Misrepresenting Halliday On Form [2]

Fawcett (2010: 42-3):

The second key point is that, while it is incontestable that there are relations of contrast at the level of form, and while Halliday's concept of 'system' in "Categories" was, like that of Firth, a system of contrasts at the level of form, in a modern SF grammar the system networks model choices between meanings. And it is these that are seen as the generative base of the grammar. The result is that the purely formal contrasts in a language play no role in how the grammar operates in the generation of a sentence. … Thus choice between meanings is the key concept in a systemic functional grammar. However, the focus of this book is on the level of form, so I shall have very little more to say about the system networks.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading.  In Categories, Halliday (2006 [1961]: 39) uses 'form' in a different sense to that used by Fawcett:

The form is the organisation of the substance into meaningful events …

[2] This is misleading.  In "a modern Systemic Functional grammar", system networks model choices on all linguistic strata: meaning (semantics), wording (lexicogrammar) and sounding (phonology).  The lexicogrammatical networks model functional wording choices at each of the levels of form on the rank scale.  In the absence of grammatical metaphor, those functional choices at the level of wording agree (are congruent) with functional choices at the level of meaning.

[3] In "a modern Systemic Functional grammar", since form realises function, contrasts in form can realise significant contrasts in function, most notably in instances of grammatical metaphor, where what would congruently be realised by a clause is instead realised incongruently as a nominal group.  A major shortcoming of the Cardiff Grammar is its inability to systematically account for grammatical metaphor.

[4] To be clear, the focus of this book on Systemic Functional grammar is on neither system nor function.