Misrepresenting Fawcett's Misunderstandings As Halliday's Problems

Fawcett (2010: 126):

These, then, are two serious, practical problems that arise in the 'structure conflation' model that is presented in IFG. It is interesting that Halliday himself identifies them in his first theoretical-generative paper about the then new model of systemic functional grammar. Yet this is as far as he goes, and there is no hint in his later writings of how the problem of formalising this general proposal is to be solved. Thus, while he identifies the phenomena that cause the problems, he does not ident[i]fy them specifically as problems, and he does not show how he proposes to resolve them.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. As previously demonstrated, Fawcett's notion of 'structure conflation' is a misunderstanding of Halliday's theory, and the problems that Fawcett thinks arise only arise from his misunderstanding of the theory, and viewing it though his own model.

[2] This is misleading.  The reason Halliday does not identify Fawcett's misunderstandings as problems is because they are not problems, but misunderstandings. Similarly, the reason Halliday does not propose how the resolve what Fawcett mistakes as problems, is because they are not problems, but misunderstandings. See previous posts for details of the misunderstandings involved.