Sinclair, who was one of Halliday's closest colleagues at the time, published in 1972 an introduction to systemic grammar in which he included all of the following as criteria for recognising units:
a) the guidance given by similar or different meanings (i.e., semantic criteria);b) the internal details or componence of structure;c) the external details, or syntax of structures. (Sinclair 1972:23)
Since the second and third criteria are often in conflict, this list should perhaps be taken as an indication of the order of Sinclair's preferences — and we note that Halliday's standard criterion is relegated to third place. In the present theory we go one step further, as in Fawcett (1974-6/81:10), and exclude the last criterion altogether. Sinclair does not explain what he intends by "semantic criteria", but at the very least his wording allows for the possibility that semantics influences syntax in the way described at the start of Section 10.2.1.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, Sinclair's criteria, from 1972, are not supported by reasoned argument.
[2] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, the criteria that Fawcett rejects, (c), are the those that take the view 'from above', and so are consistent with SFL as a functional theory, whereas the criteria that Fawcett accepts, (b), are those that take the view 'from below', and so are inconsistent with SFL as a functional theory.
[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, semantics does not "influence" syntax, semantics is realised by lexicogrammar. That is, they are in a relation of intensive identity, as two levels of symbolic abstraction, Value and Token, having originated as one, and dissociated in grammatical metaphor (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 26).
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