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.