Misrepresenting Halliday (1985, 1993, 1994) And Matthiessen (1995) On Element

Fawcett (2010: 87-8):

Halliday's seven types of 'realisation statement' are, in his words:

(a) 'Insert' an element (e.g., insert subject); 

(b) 'Conflate' one element with another (e.g., conflate subject with theme); 

(c) Order' an element with respect to another, or to some defined location (e.g., order finite auxiliary before subject); 

(d) 'Classify' an element (e.g., classify process as mental: cognition); 

(e) "Split' an element into a further configuration (e.g., split mood into subject + finite); 

(f) 'Preselect' some feature at a lower rank (e.g., preselect nominal group); 

(g) 'Lexify' an element (e.g., lexify subject : it). 

(Halliday 1993:4505) 

… Earlier, we were considering the fact that the concept of 'element' was not presented as a "basic concept" in "Systemic theory". However, as you can see from the number of instances of the word "element" in boldface in Halliday's realisation statements, this term certainly plays a central role in the process of building 'structure' in his theory. Notice, however, that the term "element" is being used here in a different sense from that in "Categories" — and also from that in which it is typically used in IFG and in Matthiessen (1995:23-5).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  Despite the fact that the two publications outline different theories,  the use of the term 'element' in Halliday (1993) is the same as its use in Halliday (1961), as the following quote from "Categories" (Halliday 2002 [1961]: 46-7) makes plain:

A structure is made up of elements which are graphically represented as being in linear progression; but the theoretical relation among them is one of order. … A structure is thus an arrangement of elements ordered in places. Places are distinguished by order alone: a structure XXX consists of three places. … 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. These yield four distinct symbols, so that S, P, C, A would be the inventory of elements of English clause structure.

What differs in the two theories is that "Categories" (Halliday 1961) does not yet differentiate between metafunctions, and so the elements of structure are restricted to what later became those of the interpersonal metafunction in Systemic Theory.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  The meaning of 'element' in both IFG and Matthiessen (1995) is 'structural function'.  For example, Halliday (1985: 32; 1994: 30) writes:

…each clause contains one element which can be identified as its Subject…

It will be seen in the following post that Fawcett confuses (functional) 'element' with (formal) 'constituent'.