Summary Of The Argument For Realisation Rules As A Separate Component

Fawcett (2010: 68):

To summarise so far: the insistence that realisation rules must not contain conditional features so that they can be simple enough to be written in on the system network makes the additional 'wiring' in the network quite complex, and the greatly preferable alternative is to place all of the realisation rules together in a separate component — i.e., the component that specifies the 'form potential' — as shown in Figure 4 and demonstrated in Figure 2 of Appendix A.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, whether realisation rules are included in system networks, or listed separately, are just two ways of representing the same linguistic complexity.  As previously demonstrated, Fawcett's argument does not determine which representation is preferable, since it is based on a network of his own (Figure 2 of Appendix A) which is not consistent with the principles of a system network.

[2]  This a non-sequitur.  To be clear, representing realisation rules separately from system networks does not entail theorising them as separate component in the model (Figure 4).

More importantly, locating realisation rules as a component of form potential is inconsistent with the dimensions of Fawcett's own model.  Firstly, it misconstrues features and the rules that apply to them as different levels of symbolic abstraction, meaning and form.  And secondly, it misconstrues the realisation relation between the paradigmatic axis (realisation rules) and syntagmatic axis (structure) as instantiation (potential to instance).