Some Problems With Fawcett's Notion Of 'Sentence'

Fawcett (2010: 192):

The present model takes broadly the same position as Halliday on this matter, i.e., the clause is taken to be the "highest" unit of English syntax. The term "sentence" is used here simply as a place-holder for the function served by the clause (or clause complex) in discourse. Thus it operates at the interface between the grammar and the 'higher grammar' that specifies the structure of discourse. Thus it is more like an "element" (see Section 10.5) than a "unit".³

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, if there is a highest unit, then there is a scale on which the unit ranks highest. That is, contrary to Fawcett's claims, his model is indeed formulated on the basis of a rank scale of units.

[2] To be clear, the term 'sentence' labels a form, not a function, and so cannot be a "place-holder" for any function served by the clause.

[3] To be clear, this is the only use of the term 'higher grammar' in this publication; but see later posts. 

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the term 'element' refers to a function, such as existential Process, whereas the term 'unit' refers a form, such as a verbal group. In Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar, however, an 'element' is the lowest syntactic category in the representation of a sentence, in a model that has "no rank scale" (p226):

In the present theory of syntax, the lowest syntactic category on each branch of the tree in a tree diagram representation of a sentence is an element (e.g., the head of a nominal group).