Fawcett (2010: 202):
Typically, a group is capable of functioning as a complete referring expression — in the sense that it can stand on its own, after ellipsis, as a natural-sounding answer to a question such as Who's this?, Where did you put it?, What is she like? and How much do you love him?, each of which can be responded to by one of the four classes of group.
The main exception to this generalisation is that quantity groups with certain items as their 'amount' occur only within quality groups and other quantity groups, and consequently cannot stand alone (e.g., far too is very unlikely as an answer to the question How heavy was it?).
Thus the ability to function as a referring expression is a useful guideline when trying to identify a stretch of words in a text that constitutes a clause or group, and not an absolute test of one.
Blogger Comments:
[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the ability of a group to function as a referring expression is its potential to realise a function at clause rank. This is the criterion that Halliday uses to classify groups, but the criterion that Fawcett rejects. That is, Fawcett's criterion for identifying groups ('from above') is inconsistent with his criterion for classifying groups ('from below'). Moreover, this constituency relation between clause and group implies a rank scale of forms, which Fawcett also rejects. Furthermore, Fawcett's criterion also justifies the verbal group — e.g. What do you usually do at night? Sleep — which Fawcett also rejects.
[2] To be clear, this exception would suggest that it is theoretically inconsistent to treat such syntagms as groups.
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