Fawcett (2010: 165-6):
The concept of rank from "Categories" is retained in "Some proposals" — at least in relation to the clause and the group, which form the core of the model of syntax in all SFL descriptions (with far less work on the proposed 'morpheme-word' relationship). However, this small syntactic 'rank scale' is interpreted in a very different way from "Categories", because it is seen as the realisation of an equivalent semantic relationship between a 'situation' and the 'things' and 'qualities' that are its 'elements' at that higher level. And, as we shall see in Part 2, later work in this version of the theory was to reduce the role of the concept of a 'rank scale' to the point where it no longer has any status in the theory at all. … In the theory of syntax to be presented in Part 2 the concept of the 'rank scale' is replaced by the concept of probabilities in the relations between elements and units.
Blogger Comments:
[1] 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"Some proposals" (1974) was oriented to Halliday's first theory, Scale and Category Grammar, after it had been superseded by Halliday's second theory, Systemic Functional Grammar.
[2] This is potentially misleading, because SFL is not a theory of syntax. Halliday (1985: xiv):
[3] To be clear, this aspect of Fawcett's model is included in his Figure 12 (p210):
In SFL Theory, the semantic unit congruently realised by a clause depends on metafunction:
- figure (ideational)
- proposition/proposal (interpersonal)
- message (textual)
and ideationally, the semantic unit congruently realised by a group is an element (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999).
[4] To be clear, SFL Theory it is the rank scale that models the linguistic phenomena deemed 'syntax' in other theories.
[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, rank is the ordering principle of structure (syntagmatic order), whereas probability is the quantification of system (paradigmatic order). This will be elaborated further in the examination of Fawcett's model in Part 2.
No comments:
Post a Comment