Fawcett's Argument Against The Preposition And Conjunction Groups

Fawcett (2010: 209):

In the Cardiff Grammar we take the view that it is not worth setting up two new units for such relatively rare cases, and we therefore 'borrow' the quantity group for use in modelling the internal structures of prepositions, Linkers and Binders — but only when there is an internal structure. Notice that, if one gives weight to the criterion of the internal structure of such units (as we do here), it would be odd to treat immediately after in immediately after their visit to us as a 'prepositional group', and immediately after in immediately after they had visited us as a 'conjunction group'. By using the quantity group in both cases we avoid setting up two completely new and little-used units for each of the preposition and the Binder.

For a slightly fuller picture of the quantity group, see the examples in Appendix B, and for a full description of this unit in English see Fawcett (in press).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, preposition groups and conjunction groups are not "relatively rare cases". In SFL Theory, every minor Process/Predicator of a prepositional phrase is realised by a preposition group, and every conjunctive Adjunct is realised by a conjunction group, in line with the principle of exhaustiveness. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 84):

The general principle of exhaustiveness means that everything in the wording has some function at every rank (cf. Halliday, 1961, 1966c).

[2] To be clear, as previously explained, this misunderstands constituency. The internal structure of prepositions is realised by morphemes.

[3] This is true. However, giving priority to structure is giving priority to the view 'from below', which is the opposite of the SFL approach of construing units in terms of their functions ('from above'). From a functional perspective, it is worse than "odd" to treat the preposition group immediately after and the conjunction group immediately after the same, because each serves a different function (minor Process/Predicator vs conjunctive Adjunctive).

[4] Appendix B (p307) provides this "slightly fuller" picture of the quantity group:

It can be seen that Fawcett's quantity group, like his quality group, includes both clause-rank interpersonal Adjuncts (indeed) and punctuation marks ('e') from the stratum of graphology. That is, it is theoretically inconsistent in terms of both rank and stratification.

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