The "Principle" Concepts Of A Replacement For 'Rank'

Fawcett (2010: 238-9, 239n):

The principle concepts of the alternative approach

In the approach to 'constituency' proposed here the two key concepts are:

1. that the predictions are made in terms of the relationship of filling that holds between a unit and an element of structure in a higher unit in the tree (rather than being about relations between units), and

2. the use of filling probabilities.⁴ (We shall look at the precise nature of 'filling probabilities' in Section 11.2.2.)

 

⁴ It may be significant that, although the concept of 'filling' was indirectly present in the S&C model (and so is still implicitly there in IFG), it has never been presented as one of the 'basic concepts' of the theory, as it is here (in Section 11.5 of Chapter 11). As we shall see, it is the concept of 'filling' that gives us a principled way to handle co-ordination as a phenomenon that is different from the usual 'componence' relationship of elements in a unit — a difference that all good grammars recognise but for which few have an adequate notation.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this is not an alternative approach to modelling the rank scale — constituency relations between forms (units) — because it is instead concerned with the relation between function (element) and form (unit).

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In Scale & Category Grammar, what Fawcett calls 'filling' is termed exponence, which Halliday (2002 [1961]: 41, 55) explicitly identifies as one of the three scales of abstraction in the architecture of the theory. Halliday (2002 [1961]: 57):

The fact that by moving from structure to class, which is (or can be) a move on the exponence scale, one also moves one step down the rank scale, is due to the specific relation between the categories of class and structure…

However, from the perspective of SFL theory, the term 'exponence' covered both realisation and instantiation (the relation of theory to data). So in SFL theory, the relation is explicitly one of realisation, as illustrated by Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 52):

[3] To be clear, Fawcett's componence is 'the part-whole relationship between a unit and the elements of which it is composed' (p244). That is, it confuses form (unit) with function (element). On the other hand, Fawcett's co-ordination is largely* the relation of paratactic expansion between units; *but see further in the upcoming examination of co-ordination.