Fawcett's Claim That His Model Is 'Fully Compatible' With Halliday (1977/8)

Fawcett (2010: 70):

The general picture that it [Halliday (1977/78)] gives of the nature of language and of how the grammar works is fully compatible with the picture given in Chapter 3. That is, the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and so on are presented as being at the level of semantics, and their realisations are integrated in a single structure at the level of form. (However, Halliday there terms it the 'lexicogrammatical level'; this is a little confusing, since Halliday later uses the term "lexicogrammar" in a sense that includes the system networks.) Thus the paper begins with the words:

Let us assume that the semantic system is one of three levels, or strata, that constitute the linguistic system: 

Semantic (semology)
Lexicogrammatical (lexology: syntax, morphology and lexis)
Phonological (phonology and phonetics). 

(Halliday 1977:176) 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is demonstrably false, as shown in dozens of previous posts.  The picture given in Chapter 3, as represented in Figure 4, is inconsistent in its own terms (e.g. confusing axial realisation with instantiation) and inconsistent with Halliday's model — even with the embryonic model presented in 1977.

[2] For once, this is actually true.  At this early stage of theorising, when Halliday was encoding the semantics (Value) by reference to the lexicogrammar (Token), he located the systems from which 'grammatical structures derive' — TRANSITIVITY, MOOD and THEME — at the level of semantics.  That is, at this early stage, Halliday (virtually) conflated the axial relation of realisation between system and structure with the stratal relation of realisation between semantics and lexicogrammar.  This situation was rectified within the next decade, largely motivated by the need to account systematically for grammatical metaphor.  Later still, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429) explain:

… in our model there are two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realised in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realised in lexicogrammatical ones. As we saw in Chapter 6 in particular, grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures. Since we allow for a stratification of content systems into semantics and lexicogrammar, we are in a stronger position to construe knowledge in terms of meaning. That is, the semantics can become more powerful and extensive if the lexicogrammar includes systems.

[3] This is misleading in a way that supports Fawcett's own model.  Unlike Fawcett, Halliday does not propose a level of form.  As the quote that Fawcett himself provides makes clear, Halliday proposes the three strata of semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology.

[4] To be clear, Halliday (1978: 128-9) proposes systems for both semantics and lexicogrammar:

Third, we will assume that each stratum, and each component [metafunction], is described as a network of options, sets of interrelated choices having the form 'if a, then either b or c'.

with the lexicogrammatical stratum system organised by rank:

Fifth, we shall assume that the lexicogrammatical system is organised by rank (as opposed to immediate constituent structure); each rank is the locus of structural configurations, the place where structures from the different [metafunctional] components are mapped onto each other.