Bare Assertion Without Reasoned Argumentation

Fawcett (2010: 29-30):

In pages 35-39 of Halliday (1965/81), Halliday discusses the complexities of alternative interpretations of Example (a) and similar examples, with the intention of showing that 'hypotaxis' represents the structural relationships more clearly than an analysis with embedding would. However, that discussion does not throw up any problems that are not equally well represented in the framework proposed in Part 2. Indeed, in many cases such relations are better represented by embedding. Thus the analysis of If you'd telephoned before I left, I'd have come would simply show if you'd telephoned before I left as a thematised Adjunct. And examples such as If before I left you 'd telephoned, I'd have come can be handled equally straightforwardly (though they would cause discontinuity in Halliday's model). See Section 11.9 of Chapter 11 for my analyses of the set of examples for which Halliday uses 'hypotaxis', and see Fawcett (in press) for the full presentation of this alternative approach.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Fawcett's report of Halliday's intention is inconsistent with Halliday's epistemological position.  The issue is not which analysis "represents the structural relationships more clearly", but which analysis is the more functional; which analysis has the more explanatory power.

[2] An alternative analysis that creates "discontinuities" in the theory is not "equal" to one that doesn't.

[3] This is merely a bare assertion, made without any supporting evidence.

[4] Section 11.9 of Chapter 11 provides no arguments in support of Fawcett's alternative analyses.

Not Demonstrating The Greater Utility Of An Alternative Analysis

Fawcett (2010: 29):

In the light of the discussion of Example (b), we can see that the difference between Examples (a) and (b) is the difference between a Complement and an Adjunct. To put it in explicitly SF terms, it is the difference between a Participant Role (a role that is 'expected' by the Process expressed in the Main Verb), and a Circumstance (a role that is not). In Example (a), therefore, the Cardiff Grammar would model before I left as a clause that fills an Adjunct in the clause if you'd telephoned before I left, and this longer clause would be shown as filling an Adjunct in the clause I'd have come if you'd telephoned before I left.

Blogger Comments:

Example (a) is Halliday's example: I'd have come if you'd telephoned before I left.
Example (b) is Fawcett's example: I said to her that I believed that you'd come.

Here Fawcett merely presents his alternative analysis in which clause complexes are construed as single clauses, without providing any argument to demonstrate any greater explanatory power of his approach.

Fawcett's argument against treating these as clause complexes is applicable to one of these examples only — Example (b) — and so, does not support his analysis of Example (a).  In any case, the argument for Example (b) is invalid, because it mistakes the low incidence of certain types of instance for disconfirmation of the general potential, as explained in the previous post.

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.

Misrepresenting Halliday's "Motivation" For Hypotaxis

Fawcett (2010: 28):

Halliday's claim is that the introduction of the 'hypotactic' relationship avoids what he describes, revealingly, as "a somewhat artificial increase in 'depth' in number of layers [in the tree structure]" (Halliday 1965/81). Indeed, it seems that the desire to avoid the embedding of units within units of the same or a lower 'rank' (i.e., 'rank shift') was the major motivation in the rapid extension of the use of 'hypotactic' relations to analyse a wide range of phenomena in the structure of language (as is shown in Section 4 of Appendix C).

Blogger Comments:

[1] The claim here is that Halliday's theoretical notion of hypotaxis was motivated by his desire to avoid embedding.  The claim is disconfirmed by the presence of both embedding and hypotaxis in the theory.  As previously explained, the distinction between hypotaxis and embedding provides insights such as what distinguishes, grammatically, a projected report (hypotaxis) from a pre-projected fact (embedding), and non-defining relative clause (hypotaxis) from a defining relative clause (embedding).  The absence of the distinction in Fawcett's model is a reduction in the explanatory power of the theory.

[2] This claim of a future supporting argument is untrue, since Section 4 of Appendix C bears no relation to this discussion.  Instead, it is a critique of the SFL notion of the verbal group, the merits of which will be examined later on this blog.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Hypotaxis [1]

Fawcett (2010: 27-8):

This leaves just the concept of 'hypotaxis'. Halliday describes 'hypotaxis' as "a chain of dependencies [between units]" (Halliday 1965/81:34). In Halliday's example I'd have come if you'd telephoned before I left, the clause before I left is said to be 'dependent on' if you'd telephoned — but not to be embedded within it and so not to fill one of its elements. And the clause if you'd telephoned is similarly said to be 'dependent on' I'd have come without being embedded in it as an element. This concept of 'dependence without embedding' is shown by the use of letters from the Greek alphabet, i.e., "α β γ" etc. to represent the 'elements' of such structures. … 

In IFG, however (e.g., pp. 375-81) Halliday shows the relationship of 'hypotaxis' as a set of horizontally linked boxes below the text, each labelled "α β γ" etc., exactly as in the 'box diagram' representations of structure in Figure 7 in Chapter 7. In these diagrams the relationship looks like sister constituency, the only remaining expression of 'dependence' being the Greek letters.

Blogger Comments:

Fawcett's argument against hypotaxis here is that Halliday's use box diagrams to label elements in a complex makes the structural relations look the same as constituency.  This is not an argument against hypotaxis, for the simple reason that it confuses the meaning of hypotaxis with the way it is expressed in a diagram.  More importantly, however, it is misleading in two ways, both of which serve Fawcett's own position, as will be explained.

Firstly, in IFG (1994: 223-4), at the beginning of the discussion of parataxis and hypotaxis, Halliday presents two very different diagrams that contrast the dependency structure of a clause complex (Figure 7-5) with its constituency structure (Figure 7-6), and then presents another different diagram (Figure 7-7) that combines both principles, showing how the two relations differ.  He (ibid.) also provides the same constituency and dependency relations simply as notations:

This can be represented as at the foot of the tree:

α ^ ββ1 ^ ββ2α ^ ββ2b1 ^ βαβ ^ bαα

or, using brackets (and showing type of interdependency), as:

α ^ " β (x β (1 ^ + 2 (α ^ " β (1 ^ + 2))) ^ α (x β ^ α))

The notation that is used here expresses both constituency and dependency at the same time: constituency by bracketing (using either brackets or repeated symbols), dependency by the letters of the Greek alphabet.

Secondly, the constituency relations here are of the clause complex, not the clause.  Fawcett's argument is that dependent clauses are "more insightfully" modelled as constituents of the clause.  That is to say, interpreting interdependency in a clause complex as constituency is not an argument that supports the interpretation of dependent clauses as embedded constituents of a clause.