²¹ It sometimes seems as if Halliday introduced the concept of 'hypotaxis' precisely to avoid having to embed one clause inside another — though Halliday nowhere explains why this phenomenon, which most other grammarians recognise as occurring with great frequency in many types of text, should be regarded as a Bad Thing. It is the fact that Halliday's grammar minimises embedding that forces him — or enables him, depending on your viewpoint — to interpret all of the types of direct 'clause within a clause' embedding recognised here as cases of a 'hypotactic' relationship.
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[1] This is misleading. To be clear, the theoretical value of the concept of 'hypotaxis' is its explanatory potential relative to other approaches. For example, it provides a means of recognising the commonality and difference of reports (hypotaxis) and quotes (parataxis), as well as the commonality and difference of reports (hypotaxis) and facts (embeddings), and non-defining relative clauses (hypotaxis) and defining relative clauses (embeddings).
[2] This is misleading. Halliday nowhere regards embedding as a "Bad Thing", which is why he nowhere explains why he regards embedding as a "Bad Thing". Instead, Halliday distinguishes embedding from hypotaxis because of the explanatory potential of doing so. Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar does not distinguish embedding from hypotaxis, and so falls short in this regard. This is why Fawcett is going to such great lengths to misrepresent Halliday on the subject.
[3] This is misleading, because it confuses reason and result. It is because Halliday distinguishes embedding from hypotaxis that an analysis reveals fewer instances of embedding (relative to the number of embeddings if the distinction is not made).
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