Misunderstanding Lexicogrammatical Delicacy

Fawcett (2010: 23n):

7. In creating and interpeting [sic] system networks, the concept of 'dependency' is in fact more fundamental than 'delicacy', as I have shown in Fawcett (1988b). It is quite widely assumed that systems that are realised in lexis are inherently more 'delicate' than systems that are realised in syntax, and that syntactically-realised systems are therefore never dependent on lexically-realised systems. But see Fawcett (1996) for a demonstration that this assumption is wrong in relation to certain classes of lexical verb, and Tucker (1998) for a similar demonstration in relation to certain adjectives and manner adverbs.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, delicacy is a major organising principle of system networks.  It is the dimension from the most general choices to the most specific.  In terms of the fractal types (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999) that feature throughout the theory at various scales, delicacy is the expansion subtype elaboration.

In SFL theory, dependency is the hypotactic relation between units in unit complexes, as between clauses in a clause complex.  The closest relation to 'dependency' in the architecture of system networks is the conditional relation between systems, as specified by the entry conditions to systems.  In terms of the fractal types, condition falls within the expansion subtype enhancement.

[2] In SFL theory, the traditional notion of 'syntax' can be seen in the syntagms of forms that realise grammatical function structures, and lexis is part of a unified lexicogrammar.  Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 198-9):

… we can differentiate both processes and participants into finer and finer subcategories, until we reach a degree of differentiation that is associated with the choice of words (lexical items). Note that it is not (usually) the lexical items themselves that figure as terms of the systems in the network. Rather, the systems are systems of features, and the lexical items come in as the synthetic realisation of particular feature combinations. Thus lexis (vocabulary) is part of a unified lexicogrammar; there is no need to postulate a separate “lexicon” as a pre-existing entity on which the grammar is made to operate.