Fawcett On The Rôle Of Lexicogrammar In Halliday (1977/8)

Fawcett (2010: 71):

Halliday then makes the point that "these are strata in Lamb's sense", and the terms in brackets are intended to show the parallels with Lamb's multi-stratal model (Lamb 1966). Of the three levels distinguished here, it is the first two in which we are interested. Let us take the "semantic" level first. Halliday writes:

Let us assume that the semantic system has four components: experiential, logical, interpersonal and textual (1977:176). 

And two paragraphs later he suggests a third basic assumption:

Let us assume that each component of the semantic system specifies its own structures, as the Output' of the options in the network (each act of choice contributing to the formation of the structure). (1977:176) 

Since Halliday never shows any structures that can be de[s]cribed as "semantic" other than the multiple structures of functional elements found in IFG (which we shall be examining in the next chapter), it is clearly these to which he is referring. In other words, choices in the system network in the experiential component result in 'structures' such as 'Agent + Process + Affected'.

What, then, is the role of the level labelled "lexicogrammar" in this approach? It is a role that is very different from that which it is assigned in Halliday's 'two levels of meaning' approach to language, in which the "lexicogrammar" includes everything from the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME etc. to as their final realisation in form. Interestingly, Halliday writes in "Language as choice in social context" that

it is the function of the lexiogrammatical stratum to map the structures onto each other so as to form a single integrated structure [my emphasis] that represents all components [of the semantics] simultaneously. (Halliday 1877:176)

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, Halliday (1978: 129) explicitly states this to be the case:

It follows from the above that each type of unit — clause, verbal group, nominal group etc. — is in itself a structural composite, a combination of structures each of which derives from one or other component of the semantics.

A clause, for example, has a structure formed out of elements such as agent, process, extent; this structure derives from the system of transitivity, which is part of the experiential component. Simultaneously it has a structure formed out of the elements modal and propositional: this derives from the system of mood, which is part of the interpersonal component. It also has a third structure composed of the elements theme and rheme, deriving from the theme system, which is part of the textual component.

[2] To be clear, the approach in this early paper, written between 1972 and 1976, is different from Halliday's later revised model.  In this paper, structures produced by semantic systems are mapped onto units of the grammatical rank scale.  In the current model, these semantic systems are reconstrued as lexicogrammatical systems, chiefly in order to systematically account for grammatical metaphor.  Semantic systems were later set out in Halliday & Matthiessen (1999).

[3] As previously explained, this is a (motivated) misunderstanding of Halliday by Fawcett.  Halliday has never proposed a "two levels of meaning" approach to language.  His approach has consistently been to propose two levels of content: meaning (semantics) and wording (lexicogrammar).