Thus, the highly general concept of 'exponence' from "Categories" was first re-interpreted by Halliday as the second highly general concept of interstratal 'realisation'. Then the researchers at London who were developing generative SF grammars specified the particular types of operation required in realisation. These have been refined over the years, and those set out above can be seen to specify, in their turn, the relationships between categories that are found in the syntax. It is somewhat ironic that the term "exponence" is reintroduced here with roughly the sense that it was originally given by Firth (1957/68:183), before Halliday borrowed it and stretched — indeed overstretched — its meaning in "Categories".
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[1] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, in Halliday (1961), 'exponence' covered what Halliday later recognised as two distinct theoretical dimensions: realisation (an identifying relation between levels of symbolic abstraction) and instantiation (an ascriptive relation between potential and instance).
[2] To be clear, 'ironic' means happening in a way contrary to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this. Fawcett's claim, then, is that it is counter-expectant and wryly amusing that he uses the term 'exponence' in a way that he deems consistent with Firth's usage.
[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Firstly, Halliday (1961) uses 'exponence' in the same sense as Firth, with no "stretching", and thus no "overstretching". Secondly, Halliday's later replacement of the term 'exponence' with the terms 'realisation' and 'instantiation' is not a stretching of the original term, but the more delicate distinction of two theoretical concepts conflated in the term 'exponence'.
[4] To be clear, here Fawcett trivially implies unethical behaviour on the part of Halliday by construing him as having borrowed something of Firth's and stretched it.
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