Misrepresenting Halliday's Clause Systems As Semantic Systems

Fawcett (2010: 47-8):

We come now to a second and equally important change to the theory. It has already been hinted at in Halliday's use of the terms "deep" and "underlying" in the passage cited above to describe the level of the systemic representation. But it was signposted more clearly when Halliday wrote a few pages later (1966/76:96) that "underlying grammar is 'semantically significant' grammar".  By 1970 Halliday had begun to describe the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on as the meaning potential of a language, and so as being at a separate level from that of the structures that are 'predicted by', and so 'derived from', the semantic features in the system networks. For example, he wrote in one classic passage: 

A functional theory of language is a theory about meanings, not about words or constructions. [...] Where then do we find the functions differentiated in language? They are differentiated semantically, as different areas of what I call the 'meaning potential' [my emphasis]. (Halliday 1971/73b: 110) 

And he then went on to describe these "areas" as the "networks of interrelated options that define, as a whole, the resources for what the speaker wants to say", and to identify them as the networks for TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, as explained in a previous post, the "change to the theory" here is not a change to "the" theory, but a change of theory: from Scale and Category Grammar to Systemic Functional Grammar.

[2] Here Fawcett again confuses the relation between potential and instance, instantiation, with the axial relation between paradigmatic system and syntagmatic structure, realisation.  Instantiation is an attributive relation, whereas realisation is an identifying relation.  As explained in previous posts, this confusion constitutes one invalidation of the architecture of his theoretical model (Figure 4).

[3] The unwarranted intrusion of the word 'semantic' here is misleading, since it misrepresents Halliday in a way that favours Fawcett's argument; see [4].

[4] As if to counter Fawcett's misunderstanding of Halliday (1971) on this point, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 49) write:

Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning — it is a ‘semanticky’ kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself. 

Giving priority to the view ‘from above’ means that the organising principle adopted is that of system: the grammar is seen as a network of interrelated meaningful choices.

In other words, Halliday models the grammar from the perspective of semantics — i.e. in terms of the meaning that the wording realises — and Fawcett misunderstands this as modelling the semantics.