Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) By Confusing Rank With Structure

Fawcett (2010: 88n):

You may have noticed that the term "rank" is used in (f) above, but this is not significant. This is because, strictly speaking, Halliday should have used here a term such as "layer of structure" or "unit", since the unit that is 'lower' in the structure is not necessarily of a lower 'rank' (e.g., a clause or a prepositional group/phrase frequently functions as a qualifier in a nominal group).

Blogger Comments:

Reminder:

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

This is misleading, because it is untrue. Here Fawcett's wording "lower in the structure" confuses the rank scale of forms ("lower") with the syntagmatic axis ("structure").  The form that realises a function is not lower in structure, but lower in constituency.  In the case of a clause realising the Qualifier of a nominal group, the (higher rank) clause is a constituent of a (lower rank) nominal group, which is why the phenomenon is called 'rankshift'.