Confusing Formal Constituency With Function Structure

Fawcett (2010: 247):

The main notation used by Halliday in IFG consists of several lines of analysis, as exemplified in Figure 7 in Chapter 7. If we showed just the line that is the equivalent of what is shown here (the top line of the MOOD analysis), it would be as in Figure 15.

This gives essentially the same amount of information as the previous notation, and it has the same limitation that it does not lend itself to showing in the same diagram the lower layers of the structure. Moreover, it is not clear why it should be thought worth using the extra time and work of drawing boxes around categories in the diagram, rather than simply drawing single lines between categories, as in the first notation, i.e., (a) above.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Fawcett's Figure 7, which misanalyses Mrs Skinner as Goal instead of Scope, is reproduced below:

To be clear, Fawcett's tautological claim is that if everything in this diagram is removed, except that which corresponds to the previous notation, then it "gives essentially the same information as the previous notation". Clearly, if this is not done, it provides considerably more information than Figure 15.

[2] This is misleading, because it confuses formal constituency ('lower layers') with function ('structure'). Though units of higher ranks consist of units of lower ranks, the structure of a lower rank (e.g. group) is not a structure of a higher rank (e.g. clause).

[3] To be clear, one practical advantage of using box diagrams for function structure and tree diagrams for formal constituency is that it provides a visual means of distinguishing the two theoretical principles.