Fawcett's Concept Of Places In A Unit

Fawcett (2010: 220):

Elements, as we have seen, are the 'components' of units. However, there is another category that intervenes between a unit and its elements. This is the concept of the places in a unit. In other words, elements occur at places in units.

In the analysis of texts the places are usually omitted (as in Figure 10 in Chapter 7). However, in the full, generative version of the grammar they play an essential role, as in Figure 13 in Section 10.4.4 below, and as illustrated in the generation of a text-sentence in Fawcett, Tucker & Lin (1993).

Like a number of other concepts that are central in a modern SF grammar (such as the concept of 'system' itself and 'lexis as most delicate grammar') the concept of 'place' can be found in "Categories" (as I pointed out in Section 2.3 of Chapter 2). The word is used rather than defined as a central concept, but its use there seems to be consistent with the sense in which it is used here.

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[1] To be clear, this is inconsistent with the architecture of SFL Theory, in which the constituents ('components') of a unit are units of the rank below. Elements, on the other hand, are the functions that those lower rank units serve in the structure of the higher rank, as exemplified by a nominal group serving as the Phenomenon of a mental clause.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory there are no pre-existing places in structures at which elements appear. Instead, the sequencing of elements in a structure is specified by realisation rules in system networks. For example, in the type of example that Fawcett comes to discuss (p224-5), the different ordering of elements according to MOOD selection:

• the feature 'indicative' activates 'realised by insert Mood, expand: insert Finite, insert Subject',
• the more delicate feature 'declarative' activates 'realised by the order Subject ^ Finite, whereas
• the interrogative feature 'yes/no' activates 'realised by the order Finite ^ Subject', and
• the disjunct interrogative feature 'WH' activates 'realised by insert Wh, the order Wh ^ Finite'.

See Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 162).

[3] Figure 13 (p225):

[4] This is misleading, because 'Categories' (Halliday 1961) set out the architecture of a long superseded theory, Scale & Category Grammar, not a "modern" Systemic Functional Grammar.