The third of the three major categories in the present theory of syntax (with 'unit' and 'element') is the item. This term includes both 'word' (in its traditional sense) and 'morpheme'. Strictly speaking, the concept of 'item' lies outside syntax, since items are a different manifestation of meanings at the level of form from syntax. The four manifestations are: (1) items (words or morphemes, their relationship being described below); (2) syntax (i.e., the concepts that define relations between items), and (3) either intonation or punctuation (depending on whether the text is spoken or written). However, we need to bring the concept of 'items' into the picture to complete the account of syntax, because syntax only ends when elements are expounded by items.
In the present theory of syntax, the lowest syntactic category on each branch of the tree in a tree diagram representation of a sentence is an element (e.g., the head of a nominal group). And each such lowest element is expounded by an item — or as we shall see shortly, by items (in the plural).
Notice, then, that an element such as the head of a nominal group is not 'filled' by the unit of the 'word', as it would be in "Categories" and, in principle, in IFG. (In practice, however, elements of groups are almost always shown in IFG as being expounded directly by words, roughly as advocated here — the reason being that the description in IFG does not go below the 'rank' of the 'group' (which of course includes its elements).
Items are quite different from the other categories that we have discussed so far, because they do not have an internal structure that it [sic] relevant to a generative grammar and so have, in spoken language, what Firth calls "phonetic and phonological 'shape' " (1957/68:183). (He also introduces the term "graphic exponents" for what he terms the "companion study" of written language.) It is precisely the fact that they have a phonological or graphological shape that differentiates them from the relatively more abstract categories of syntax that we have been considering in the earlier sections of this chapter.
As we shall now see, languages vary quite considerably in how soon, as one moves down the layers of structure in the representation of a text-sentence, one escapes the abstract categories of syntax and reaches the first category that has the phonological or graphological "shape" of an item.
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[1] To be clear, on the one hand, it is true that the concept of 'item' lies outside syntax, since it is concerned with modelling morphology rather than syntax. However, on the other hand, morphology and syntax can be seen as two manifestations of the same phenomenon, as Halliday (2002 [1961]: 51) argues in the source of Fawcett's model, Scale & Category Grammar:
Traditionally these terms have usually referred to “grammar above the word” (syntax) and “grammar below the word” (morphology); but this distinction has no theoretical status. … But it seems worthwhile making use of “syntax” and “morphology” in the theory, to refer to direction on the rank scale. “Syntax” is then the downward relation, “morphology” the upward one; and both go all the way.
[2] To be clear, this incongruously models form at different levels of symbolic abstraction — content ("items and syntax") and expression ("intonation and punctuation") — as being at the same level.
[3] As previously observed, although Fawcett claims that the Cardiff Grammar does not include a rank scale in its architecture, its syntagmatic categories are nevertheless ranked on a scale from highest to lowest.
[4] This is potentially misleading. To be clear, the reason why elements of groups are "almost always" shown as realised by words in IFG is because that is how the theory models the relation. Elements of structure at a higher rank (e.g. group) are realised by units of the rank below (e.g. word). The only exceptions are instances of rank-shift, as when the Qualifier of a nominal group is realised by an embedded clause or prepositional phrase.
[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, both syntax and morphology ('items') have "phonological and graphological shape" to the extent that lexicogrammar is realised in the expression plane systems of phonology and graphology.
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