Misrepresenting Halliday (1961, 1993) And Matthiessen (1995) On Element

Fawcett (2010: 88):

In the Sydney Grammar, it is the word "function" that should, strictly speaking, be used to refer to concepts such as 'Subject' and 'Theme', e.g., in (a), (b) and (c) of Halliday's realisation statements. The term "element" is typically used for the component of the clause into which such "functions" combine. Interestingly, Matthiessen makes no use at all of the term "element", using instead the informal term "bundle of functions". Thus in "Systemic theory" Halliday uses "element" in Matthiessen's sense of "function" — such that the "conflation" (or 'fusion') of two or more such "functions" combines to constitute a single element of the clause, in the way to be described in Section 7.2 of Chapter 7. It is this unified sense of "element" that corresponds most closely to the meaning of the term "element" in "Categories". It may be thought that this is not a major difference, but it is nonetheless a significant one, because it reflects the addition to the theory of the concept that an element may carry several meanings at the same time — this being the third of the major developments in the theory that we noted in Chapter 4.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  Subject and Theme are each elements of function structure.  In theoretical terms, this specifies them as located on the syntagmatic axis, whereas the unqualified term 'function' does not.  For example, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 83) point out: 'Theme functions in the structure of the clause as message'.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  Elements of function structure, such as Subject and Location, map onto clause constituents, such as nominal groups and prepositional phrases.  That is to say, here Fawcett has merely confused the term 'element' (of function structure) with the term 'constituent' (as modelled by the rank scale of form).  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 9):

Grammatically, however, the constituent of a clause is not, in fact, a word; it is either a phrase or a word group…

[3] To be clear, the terms 'element' and 'bundle of functions' are not synonymous.  While an element is a structural function such as Theme or Subject or Senser, a bundle of functions are all the structural functions that map onto a clause constituent, such as Theme and Subject and Senser all mapping onto a nominal group.

[4] This is doubly misleading, because it is doubly untrue. On the one hand, in Halliday's Scale and Category Grammar (1961), before the theorising of metafunctions, there are no functions to be conflated on a constituent, and on the other hand, Halliday (1961) uses the term in precisely the same way as in Systemic Theory (1993).  Halliday (2002 [1961]: 47):

In the statement of English clause structure, for example, four elements are needed, for which the widely accepted terms subject, predicator, complement and adjunct are appropriate.