The Key Rôle Of 'Place' In Handling 'Raising' Phenomena

Fawcett (2010: 224-5):

However, there is one aspect of syntax where the concept of 'place' assumes major theoretical importance. It is when a place in one unit — in practice, always a clause — is occupied by an element from a lower unit. This phenomenon occurs in cases such as Who were you seen by?, Who did you give it to?, Where did you say you put it? and so on.

Consider the first example, the analysis of which is shown in Figure 13. Here, the initial item who fills Place 28 in the clause. This is the place at which 'sought' elements (realised as wh-items) typically occur. However, the element who is not an element of the clause, but of the prepositional group that fills the Complement. In other words, in this example it has been made to occupy a place in the unit above the unit of which it is an element.

… Essentially the same principles apply in the analysis of examples such as Who did you say you saw there? (See Section 11.7 of Chapter 11 for the concept of discontinuity, and see Fawcett (in press) for the analysis of these and other types of discontinuity.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] Reminder: Fawcett's claim is that the Cardiff Grammar does not use a rank scale ('lower', 'above'), and does not feature units, though it does feature classes of units.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the first two examples are clauses, whereas the latter two are clause complexes. In the clause examples, the minor Complement of a prepositional phrase is conflated with the thematic WH- element:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 163-4) explain:

In the selection of the WH- element, the category of Complement can extend to include the minor Complement of a prepositional phrase. Here the WH- element is conflated with the minor Complement of a prepositional phrase serving as a circumstantial Adjunct in the clause. Since the WH-element is thematic, the minor Complement of the prepositional phrase is given the status of Theme, while the minor Predicator appears within the Rheme, in the position the Adjunct has when it is not thematic…

However, this is not the case for the two clause complex examples.  Here the Adjunct and Complement of projected clauses — not the Complement of a prepositional phrase — are each thematised beyond the (now included) projecting clause:

Here the first clause is a thematic agnate of Did you say where you put it? and the second clause is a thematic agnate of Did you say who you saw there?.

But see Matthiessen (1995: 417), who (bizarrely) interprets the thematised element of the projected clause as functioning as an element of the projecting clause.

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the who in Who were you seen by? does serve as an element of clause structure:

• textually as Theme,
• interpersonally as Complement/WH-,
• experientially as Senser (along with by).

Importantly, the Range/Complement of a prepositional phrase functions as an indirect participant in the Process of the clause — indirect, because the participation is mediated by the minor Process/Predicator of the prepositional phrase. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 312, 329):

We can make a contrast, then, between direct and indirect participants, using ‘indirect participant’ to refer to the status of a nominal group that is inside a prepositional phrase. We have already seen that the participant roles of (1) Client, Recipient and Receiver and (2) Scope, Behaviour and Verbiage are sometimes expressed ‘indirectly’ in this sense, as in gave money to the cashier, plays beautifully on the piano. … The preposition, it was suggested, acts as a kind of intermediary whereby a nominal element can be introduced as an ‘indirect’ participant in the main process.

[4] Reminder: Fawcett (in press) is still unpublished, 21 years after the first edition of this book.