Fawcett's Two Types Of Sequential Relationship And Recursion

Fawcett (2010: 166):

Two types of sequential relationship between sister elements of structure are recognised in "Some proposals": the segmental relationship of adjacency and the discontinuous relationship that occurs when elements are non-adjacent. These are not explicitly mentioned in "Categories", but every theory of syntax must have adequate ways of handling the various types of discontinuity found in language. Part 2 will introduce these concepts in Section 11.7 of Chapter 11.

Finally, two types of recursion are recognised. The first is embedding, in which a unit is 'rankshifted' (to use Halliday's original term) to fill an element of structure in a unit of the same or a lower rank. The second is co-ordination, in which two or more units fill a single element of structure.

With the exception of the concept of 'rank' — and so the derived concept of 'rank shift' — all of these 'relationships' are retained in the model of syntax to be presented in Part 2, and a small number of additional concepts that are not included in "Some proposals" are added to them. There is no need, therefore, to discuss the concepts of "Some proposals" any further at this point.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, SFL Theory proposes different structural relations for each metafunction, with 'segmental' describing experiential structures only. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 85):

[2] As previously noted, Fawcett's "Some proposals" (1974) was oriented to Halliday's first theory, Scale and Category Grammar, after it had been superseded by Halliday's second theory, Systemic Functional Grammar.

[3] To be clear, in formal theories, unlike SFL Theory, the term 'embedded' covers both rankshift and hypotaxis. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 382):

Such items are said to be ‘rankshifted’ – by contrast with ranking ones, which function prototypically as constituents of the higher unit. We may also use the term ‘embedded’, taken from formal grammars; but with the proviso that this term is often used to cover both rankshift (where the item is downgraded as a constituent) and hypotaxis (where the item is dependent on another one but is not a constituent of it. Here we shall use embedded only as an alternative term synonymous with rankshifted.

As will eventually be seen, Fawcett uses 'embedding' to include hypotactic relations between ranking clauses.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the traditional notion of co-ordination is treated as paratactic extension. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 472).

The combination of extension with parataxis yields what is known as co-ordination between clauses. It is typically expressed by and, nor, or, but.

Fawcett (p272), on the other hand, uses co-ordination and embedding to replace parataxis and hypotaxis, depending on the logico-semantic relation involved:

we treat four of Halliday's five types of 'hypotaxis' and two of his five types of 'parataxis' as embedding, and one type of 'hypotaxis' and his three 'expansion' types of 'parataxis' as co-ordination.

The problems with this approach will be identified when Fawcett's model is finally presented.

[5] To be clear, rank is the means by which SFL Theory models the phenomena of language known in other models as 'syntax'.

[6] To be clear, Fawcett's model includes embedding, but not rank-shift.