Misrepresenting Halliday's Grammar As Semantic

Fawcett (2010: 58): 

For the purpose of a general comparison between the two models, then, we may treat the level of 'meaning potential' in Halliday's grammar (i.e., the level at which TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on are located) as roughly equivalent to the semantic system networks of the Cardiff Grammar. In other words, Halliday's adoption of the second position on levels of meaning makes no significant difference to the components of the model of language that we shall assume to be common to all of those who work in the framework of SFL. (But see the next section for a caveat to this claim.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] This continues the confusion between meaning potential (language as system) and meaning as a level of symbolic abstraction (semantic stratum), and the use of the confusion to misrepresent Halliday's grammar as semantic.

[2] This continues the misrepresentation of Halliday as having two "positions" on the stratification of the content plane as meaning (semantics) and wording (lexicogrammar), and the wrongful attribution to Halliday of recasting his grammatical systems are semantic.

[3] This is misleading.  On the one hand, the relocation of Halliday's grammatical systems to semantics creates serious theoretical inconsistencies and reduces its explanatory power (grammatical metaphor), as explained in previous posts.  On the other hand, the relocation is precisely what Fawcett needs in order to make theoretical space for his theory of syntax.

[4] But see the review of the next section for an examination of this caveat.

The Claim That The Outputs Of System Networks Are At The Level Of Form

Fawcett (2010: 58): 

Notice, moreover, that the outputs from any grammar with system networks of either type must be considered to be at the level of form, because they specify the sequence of the items that constitute the 'final' output ("final", that is, apart from specifying the output's spoken or written shape). And this is true of both the Sydney and the Cardiff Grammars, despite the differences between the types of representation that are found in each. (However, there are theoretical problems about the status of the Sydney Grammar representations, as we shall see in Chapter 7.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] As the term 'output' suggests, this misunderstands the notion of system in the architecture of SFL theory.  The process of selecting systemic features and activating realisation statements during logogenesis, the unfolding of text, is the process of instantiation, and so the relation between system and text is one of instantiation.   Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 51):

But ‘text’ is a complex notion. In the form in which we typically receive it, as spoken and written discourse, a text is the product of two processes combined: instantiation, and realisation. The defining criterion is instantiation: text as instance. But realisation comes in because what becomes accessible to us is the text as realised in sound or writing. We cannot directly access instances of language at higher strata – as selections in meaning, or even in wording. But it is perhaps helpful to recognise that we can produce text in this way, for ourselves, if we compose some verse or other discourse inside our heads. If you ‘say it to yourself’, you can get the idea of text as instance without the additional property of realisation.

[2] See the review of Chapter 7 for the theoretical misunderstandings on which this falsehood is based.

Conceding That The Cardiff Approach Has Been Invalidated In Principle

Fawcett (2010: 57-8):

Since our purpose in this book is to establish the theory that is required for modelling syntax at the level of form, we must ask the question: "Does Halliday's adoption of the second position on the levels of meaning in language mean that the general framework within which we are comparing the Sydney and the Cardiff approaches to analysing syntax, as summarised in Figure 4 of Chapter 3, becomes inval[i]d?" The answer is that it might in principle have been invalidated by Halliday's recent decision, but that in practice it does not. The reason is that, whether or not we add a higher layer of 'meaning' to our model of language, there is still a level of meaning potential within the grammar. It is a level of description that Halliday describes as having "been pushed [...] fairly far [...] in the direction of the semantics" (Halliday 1994:xix). From the 'theoretical-generative' viewpoint (a concept that will be introduced in Section 5.2 of Chapter 5), there seems to be no very significant difference between the mode of operation of a grammar in which system networks that have been pushed "fairly far in the direction of the semantics" and one in which the system networks have been pushed all the way. 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, SFL theory models grammatical form as the rank scale.  Paradigmatically, each level on the rank scale serves as the entry condition for functional systems of that rank; syntagmatically, functions at one rank are realised by forms of the rank below.  As far as the term 'syntax' is concerned, Halliday (1994: xiv) explains its inappropriateness for SFL theory as follows:

[2] As previously explained, since the inception of Systemic Grammar, Halliday has only had one position on stratification of language.  The notion of a second position arises from a (motivated) misunderstanding on Fawcett's part: confusing meaning potential (language as system) with semantics (meaning as stratum).

[3] As previously demonstrated, the Cardiff model is invalidated by its own internal inconsistencies, arising from misunderstandings of axis, delicacy, stratification and instantiation.

[4] This is misleading.  On the one hand, Fawcett uses his misunderstanding of 'meaning potential' to misrepresent lexicogrammar as a level of meaning, rather than wording.  On the other hand, Fawcett confuses the notion of a grammar 'pushed in the direction of semantics' with semantics.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 39) explain:

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.

Not Addressing The Theoretical Motivation For The Stratification Of The Content Plane

Fawcett (2010: 57n):

In my view the addition of this new level of meaning is an unnecessary complication to the theory. It has the considerable disadvantage that it requires a whole new level of system networks, which together must cover the same broad range of types of meaning as the existing ones. We need to be absolutely sure that this very large new level of system networks really is needed, before we commit ourselves to a vast amount of new work, the result of which will be to complicate even further what is already a very rich and complex model of language. I believe that the evidence is that this vast extension of the theory is neither desirable nor necessary — so long as we actually carry out the implications of Halliday's proposal that the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on should model choices between meanings. I consider that the phenomena that have led Halliday to adopt his latest position are to be explained in other ways (one being to further semanticise some of Halliday's networks, e.g., that for MOOD). See Fawcett (forthcoming a) for a set of such semantic system networks.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here Fawcett studiously ignores the reasons given for the stratification of the content plane in the work he has just cited, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237):

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.

[2] As previously explained, this level of meaning is not new, and the "old level of meaning", lexicogrammar, is wording, not meaning.

[3] These clauses project bare assertions, unsupported by reasoned argument.

[4]  This promised work was "forthcoming" in 2000, and is still "forthcoming" in 2018.

Misrepresenting Halliday And Misunderstanding Stratification

Fawcett (2010: 56-7):

Thus Halliday himself did not take on the task of a thorough re-working of the existing systemic descriptions that the revolutionary new model logically called for. However, the few new networks that emerged from that period such as those for 'modality' (Halliday 1970/76a) are more clearly oriented to meaning than most of the 1964 networks reproduced in Halliday (1976). The position remains that some of Halliday's networks (e.g., TRANSITIVITY, the network for generating Participant Roles, etc.) have been pushed very much further towards the semantics than others (e.g., the MOOD network). 

In recent years, however, Halliday appears to have reached the decision that it really is necessary to add a second and higher level of 'meaning'. This is the position that is expressed in Halliday (1996), Matthiessen (1995) and in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999) — the latter being the exploration of a possible 'experiential semantics'. As a consequence of this decision, Halliday now uses the term "semantics" for this new level of 'meaning' — while continuing, however, to describe the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on as "meaning potential" (e.g., Halliday 1993:4505).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the task that Fawcett thinks was "logically" called for was the reconstrual of Halliday's grammatical systems as semantic systems; see below. Here yet again Fawcett employs the logical fallacy of proof by assertion: repeating a false claim as if multiple repetitions of the claim have established it as valid. 

[2] To be clear, Halliday's system of modality is a grammatical system, and, like all grammatical systems, including TRANSITIVITY and MOOD, it was theorised from the viewpoint of semantics, that is: in terms of the meanings it realises.

[3] This misunderstands the SFL stratification hierarchy.  Semantics is not "a new added second and higher level of meaning".  On the one hand, it is misleading to claim that semantics is a "new added" level, since it was theorised as a level in, for example, Halliday & Hasan (1976).  On the other hand, on the SFL model, there is only one level of meaning, semantics, and this is distinguished from the level of wording, lexicogrammar, with these two constituting the two levels of the content plane.

[4] As previously explained, Fawcett continually mistakes 'meaning potential' (language as system) for 'meaning' as a level of symbolic abstraction (semantic stratum).