Later Changes (1981) To Fawcett's "Some Proposals" (1974): Verbal, Quality & Quantity Groups

Fawcett (2010: 164):

However, by the 1981 edition I had made several changes to the model. Firstly, I had strengthened my position on the supposed 'verbal group', writing that even for text analysis the elements of the supposed 'verbal group' "would in my view be best shown as clause elements" (Fawcett 1974-6/81:31) (See Fawcett (2000) and (forthcoming b) for the full set of reasons and Appendix C for a summary of them.) Secondly the 'adjectival' and 'adverbial' groups, which were already shown in the 1974-6 edition as sharing a common structure, were brought together as the 'quantity-quality group' (since they typically express the meaning of a 'quantity' of a 'quality'). And thirdly the 'prepend group' had been re-named the "prepositional group". Later still, as Part 2 shows, I realised that, in order to provide an adequate description of English and other languages, we need to recognise both a quality group and a quantity group. See Tucker (1998) for the fullest explanation of the quality group in English and Fawcett (in press) for an introduction to both classes of group.

 Blogger Comments:

[1] As will be seen in the examination of Appendix C, Fawcett's argument against the verbal group (pp333-6) centres on misunderstandings involving the Finite element and phrasal verbs.

[2] To be clear, the notion of 'quality group' and 'quantity group' confuses class (of group) with function (of group).

[3] As previously noted, Fawcett (in press) is still unpublished, 20 years after the first edition of this work.