Giving Priority To Form Over Function

 Fawcett (2010: 215):

The principle that each element in a unit realises a different type of meaning brings with it the great advantage that it makes text analysis easier. This is because, once you have worked out what element an item expounds, you typically also know automatically what class of unit the element belongs to. This advantage applies both to human text analysts (perhaps consulting a summary of the syntax of English such as Appendix B) and to a computer parser of text-sentences, e.g., as built for the COMMUNAL Project (Weerasinghe & Fawcett 1993 and Weerasinghe 1994).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it falsely implies that this principle holds for Fawcett's Cardiff Grammar, but not for SFL Theory. To be clear, in SFL Theory, each of the clause elements Senser, Process and Phenomenon, for example, realises a different type of meaning.

[2] This nicely demonstrates, once again, that the Cardiff Grammar gives priority to form over function. In this case, the functional element is merely the means of ascertaining the class of formal unit.