Fawcett's Linkers, Deictics & Quantifiers

Fawcett (2010: 216, 216n):

There is a good reason why, in all of these cases, the same element is permitted in more than one unit. It is that the same meaning is carried in relation to the entity being expressed, e.g., 'co-ordination' of one of several types in the case of the Linker. So, with the exception of these well-motivated cases, the principle that a unit and its elements of structure are mutually defining holds good.²⁰

²⁰ To complete the picture, it should be said that there are two elements that occur in a quality group when it is being used to express a 'superlative' or 'ordinative' meaning, which have considerable similarities to the deictic determiner and the quantifying modifier in the nominal group, e.g., as in the use of the and two in the underlined portion of the most interesting two of Shakespeare's plays. See Appendix B for the names of the elements.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the paratactic structural relation ('co-ordination') marked by a Linker is to other units, not to other elements within the same unit. In SFL Theory, a structure is the relation between the elements of a unit. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 451):

Note that, although it is the functions that are labelled, the structure actually consists of the relationships among them.

[2] To be clear, the coyly withheld names of the elements that resemble the deictic determiner and quantifying modifier of Fawcett's nominal group appear to be the quality group deictic and the quality group quantifier (p304). In SFL Theory, the quality group is a portion of the nominal group, as demonstrated in previous posts.