Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) On Rank And Rank Shift

Fawcett (2010: 100):

Interestingly, the concepts of 'rank' and 'rank shift' (alias 'embedding') have only a relatively small role to play in IFG. This is in large measure because the book focusses so strongly on the clause that groups and their internal structures are not fully explored — and the fact is that all classes of group frequently contain other groups and clauses within them, as Part 2 and the outline description of English in Appendix B both clearly illustrate. However, in IFG the theory itself is also responsible for the reduced role of 'rank shift', because it treats many relationships between units that would in other approaches be analysed as cases of embedding as 'hypotaxis', i.e., as 'dependency without embedding'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading. To be clear, IFG (Halliday 1994) devotes four chapters (196 pages) to the rank of clause and two chapters (52 pages) to the rank of group.  Rank shift is discussed with respect to 

• the Qualifier of nominal groups (pp187-8), 
• the Numerative of nominal groups (pp195-6),
• the Postmodifier of adverbial groups (pp210-1),
• embedded expansions (pp242-50),
• embedded locutions and ideas (pp263-4), and
• facts (pp265-9).

[2] This is misleading, because it is the direct opposite of what is true.  The two chapters (52 pages) devoted to groups (and phrases) outline

• the experiential and logical structure of nominal groups (pp180-91 and pp191-6),
• the experiential and logical structure of verbal groups (pp196-8 and pp198-207),
• the logical structure of adverbial groups (pp210-1),
• the logical structure of conjunction groups (p211),
• the logical structure of preposition groups (p212),
• the experiential and interpersonal structure of prepositional phrases (pp212-3),
• the logical structure of nominal group complexes (pp275-6),
• the logical structure of adverbial group / prepositional phrase complexes (pp277-8),
• the logical structure of verbal group complexes (pp278-91).

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue.  Only nominal and adverbial groups include embedded elements (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 329, 424, 492); see also [4].

[4] It will be seen in later discussions that Fawcett mistakes nesting for embedding.

[5] This is true, and, moreover, as will be seen, it arises from grammatical reasoning, and results in increased explanatory power of the model.