Misrepresenting Halliday (1961, 1985, 1994)

Fawcett (2010: 1):

The title of this book can be read as implying that Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) does not currently have an agreed theory of syntax, and that it is therefore in need of one. This is precisely the interpretation that I intend. 

There certainly was a theory of syntax at the inception of SFL, because the core of Halliday's "Categories of the theory of grammar" (1961) consists of just that. But later developments in Halliday's thinking have left most of the concepts presented in "Categories" with a curiously peripheral status, as we shall see in due course. And the concepts which have superseded them in Halliday's current model for use in representing structure at the level of form seem to hover — insightfully or unsatisfactorily, depending upon your viewpoint — somewhere between the levels of meaning and form. As we shall see in Chapter 5, Halliday's most recent restatement of the theory (Halliday 1993) has virtually nothing to say about structure at the level of form — i.e., syntax — and his recent major functional description of English (Halliday 1985 and 1994) similarly fails to provide a summary of the theory that underlies it.

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[1] This is yet another instance of the logical fallacy of proof by repeated assertion.  No argument has been provided in support of the claim; see previous posts.

[2] The elements of clause structure in Halliday (1961) are Subject, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct (following Hill 1958: 256).  Halliday (2002 [1961]: 47):

In a few cases traditional names exist which can usefully serve as names for elements of structure, with the initial letter as the descriptive symbol. In the statement of English clause structure, for example, four elements are needed, for which the widely accepted terms subject, predicator, complement and adjunct are appropriate.

[3] This is misleading.  This early exploratory paper by Halliday, as the title announces, presents a general overview of the fundamental categories required of a theory of grammar, namely: unit, structure, class and system.  Halliday (2002 [1961]: 37, 41):

My purpose in writing this paper is to suggest what seem to me to be the fundamental categories of that part of General Linguistic theory which is concerned with how language works at the level of grammar, with brief reference to the relations between grammar and lexis and between grammar and phonology. …

The fundamental categories for the theory of grammar are four: unit, structure, class and system.

[4] This is misleading.  The elements of clause structure in Halliday (1961) — Subject, Predicator, Complement and Adjunct — do not have a "curiously peripheral status".  On the contrary, they feature as elements of structure in the clause as exchange (interpersonal metafunction).

[5] Because SFG is a functional grammar, grammatical elements are view 'from above', that is: from semantics, and labelled in terms of the function they perform.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 49):

Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning — it is a ‘semanticky’ kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself.

It will be seen later that Fawcett's model of syntax confuses function (Subject) and form (Verb).

[6] This is misleading.  Halliday (1985, 1994) explicitly locate grammatical form in the rankscale of clause, phrase/group, word and morpheme, and in the syntagms (sequence of classes) that realise the elements of structure, as when, in clause structure, Medium^Process is realised by the syntagm nominal group^verbal group.

[7] This is deeply misleading.  Both editions, Halliday (1985, 1994), are expositions of the theory that underlies the description of English.