Seriously Misrepresenting Huddleston On Univariate Structure

Fawcett (2010: 320-1):

The above argument goes rather further in exploring the implications for the concept of the 'rank scale' of Halliday's proposals than does Huddleston's review, perhaps in part because he concentrates on different matters (relations between words and groups, and issues of left and right branching). While I shall not attempt to summarise these here, I shall cite his interesting concluding words. These deserve attention because he was, as we noted in Section 5.1 of Chapter 5, one of the small team (with Halliday, Hudson and Henrici) who worked on these problems in the 1960s. Indeed, it was Huddleston who wrote one of the key S&C papers on this topic (Huddleston 1965/81). Since he was so closely involved, we should give due weight to his statement that

historically, the layered univariate structure was introduced in the context of an attempt to solve certain problems stemming from the total accountability requirement of the rank model. [...] "The problems we have been discussing [layering in 'paratactic' and 'hypotactic' structures] are created by the [rank scale] model". (Huddleston 1988:151)

The clear implication of this revealing statement is that the purpose of introducing the concepts of 'paratactic' and 'hypotactic' relations in structure to the theory was less their inherent insightfulness than to shore up the ailing concept of the 'rank scale'. This is therefore secondary evidence for the position taken here, i.e., that the concept of the 'rank scale' is ultimately not a useful one. Moreover we now have a replacement for it, i.e., the concept of a set of units, each of which is capable of filling several elements of one or more higher units in a tree representation, supplemented for text analysis by filling probabilities.

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously demonstrated, Fawcett's exploration of the implications on the rank scale proceeds from misunderstandings of unit complexes with regard to the rank scale.

[2] Again, to cite a conclusion without the argument on which it is based is a fallacious use of the argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam).

[3] This is very misleading indeed. Huddleston's point is that if a rank scale is assumed, then total accountability at all ranks entails layered univariate structures in the model.  Fawcett misrepresents this as meaning univariate structures were devised primarily as an attempt "to shore up the ailing concept of the rank scale".

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Fawcett has merely misrepresented Huddleston — see [3] — in a way that agrees with his desires.

[5] To be clear, Fawcett ranks his units on a scale from higher to lower, but denies that his model includes a rank scale.