The Implications Of The Argument For A Theory Of Syntax For SFL [2]

Fawcett (2010: 157-8):

However, since the current situation is that there is not yet a published work in any version of SFL that demonstrates how to use the features in system networks for the systemic analysis of texts, IFG-style analyses may still have a role to play for a while. The system networks for the Sydney Grammar have of course now been published (in Matthiessen 1995), but these networks are not in fact designed for use in text analysis, and they are often hard for the reader to interpret. Moreover there are no published guidelines as to how to use system networks for the task of making analyses of real-life texts, and no published examples of such analyses, other than those in Fawcett (1999) and in Figure 10 of Section 7.9. The publication of Fawcett (in press) and Fawcett (forthcoming a), as described at the end of Section 7.8, make available the Cardiff Grammar versions of (a) the functional structure of text-sentences and (b) system networks that are equivalent in their coverage (but more explicitly semantic) to the Sydney Grammar networks found in Matthiessen (1995). Moreover Fawcett (forthcoming a) contains guidelines that show the analyst how to go about making such analyses, and it contains many such examples.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is still misleading, because it is still untrue. As previously noted, Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) provides, for each metafunction, clause analyses which display the features selected.

[2] To be clear, the structures exemplified in IFG represent an integral dimension of SFL Theory.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, system networks are the formal means by which language is modelled, and which specify the structures that Fawcett equates with text analysis.

[4] To be clear, here Fawcett presents his own difficulty in interpreting system networks as a problem with the networks themselves.

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. As previously noted, Figure 10 does not include the networks from which its features are derived, and misrepresents paradigmatic features of the entire clause as individual elements of syntagmatic structures ("strands of meaning").

[6] As previously noted, these promised works — Fawcett (in press) and Fawcett (forthcoming a) — remain unpublished, 20 years after the first edition of this publication.