On The Interpretation Of Signifier And Signified As Form And Meaning

Fawcett (2010: 33):

Saussure's central concept is the 'linguistic sign'. As is well known, he emphasises that a 'sign' consists of a 'signifier' and a 'signified', and we shall interpret this as saying that a sign has both a form and a meaning. And to this we can add the important concept — which is long familiar to functionally oriented linguists — that form and meaning are mutually defining. 

Consider, as an analogy, the type of simple traffic control system that has just two 'forms' of display — a red disk and a green disk. It also has just two 'meanings' — which are, in crude terms, 'stop' and 'go'. A human language is of course very much more complex than this in both its forms and its meanings — and indeed in the relationships between the two. But it is nonetheless helpful to recognise that the two primary levels of a language — as in any semiotic system — are those of meaning and form.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Saussure's distinction between signifier and signified is the general distinction between lower and higher levels of symbolic abstraction, as between:

• expression and content
• form and function
• wording and meaning
• sounding and wording.

[2] To be clear, the relation between two levels of symbolic abstraction is realisation, which is a relation of intensive identity between a Token and a Value.  In terms of coding, the identity encodes a Value by reference to a Token, and decodes a Token by reference to a Value.  For example, the identity of expression and content encodes content (e.g. 'go') by reference expression (e.g. green traffic light), and decodes expression (green) by reference to content ('go').  This is the sense in which they are 'mutually defining'.

An Unsurprising Finding

Fawcett (2010: 32):

Surprisingly, perhaps, we shall find that the concepts of "Categories" appear to be more relevant to the theory of syntax found in the Cardiff Grammar than they are to Halliday's presentations of his own version of SF grammar.

Blogger Comments:

This unwittingly acknowledges the degree to which Halliday's theorising continued to evolve after his 1961 publication, in comparison with Fawcett's understanding and use of Halliday's ideas.

Misrepresenting Halliday On Hypotaxis [2]

Fawcett (2010: 30):

There is a further problem about the proposed relationship of 'hypotaxis'. This is the question of what it actually means to say that the relationship is one of 'dependency without embedding'. The answer lies in Halliday's use of the terms 'modifier' and 'head' (IFG p. 217) to describe the relationship. Essentially, the relationship of 'hypotaxis' is the same the traditional 'modifier-head' relationship in a unit. The only differences are that Halliday narrows the definition, such that (1) each element must be filled by the same unit, and (2) the relationship between each element and the sister elements on either side of it is always the same. (And neither of these is the case, it can be argued, for the relationships between the modifiers and the head in the English nominal group, for which see Section 10.2.5 of Chapter 10.) Thus, despite this narrowing of the definition, 'hypotaxis' is still a relationship between sister elements — and this, you will recall, is essentially what a 'multivariate' structure is. So the distinction between 'multivariate' and 'univariate' structures is not in fact very clear.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, dependency is a relation between units of the same rank, whereas embedding is the functioning of a higher rank unit in the structure of a lower rank unit.  That is, dependency and embedding are mutually exclusive.

[2] This is misleading because it is not true.  Hypotaxis is not essentially the same as the traditional Modifier–Head relationship.  The Modifier–Head relationship in the nominal group additionally includes the relationship of subcategorisation.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 388-9):

We now need to consider the structure of the nominal group from a different, and complementary, point of view; seeing it as a logical structure. This does not mean interpreting it in terms of formal logic; it means seeing how it represents the generalised logical-semantic relations that are encoded in natural language. These will be discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7; for the purposes of the nominal group we need to take account of just one such relationship, that of subcategorisation: ‘a is a subset of x’. This has usually been referred to in the grammar of the nominal group as modification, so we will retain this more familiar term here.

[3] This is misleading because it is not true.  The Modifier-Head relationship in the nominal group is not one in which 'each element must be filled by the same unit'.  Like all univariate structures, it is generated by the iteration of the same functional relationship.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 390):

We refer to this kind of structure as a univariate structure, one which is generated as an iteration of the same functional relationship (cf. Halliday, 1965, 1979): α is modified by β, which is modified by γ, which is ... .

[4] This is only half true.  It is true that the Modifier-Head relationship in the nominal group is the iteration of the same functional relationship, subcategorisation, but the subcategorisations themselves vary according to the logico-semantic relations of expansion (elaboration, extension, enhancement) and projection.  See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 183).

[5] This is misleading because it is not true.  In the promised discussion, Fawcett misconstrues the Epithet/Head of the nominal group very bright as Thing.  This misunderstanding will be explained in more detail in the critique of section 10.2.5.

[6] This is misleading because it is not true.  A "relationship between sister elements" is not "essentially what a multivariate structure is"; it describes structure in general, whether multivariate or univariate, and within univariate, whether hypotactic or paratactic.

[7]  This is misleading because it is not true.  The distinction between multivariate and univariate structures is very clear and simple.  Continuing from the quote in [3] above, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 390) explain:

By contrast, the type of structure exemplified by Deictic + Numerative + Epithet + Classifier + Thing we call a multivariate structure: a configuration of elements each having a distinct function with respect to the whole.

Fawcett's Argument Against Verbal Group Complexes

Fawcett (2010: 30n):

For a demonstration that the concept of the 'hypotactic verbal group complex' is not needed, and for an account of how the Cardiff Grammar provides for the phenomena for which Halliday sets up the concept of the 'verbal group complex', see Fawcett (forthcoming c). That paper also shows why the concept of a 'paratactic verbal group complex' is not needed, as well as showing, incidentally, how most types of text-sentence that Halliday would analyse as showing 'hypotactic' relations between clauses can be handled elegantly as embedded clauses.

Blogger Comments:

[1] The question of whether or not the concepts of 'hypotactic verbal group complex' and 'paratactic verbal group complex' are needed in SFL theory is decided on many interrelated factors, including on the basis of their explanatory power, and how they fit within the overall architecture of the theory — as well as the consequences, for the theory, including its self-consistency, if they are dispensed with.

[2] Fawcett's promised paper In Place Of Halliday's Verbal Group Complex was 'forthcoming' in the first edition of this work (2000: 342), still 'forthcoming' a decade later in the second edition (2010: 30n), and still unpublished another seven years later at the end of July 2017.

[3] This is another bare assertion.  The promised argumentation is still unpublished, seventeen years after the original declaration.

With regard to 'elegance' in this context:

In the philosophy of science, there are two concepts referring to two aspects of simplicity. Elegance (syntactic simplicity) means the number and complexity of hypotheses. Parsimony (ontological simplicity) is the number and complexity of things postulated.