What is the relationship between one element and its 'sister' elements in a unit? This has been a major focus of interest for some grammarians, leading to arguments about whether such relationships are those of 'daughter dependency' or 'sister dependency' (e.g., Hudson 1976). (For a brief comparison of the two, see Section 11.2 of Chapter 11.) Here I offer a new answer to the question asked above. It is one that follows directly from the adoption of the framework outlined in Chapter 2 and exemplified in Appendix A.
Let us take as an example the relationship between a modifier and the head in the English nominal group. In the framework of a systemic functional grammar the relationship is not, I suggest, the direct one that form-centred grammarians consider it to be. In formal and traditional grammars, it is simply assumed that what the modifier modifies is the head. Here, however, the general function of the modifiers in a nominal group is regarded as being to describe the referent. (See Fawcett (in press) for the sub-types of 'description' that the various sub-types of modifier express, e.g., 'colour modifiers', 'affective modifiers', 'general epithet modifiers' etc.) Similarly, the function of the head of the nominal group is (assuming that it is a noun) to state the 'cultural classification' of the referent. The referent is thus the object to which the nominal group refers, and it is the function of the noun at the head of the nominal group to express what Lyons (1977:206-7) terms the "denotation" (of some class of 'thing'). In other words, the head realises one type of meaning that relates to the referent, while the modifier realises another. So both the modifier and the head relate, via the meanings they express, to the referent — but they are related only indirectly to each other. Thus a modifier does not in fact 'modify' (or 'describe') the head; it modifies (or describes) the referent which the head denotes.
This general principle applies to all 'sister' relationships between elements, and it applies to all units. From this viewpoint, the question of whether an element is dependent on a 'sister' element such as the 'head' or on a 'mother' unit is beside the point; the 'dependency' is not in fact 'syntactic' at all, and what we observe in syntax is the realisation of dependence in the system networks.
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[1] To be clear, this confuses relations between formal units with relations between functional elements.
[2] To be clear, this confuses structure with ideational denotation ("describing a referent"). In SFL Theory, a structure is the relation between the elements of a unit. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 451):
Note that, although it is the functions that are labelled, the structure actually consists of the relationships among them.
In SFL Theory, which takes an 'immanent' view of meaning, the ideational denotation of a wording (lexicogrammar) is its ideational meaning (semantics). However, in other theories, which take a 'transcendent' view of meaning, the ideational denotation is to a domain outside language.
[3] To be clear, as Fawcett explicitly makes clear by the wording "meaning that relates to the referent", his model takes a 'transcendent' view of meaning, a view that is seriously inconsistent with the epistemological assumptions from which SFL Theory is constructed.
[4] To be clear, this is inconsistent with SFL Theory, in which Modifier–Head is a univariate structural relation. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 390):
We refer to this kind of structure as a univariate structure, one which is generated as an iteration of the same functional relationship (cf. Halliday, 1965, 1979): α is modified by β, which is modified by γ, which is ... .
[5] To be clear, if 'dependency' is a syntagmatic relation between formal units, then it is 'syntactic'.
[6] To be clear, this is inadvertently consistent with the architecture of SFL Theory — or, at least with the general principle that syntagmatic structures realise paradigmatic selections.
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