Fawcett (2010: 198-9):
What reasons could Halliday have had for setting up classes of unit on the basis of their potential for operation in the unit above? The most likely is the generalisation that nominal groups tend to occur as the Subjects and Complements of clauses.
The first problem for his criterion is the fact that nominal groups also occur very frequently as elements of other units — particularly in prepositional groups. Such cases challenge his criterion, because it requires the higher unit to be 'above' the current unit on the 'rank scale', and in such cases it is at the same 'rank'.
A second problem for Halliday's criterion, as Butler points out (1985:33), is the fact that an expression such as very clever is classified by Halliday as a type of "nominal group". The problem is that, although it occurs naturally as a Complement, it does not occur (except in quotation marks) as a Subject. It is therefore a counter-example to the claim that nominal groups are defined by their potential to operate as both Subject and Complement. While Halliday himself points out this inconsistency (IFG p. 80), the fact that he does so does not weaken its force as an argument against his general claim.
And the problems for his claim increase when we also take into account the fact that a unit such as very clever can also function as the modifier in a nominal group (e.g., a very clever cat). Is it still a nominal group in such a case, in IFG terms? It appears not, since on p. 192 it is analysed as a case of "submodification". But there is no explanation of this inconsistency.
These facts present no problem for the model outlined here, because it assumes that it is a natural characteristic of language that two units with the same internal structure should be able to fill two or more elements of other units (as is demonstrated in the summary of what units can fill what elements in Appendix B).
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, Halliday's criterion derives from the functional perspective of taking the view 'from above', and from the broader notion that a functional grammar incorporates the natural relation between semantics and grammatical form, as between participant and noun (expanded as nominal group), and between process and verb (expanded as verbal group). Halliday (1994: xviii):
Halliday & Matthiessen (2014:363) relate group and phrase classes to both the experiential and modal structures of the clause:
[2] To be clear, Fawcett here takes the view 'from below' (nominal group) instead of the (SFL) view 'from above' (clause function). The question is whether nominal groups are distinguished from other groups in that they congruently realise Subject, Complement or a participant rôle.
[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, nominal groups do not "occur as elements of prepositional groups". Nominal groups are constituents of prepositional phrases, and they realise the Complement/Range element of phrase structure. Where a group is an expanded word, a phrase is a contracted clause, with its preposition serving as minor Process/Predicator. The reason why group and phrase are located at the same point on the rank scale, is that both realise clause rank functions. On Halliday's model, it is the prepositional phrase that realises a clause rank function — Adjunct/circumstance rôle — not its constituent nominal group.
[4] To be clear, Butler makes the same error as Fawcett, in taking the view 'from below' (nominal group) instead of the (SFL) view 'from above' (clause function). The question is whether nominal groups are distinguished from other groups in that they congruently realise Subject, Complement or a participant rôle. It is because Attributes/Complements are realised by groups like very clever, over sixty, a slow learner that all three variants can be classified as nominal groups.
[5] This is misleading. The exceptionality here is the fact that the functions of Attribute and Subject cannot conflate. Halliday (1994: 80):
[6] To be clear, there is no inconsistency here. Here again Fawcett takes the view 'from below' (form) instead of the (SFL) view 'from above' (function). The wording very clever as in a very clever cat is a unit in Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar, but not in SFL Theory. In SFL theory, the unit is a very clever cat, a nominal group, and identified as such by the fact that, like other nominal groups, it congruently realises Subject, Complement and participant rôles of clause rank structures.
[7] To be clear, on the one hand, these are not "facts"; see [2] to [6] above. On the other hand, the view 'from above' does not rule out the possibility "that two units with the same internal structure should be able to fill two or more elements of other units" as demonstrated by the fact that a prepositional phrase can serve in either a circumstantial or participant rôle at clause rank:
No comments:
Post a Comment