Summary Of What The Cardiff Grammar Abandons, Re-Defines And Introduces

Fawcett (2010: 285):

In summary, we can say that in the theory proposed here the concept of the 'rank scale' has been abandoned, together with its associated predictions about 'rank shift, and so also has 'delicacy' (in the sense of 'primary' and 'secondary' structure in syntax (as opposed to 'delicacy' in the system networks). "Exponence" has been re-defined in a way that enables it to be used in what is broadly its original Firthian sense, and the important new structural concepts of 'componence', 'filling' and 'exponence' have been introduced.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Despite his bare assertions to the contrary, it has been demonstrated that Fawcett's model ranks formal units on a scale from sentence to clause to group and cluster to item.

[2] This is misleading, because Fawcett does in fact use a rank scale, his cases of embedding do indeed constitute instances of rankshift, despite his bare assertions to the contrary.

[3] This is misleading, because the notion of delicacy of structure was a feature of Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961), but does not feature in SFL Theory.

[4] This is misleading, because the Firthian sense of 'exponence', which Halliday (1961) deploys, included both the notions of realisation and instantiation, whereas Fawcett uses it solely in the sense of realisation.

[5] Again, for the theoretical problems with these key relationships, see the relevant posts:

• here for componence
• here for filling, and
• here for exponence.

Misrepresenting Halliday (1961) On Exponence

Fawcett (2010: 282):

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".

Blogger Comments:

[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.

Fawcett's Use Of 'Exponence'

Fawcett (2010: 254):

The relationship between categories of exponence has a different theoretical status from any other, because it takes us out of the abstract categories of syntax and into the more concrete (but still abstract) phonological or graphological "shape" of items. Thus we may say that the head of a nominal group is expounded by the item mountain. As I pointed out earlier, the present use of the term is essentially a return to the sense in which it was used by Firth (1957/68), from whom Halliday borrowed it before greatly extending its meaning in "Categories". (Later, as we have seen, he re-named it 'realisation').

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Fawcett's 'item' confuses:

• grammatical word (consisting of morphemes) that realises an element of group structure,
• lexical item that synthetically realises the most delicate lexicogrammatical features, and
• the graphological/phonological configuration that realises a word.

[2] To be clear, the following characterisation by Firth's student, Palmer (1995: 271), would suggest that Firth used 'exponence' for the relation between a level of abstraction within theory and data, which is not the sense used by Fawcett:

Grammatical categories are abstracted from the linguistic material, but 'renewal of connection' via their 'exponents' is essential, though these exponents may be discontinuous or cumulative.

In terms of SFL Theory, this usage combines realisation (level of abstraction within theory) with instantiation (the relation of theory to data). Fawcett's use of 'exponence' is closer to the non-Firthian usage: the relation between a morphosyntactic category and its phonological expression — which is but one example of 'realisation' in SFL Theory.

[3] As previously explained, the meaning of exponence in the superseded theory, Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961), covered both of what became realisation and instantiation in SFL Theory.

Fawcett's 'Item'

Fawcett (2010: 226-7):

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.

 

Blogger Comments:

[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.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Form [2]

Fawcett (2010: 42-3):

The second key point is that, while it is incontestable that there are relations of contrast at the level of form, and while Halliday's concept of 'system' in "Categories" was, like that of Firth, a system of contrasts at the level of form, in a modern SF grammar the system networks model choices between meanings. And it is these that are seen as the generative base of the grammar. The result is that the purely formal contrasts in a language play no role in how the grammar operates in the generation of a sentence. … Thus choice between meanings is the key concept in a systemic functional grammar. However, the focus of this book is on the level of form, so I shall have very little more to say about the system networks.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  In Categories, Halliday (2006 [1961]: 39) uses 'form' in a different sense to that used by Fawcett:

The form is the organisation of the substance into meaningful events …

[2] This is misleading.  In "a modern Systemic Functional grammar", system networks model choices on all linguistic strata: meaning (semantics), wording (lexicogrammar) and sounding (phonology).  The lexicogrammatical networks model functional wording choices at each of the levels of form on the rank scale.  In the absence of grammatical metaphor, those functional choices at the level of wording agree (are congruent) with functional choices at the level of meaning.

[3] In "a modern Systemic Functional grammar", since form realises function, contrasts in form can realise significant contrasts in function, most notably in instances of grammatical metaphor, where what would congruently be realised by a clause is instead realised incongruently as a nominal group.  A major shortcoming of the Cardiff Grammar is its inability to systematically account for grammatical metaphor.

[4] To be clear, the focus of this book on Systemic Functional grammar is on neither system nor function.

Fawcett's Argument Against Hypotaxis [2]

Fawcett (2010: 28-9):

In my view, however, examples of 'hypotaxis' such as those in Figure 2 are more insightfully analysed as cases of embedding, where a unit fills an element of the unit above. Indeed, in using Example (a) in Figure 2 to illustrate the concept of 'hypotaxis' Halliday has chosen the most favourable type of example. It is one in which it is possible to interpret the 'main' clause in each 'hypotactically' related pair as a complete clause. And it is this that enables one to think first of each such pair as two separate clauses, and then to go on to ask how they are related to each other. However, Halliday also treats clauses that report speech or thought in the same way, and his analysis of Example (b) in Figure 1 would be as shown there. And here the line of reasoning used to justify the hypotactic analysis of Example (a) is simply not possible. In other words, I said to her is clearly an uncompleted clause that is "expecting" (to borrow Firth's metaphor) another element (which we may call a Complement). And that I believed similarly expects a Complement. In the Cardiff Grammar — as in virtually all grammars other than Halliday's — these would be treated as cases of embedded clauses that fill an element of a higher clause.

Blogger Comments:

(Example (a) is Halliday's 'enhancement' example: I'd have come if you'd telephoned before I left;

example (b) is Fawcett's 'projection' example: I said to her that I believed that you'd come.)

[1] Opinion is not argument.  The text that follows does not provide a grammatical argument that supports this opinion.  Removing the distinction of hypotaxis vs embedding reduces the explanatory power of the theory, as explained in previous posts.  As Marshall McLuhan (1962) cautioned:

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding.

[2] Here Fawcett suggests that Halliday has used the logical fallacy of incomplete evidence, also known as cherry picking. It will be seen below that this accusation is unfounded.  For Fawcett's use of logical fallacies in his own argumentation, see below, or click here.

[3] This is untrue; see [4] and [5] below.

[4] Here Fawcett employs the logical fallacy known as the argument from incredulity: "I cannot imagine how this could be true; therefore, it must be false."

[5] The expectation comes from the system probabilities established by previous experiences of instances.  Verbal clauses are more likely to include Verbiage or to project a locution clause.  Low probability is not disconfirmation.

[6] Here Fawcett employs two versions of the 'red herring' fallacy.  On the one hand, it can be interpreted as the logical fallacy known as the appeal to tradition (also known as argumentum ad antiquitatem, appeal to antiquity, or appeal to common practice): a conclusion supported solely because it has long been held to be true.

On the other hand, it can be interpreted as the logical fallacy known as argumentum ad populum (appeal to widespread belief, bandwagon argument, appeal to the majority, appeal to the people) – where a proposition is claimed to be true or good solely because many people believe it to be so.