Misrepresenting Halliday On The Distinction Between 'Group' And 'Phrase'

Fawcett (2010: 205):

The equivalent term in IFG is not "prepositional group" but "prepositional phrase". Halliday has maintained a distinction between 'group' and 'phrase' from the very start, stating in "Categories" that it is needed to express a difference between classes of unit that is "so fundamental that it is useful to have two names for this unit" (1961:253). Interestingly, Kress (or Halliday?) has chosen to omit this passage from the 1976 version, perhaps because Halliday, unsatisfactorily, gives no reason for this intriguing claim. The reason is finally stated in IFG, i.e., that, "whereas a group is an expansion of a word, a phrase is a contraction of a clause" (1994:180). This offers a potentially interesting perspective on the distinction — as Halliday's ideas often do — but it is no[t] self-evidently worthy of the epithet "fundamental".

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is not misleading, because it is true.

[2] To be clear, whatever the case in the "1976 version" of this pre-Systemic paper, the original passage appears in the 'Collected Works' series. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 45):

It is at the rank of the phrase that there is most confusion – because there are here the greatest difficulties – in the description of English; one reason is that in English this unit carries a fundamental class division (see below, 5), so fundamental that it is useful to have two names for this unit in order to be able to talk about it: I propose to call it the group, but to make a class distinction within it between group and phrase.

[3] To be clear, what Halliday (1994: 179-80) actually writes is more informative:

… a group is in some respects equivalent to a WORD COMPLEX – that is, a combination of words built up on the basis of a particular logical relation. This is why it is called a GROUP (= ‘group of words’). … A PHRASE is different from a group in that, whereas a group is an expansion of a word, a phrase is a contraction of a clause. Starting from opposite ends, the two achieve roughly the same status on the rank scale, as units that lie somewhere between the rank of a clause and that of a word.

and he later clarifies (1994: 212, 213):

It is important to make a distinction between a PREPOSITION GROUP, such as right behind or immediately in front of, which is a Modifier-Head structure expanded from and functionally equivalent to a preposition, and a PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, which is not an expansion of anything but a clause-like structure in which the Process/Predicator function is performed by a preposition and not by a verb. …

But note that prepositional phrases are phrases, not groups; they have no logical structure as Head and Modifier, and cannot be reduced to a single element. In this respect, they are clause-like rather than group-like; hence when we interpret the preposition as ‘minor Predicator’ and ‘minor Process’ we are interpreting the prepositional phrase as a kind of ‘minor clause’ – which is what it is.

However, earlier in the text (1994: 158), Halliday had already provided argumentation on the clause-like nature of the prepositional phrase:

A prepositional phrase can be interpreted as a shrunken clause, in which the preposition serves as a ‘minor process’, interpreted as a kind of mini-verb, and the nominal group as a participant in this minor process. This needs explaining.

The preposition, it was suggested, acts as a kind of intermediary whereby a nominal element can be introduced as an ‘indirect’ participant in the main process. We saw also that in circumstantial and possessive relational processes there are often close parallels between be + preposition and a verb, e.g.

the delay was because of a strike ~ was caused by a strike

a carpet was over the floor ~ covered the floor

the bridge is across the river ~ crosses/spans the river

a path is along(side) the wood ~ skirts the wood

a halo is around the moon ~ surrounds the moon

This similarity between verb and preposition can also be seen in cases where there is a close relationship between a prepositional phrase and a non-finite dependent clause:

he cleaned the floor with a mop ~ using a mop

grass grows after the rain ~ following the rain

In this way certain prepositions are themselves derived from non-finite verbs; e.g. concerning, according to, given, excepting. These considerations suggest that the nominal group stands to the preposition in some kind of transitivity relation, as well as in a relationship like that of Complement to Predicator in mood structure.

Moreover, Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 276) essentially relate the minor Processes of prepositional phrases realising circumstances to Process types of the clause:

… circumstances of expansion [Extent, Location, Manner, Cause, Contingency, Accompaniment, Rôle] relate to ‘relational’ clauses, circumstances of projection [Matter, Angle] relate to projecting ‘mental’ and ‘verbal’ clauses …

[4] To be clear, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by argument. The facts that 

• a group is an expansion of words, whereas a phrase is not,
• a phrase includes a minor Process/Predicator, whereas a group does not, and
• a phrase can introduce an indirect participant in the clause Process, but a group can not

are important distinctions in terms of the theory itself.