Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) On Formal Constituency And Function Structures

Fawcett (2010: 98):

But what happens in practice, as we read on through IFG? Do "other, more abstract types of relationship" take over from 'constituency'? The fact is that they do not. The different structures that Halliday proposes for each strand of meaning are all represented in the same way, i.e., by the use of 'box diagrams'. It is true that in some cases the significant elements (such as Theme' and 'New') tend to be found at the beginning and end of their structures, but there are too many exceptions to the generalisations that he proposes for it to be worth setting up different types of structure for different types of meaning. Halliday's solution to the problem of finding an adequate notation is to use box diagrams for representing all of the various types of structure that he claims to find in the clause. But box diagrams, as Halliday himself makes clear (IFG p. 36), are just one of several ways of representing the concept of 'constituency'. (For a critical examination of the role of the concept of 'constituency' in a theory of syntax, see Section 11.1 of Chapter 11.) The picture twith which these chapters of IFG leave the reader with is one of a reluctant recognition that, after all, the 'flat tree' type of constituency provides the best way of representing structure. And, as we shall see in Chapter 7, there is a compelling reason for Halliday to represent each of the different lines of structure in the same way.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is the exact opposite of what is true.  The metafunctional structures that Halliday proposes are more abstract than formal constituency because function is more abstract than form — form (Token) realises function (Value).

[2] To be clear, here Fawcett confuses the notion of structure (Value) with the diagrammatic representation of structure (Token), and presents the confusion as evidence that metafunctional structures are not more abstract than formal constituency.  See [1] above.

[3] Here Fawcett (bizarrely!) presents the sequencing of functions in structures as Halliday's theoretical motivation for proposing different types of metafunctional structure, rather than the nature of metafunctions themselves.  This is another instance of the red herring fallacy, a fallacy of relevance.

[4] This is misleading.  What Halliday (1994: 36) actually writes is:

[5] To be clear, Systemic Functional Grammar is not a theory of syntax. It is Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar that is a theory of syntax.

[6] To be clear, the wording 'reluctant recognition' is deeply misleading here, because it falsely implies that Halliday does not deploy a 'flat' model of constituency. As Halliday (1995 [1993]: 273) makes clear:

'Rank' is constituency based on function, and hence 'flat,' with minimal layering;

On the other hand, Fawcett here again confuses formal constituency with functional structure, and further confounds this by confusing such theoretical dimensions with their diagrammatic representation.

[7] To be clear, the review of Chapter 7 will identify the knot of confusions on which Fawcett's claim is based.