Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) On Types Of Clause Structure

Fawcett (2010: 114):

However, there are in fact at least three other lines of representation in the analysis of a typical text-sentence in Halliday (1994:368-5), in addition to the four shown in Figure 7. The fifth is the analysis of the logico-semantic relationships between clauses that Halliday introduces to represent 'paratactic' or 'hypotactic' relations, as in I'll come when I'm ready (see Section 2.6.1 of Chapter 2.)

The sixth line of representation arises from the fact that Halliday always shows two lines of structure for the 'interpersonal' strand of meaning. At the primary degree of delicacy the structure is 'Mood + Residue'. Here I am using the term "primary" that was introduced to the theory for this purpose in Halliday 1961/76), in order to make explicit the nature of the relationship between the two lines. Then at the secondary degree of delicacy the structure within the 'Mood' element is divided into 'Subject + Finite'. This is not a matter of constituency relations, Halliday emphasises, but of a more delicate analysis at the same layer of structure, as we saw in Section 2.4 of Chapter 2.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it misrepresents Halliday' model.  Fawcett's Figure 7 depicts a clause analysis; the notion of a 'text-sentence' is exclusive to Fawcett's model, and so does not feature in Halliday (1994).  As previously demonstrated, on Halliday's model, there are three lines of structure in the clause: textual, interpersonal and experiential.  Fawcett's Figure 4 shows four lines of structure because he misrepresents the structure of an information unit as a structure of the clause.

The "at least three other lines of representation" that Fawcett refers to here are:

• logical structure, which does not apply to clause structure (hence Fawcett's strategic use of "text-sentence" instead of clause);
• interpersonal structure misrepresented as two lines of structure instead of one (see below); and
• cohesive relations, which do not apply to clause structure (hence Fawcett's strategic use of "lines of representation" instead of lines of structure).

[2] This is misleading, because here Fawcett uses Halliday's first theory, Scale & Category Grammar (Halliday 1961) — which featured neither system nor metafunction — to misrepresent Halliday's final theory, Systemic Functional Grammar.

In SFL Theory, delicacy refers to the elaboration of systems, from the most general features to the most particular.  It does not refer to structural relations.

The relation of the Mood element to the Subject and Finite elements, on the other hand, is one one of composition — a subtype of extension, not elaboration. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 143):

The presence of the Mood element, consisting of Subject plus Finite, realises the feature ‘indicative’.

Importantly, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the sense in which this functional relation is "not a matter of constituency relations" is that it is not a matter of formal (rank) constituency; that is, it is not a matter of clauses consisting of groups consisting of words consisting of morpheme.

To be clear, in SFL Theory, the mood structure of the clause realises one type of meaning: that of the interpersonal metafunction.