Fawcett's 'Co-ordination' Viewed Through The Lens Of SFL Theory

Fawcett (2010: 263-4):

The first type of recursion is co-ordination. Here two or more units fill a single element of structure. It occurs between all units: clauses and all classes of groups and occasionally clusters. Typically the units are (or in the case of the genitive cluster, contain) potential referring expressions, because co-ordination is ultimately not between syntactic units but between mental referents.

Co-ordination is typically marked by an overt Linker, such as and or or, and these two Linkers can occur with all units. (The linker has a lower case "l" when it co-ordinates groups.) A Linker or linker may co-occur with intonational marking or a punctuation mark (e.g., the two commas in Peter, his brother, his brother's wife and their children).

While some co-ordinators (e.g., and and or) occur with all units, each class of unit has its own set, with its own probabilities. Thus there is not a single set of choices in co-ordination for all units, as some grammars imply.

Sometimes the meaning of 'co-ordination' is re-enforced by another linker that introduces the first unit, as in both my wife and myself. This suggests that the L/linker should be treated as an element of the unit that it introduces, rather than as a 'structural signal' that is not part of either unit (cp. Halliday 1966).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Fawcett's co-ordination largely corresponds to paratactic extension (but see a later post for anomalies in this regard).

[2] To be clear, from the perspective of SFL Theory, Fawcett's "mental referents" correspond to ideational meanings — prototypically participants (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999) — and, grammatically, paratactic extension ("co-ordination") obtains between formal units of the rank scale. Fawcett's notion of "mental referents" is inconsistent with the epistemological assumptions of SFL Theory (see, e.g., Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 416, 426, 442, 603).

[3] To be clear, in SFL Theory, grammar is linguistic content, whereas graphology and phonology are linguistic expression. That is, importantly, they are different levels of symbolic abstraction.

[4] To be clear, in SFL Theory, system choices are functional rather than formal. Here again, contrā SFL Theory, Fawcett takes the view 'from below', identifying systemic features with the expressions of meanings rather than the meanings they express.

[5] This is potentially misleading. In his reply to Matthews' criticisms of the concept of rank, Halliday (2002 [1966]: 125) wrote:

Given an adequate representation of the underlying grammar, there is no need to insist that every element should be assigned constituent status at all; it is quite usual not to recognise intonation features as constituents, and the same considerations could apply, as Matthews points out, provided limitations were stated, to markers such as and and or. I do not know how to specify in a general formation the conditions under which accountability in constituent terms would not be required.

In SFL Theory, the equivalents of Fawcett's L/linkers are analysed as constituents at all ranks; eg clause (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 457):

group (op cit: 566):

and word (op cit: 564):

and, at clause rank, they serve as structural Theme (op cit: 107-8).