheme followed by a morpheme of case and a morpheme of number”.1 Indeed other things being equal, it is usually accepted as desirable that the two should coincide: when the linguist is faced, as he often is, with a choice between two descriptions, both theoretically valid and both accounting for the facts, one in which the two assignments coincide and one in which they do not, he will normally, and “intuitively”, choose the former. For example, groups in English such as this morning operate in clause structure both as Adjunct, as in “I came this morning”, and as Subject (or Complement), as in “this morning promises to be fine” (or “I’ve set this morning aside for it”). The syntactic class defined by operation as Adjunct is the adverbial group; that defined by operation as Subject or Complement is the nominal group. Syntactically, therefore, this morning could be assigned to either or both of these classes. Morphologically, however, it clearly resembles other nominal groups (the morning, this man, etc.) rather than other adverbial groups (quickly, on the floor, etc.), and this can be allowed to determine its primary syntactic assignment.

There are, however, clear instances where syntactically defined sets do not coincide with morphologically defined sets; and it would probably be generally agreed that, whatever the status accorded to the latter, the former cannot be ignored. Syntactic likeness must be accounted for. Moreover, even where the two sets do coincide, the criteria on which they have been established, and therefore their theoretical status, is different; and it is desirable that they should not be called by the same name. It seems to me appropriate that the term “class” should be reserved for the syntactic set (the morphological set may then be referred to as a “type”), and I propose to adopt this usage here. It is also true, in my opinion, that the class thus defined, the syntactic set, is crucial to the whole of linguistic theory, since it is required to give meaning to the basic concepts of “structure” and “system”; whereas the type, or morphological set, is more a descriptive convenience whose theoretical implications are largely internal to itself.

In the remaining sections of this paper, therefore, I should like to discuss two aspects of the syntactically defined set, which I shall refer to henceforward simply as the “class”.