Fawcett (2010: 197-8):
There is a crucial difference, therefore, between the theoretical positions taken on this matter in the Sydney and the Cardiff Grammars. Moreover, there are many other systemic linguists who have differed from Halliday on this key matter, as we shall now see.
Butler (1985:33-5) provides a valuable discussion of several of the problems with Halliday's concept of 'class', referring to some of the key contributions to the literature that it has generated. He points out that "certain other systemicists" — including Huddleston (1966/81), Hudson (1967/81) and myself (Fawcett 1974-6/81) — had by then abandoned Halliday's criterion of the potential for operation in the unit above it on the 'rank scale', in favour of the criterion of "the internal structure of units".
This leads to the question of why I and others should have abandoned this central tenet of Halliday's theory. My own answer — and I cannot speak for Huddleston and Hudson — is that my experience of building models of English syntax (for use in both generating and describing text) has taught me that the model become [sic] far more insightful, when I treat the internal structural patterns of a unit as the defining ones (for the reasons given in Section 10.2.1). One must operate with either internal criteria or external criteria (the latter being operation in the unit next above on the 'rank scale'), because the two are often in conflict. I find that the descriptive facts of natural texts in English and other languages provide just too many clear examples where it distorts the facts to categorise them in terms of their operation in a higher unit, and where it is insightful to categorise them in terms of their internal syntactic-semantic structure.
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is misleading. On the one hand, the "many" systemic linguists are four in number, namely:
- Fawcett himself,
- Christopher Butler, an advocate of Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar,
- Richard Hudson, who was Halliday's research assistant (1964-70) and is not a systemic linguist (his theory is 'Word Grammar'), and
- Rodney Huddleston, who was Halliday's student (1961-3) and research assistant (1964-7), and is not a systemic linguist.
On the other hand, here Fawcett combines the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum ('many other systemic linguists') with the logical fallacy known as argumentum ab auctoritate, whereby authorities are cited instead of their arguments.
[2] To be clear, Fawcett does not provide any reasoned arguments from Butler (1985: 33-5) as to why Hudson and Huddleston see Halliday's concept of 'class' as problematic.
[3] To be clear, this is but bare assertion ("far more insightful") unsupported by reasoned argument.
[4] This is misleading. As previously demonstrated, Fawcett's Section 10.2.1 merely outlines, in general terms, the concept of 'class of unit' in the Cardiff Grammar. It does not provide any reasons as to why classifying units on the basis of structure is "far more insightful".
[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, this corresponds to taking the view 'from below' ("internal criteria") or the view 'from above' ("external criteria"). In Systemic Functional Linguistics priority is given to the view 'from above': to system over structure, to function over form. Fawcett's view is inconsistent with the principles of SFL Theory.
[6] To be clear, if the two are often in conflict, then the conflict is between taking Halliday's systemic-functional perspective and taking Fawcett's structural-formal perspective.
[7] To be clear, this is another bare assertion unsupported by reasoned argument.
[8] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In Fawcett's model, Figure 4 (p36), structure is syntactic (formal), but not semantic (meaning):
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