Misrepresenting Halliday As Theoretically Inconsistent And Intellectually Dishonest

Fawcett (2010: 323n):

¹⁶ As with many other concepts, the idea that all groups can be handled as word complexes is one for which at least some support can be gleaned from Halliday's writings (e.g., "a group is in some respects equivalent to a word complex (IFG pp. 179-80), and "a group is the expansion of a word" (p. 180). Indeed, Halliday sometimes gives the concept of a group as a word complex more weight than the concept of a group as the expression of a semantic unit with its own set of functional elements. One clear case is his treatment of quality groups when they fill the modifier in a nominal group, as in the case of very small in some very small ones (IFG pp. 192 and 194). Thus very small is said to be a 'complex' of two words that are 'hypotactically related' rather than a group of words. Yet the same words would be a group for Halliday if they filled a Complement, as in The egg was very small. We can guess that the reason why he adopts this somewhat inconsistent position is that it at least has the virtue (from his viewpoint but not mine) that it avoids having to recognise such examples as yet another cased of the unwanted phenomenon of 'rank shift' — which, if acknowledged, would be further evidence against the concept of the 'rank scale'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading in a trivial way. The idea that all groups can be handled as word complexes does not find "at least some support" in Halliday's writings; it is Halliday's model.

[2] To be clear, with the nominal group, which is Fawcett's chief concern, Halliday gives equal weight to the logical ("word complex") and experiential ("its own set of functional elements") structures. With the verbal group, which is lacking from Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar, the logical structure is of greater value, because it 'embodies the single most important semantic feature of the English verb, its recursive tense system' (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 398). It is the groups that are of no concern to Fawcett — adverbial, conjunction, preposition — that are structured only logically.

[3] To be clear, the (ideational) semantic unit that is realised by the group is the element: participant, process, circumstance, relator; see Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 177-226).

[4] To be clear, quality groups do not feature in Halliday's model.

[5] This is misleading. In such instances, very small  is a subcomplex within the logical structure of the nominal group, corresponding to the Epithet in the experiential structure. Halliday (1994: 194):

To be clear, very small is a "group of words", but in this instance, it does not constitute an entire nominal group (of words).

[6] To be clear, in this instance, very small  is once again a subcomplex within the logical structure of the nominal group, once again corresponding to the Epithet in the experiential structure. The difference in this case is that the Epithet conflates with the Head of a nominal group with no Modifier:

In a functional grammar, where the view is 'from above', it is the function of words that is criterial, not the words as forms ("the same words").

[7] This is misleading, because Halliday does not adopt an inconsistent position, as demonstrated above. Once again, as throughout this book, Fawcett has falsely assumed that he correctly understands Halliday's model.

[8] This is misleading on three counts. Firstly, both examples involve internal bracketing, not rankshift, and so the question of recognising rankshift does not arise. Secondly, rankshift is not an "unwanted phenomenon"; for example, it provides a systematic explanation of how the complexity of written language (lexical density) is brought about. Thirdly, rankshift is not "evidence against the concept of the rank scale" because it is consistent with the notion of a rank scale, with the rank scale providing the yardstick by which to identify the shift.

But it must be said, the really nasty thing here is that Fawcett has falsely accused Halliday of intellectual dishonesty: of trying to conceal what Fawcett wrongly claims to be a problem for the model. In this book of 12 chapters, only 3 were devoted to expounding Fawcett's model, but all 12 were devoted to misrepresenting Halliday's model in a way that favoured Fawcett's argument for his own model.