"The Second Major Difference Between Fawcett's And Halliday's Nominal Group"

Fawcett (2010: 204):

The second major difference between the two models is that the coverage of the nominal group in the Cardiff Grammar is considerably fuller than that in IFG. This is especially true with respect to the many types of determiner that it introduces and the concept of 'selection' that holds between them, e.g., as in five of the ripest of those mangoes. 

It also includes a full treatment of compound nouns — a very important category that is the source of many problems in text analysis and text generation. Halliday simply omits these from IFG (presumably on the grounds that the primary focus in IFG in on the clause, with groups and words receiving a much lighter treatment). For a fuller picture of the nominal group, see Appendix B and Fawcett (in press).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by evidence, or by the provision of a scale by which to objectively measure different degrees of fullness.

[2] To be sure, the Cardiff Grammar does propose many types of determiner (pp304, 306), though few of these are "determiners" from the perspective of SFL Theory:

On the other hand, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the Cardiff Grammar treats Numeratives as determiners, and does not distinguish Deictics from post-Deictics, nor Classifiers from Epithets. More importantly, it mixes word classes (determiner) with experiential elements (qualifier) with logical elements (modifier, head). Most importantly, this confusion of theoretical principles is the incongruous solution to Fawcett's previous argument against viewing the nominal group as a logical structure (194-5):

Once we recognise that each element of a syntactic unit makes a unique contribution to realising the meaning of that unit, we can dispense with the traditional, over-narrow characterisation of the internal structure of groups as a series of 'modification' relationships. In its extreme form, this model presents groups as simply the 'hypotactic expansion' of the word class that functions as the 'head', in a series of 'modifier-head' relationships. …

The nearest that the present grammar comes to a generalised concept of a 'modifier + head' relationship is its recognition of the fact that other elements of a group typically depend on the presence of the 'pivotal element'. Thus when the grammar generates a "common nouns" as the head of a nominal group, other elements realising other types of meaning typically get brought into play as well. Thus it is preferable to characterise the nominal group as a unit for expressing the wide range of types of meaning associated with a 'thing', rather than in terms of an over-simple series of 'modifier + head' relationships.

[3] To be clear, this concept will be examined when it is discussed in the text.

[4] To be clear, the "full treatment" of compound nouns in this volume is a single mention in Appendix B (p306):

[5] This is very misleading indeed, because it misrepresents Halliday (1994). A compound noun, as a noun, serves as the Thing of a nominal group, but, as Halliday (1994: 185) explains, there is often indeterminacy between 'compound noun' and 'Classifier + Thing' interpretations:

[6] To be clear, Fawcett (in press) is still unpublished, 21 years after the first edition of this volume.