Misrepresenting Halliday (1994) On "Filling" Notation

Fawcett (2010: 251-2):

Interestingly, there is an equivalent gap in the Sydney Grammar's notation for representing the outputs from the grammar. This arises from the surprising fact that there is no diagram in IFG — or in the equivalent diagrams in Matthiessen & Bateman (1991) or Matthiessen (1995) — that shows how such a relationship should be represented in the full analysis of a text-sentence. In all of these works each unit is analysed in its own terms, almost as if the way in which they are to be related to the units above and below them in the structure is self-evident and has no complications. Filling is in fact a complex matter, and it very often happens that the possibilities as to what class of unit may fill an element depends, either in absolute or in probabilisitc [sic] terms, on choices in the generation of the unit above. The most obvious example is the restrictions on what may fill the Complements of particular Main Verbs (for which see Fawcett 1996).

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is the direct opposite of what is true. Halliday (1994: 109) provides the following diagram illustrating both clause experiential function types and their realisations by classes of forms at the rank of group/phrase:

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 169) further elaborates the model for all three metafunctional structures:

[2] This is not misleading, because it is true. In SFL theory, each rank provides the entry condition to the systems of that rank, in which the structures of each rank are specified.

[3] This is misleading because, in SFL Theory, formal constituents are related to each other by the rank scale, and the relation between function structures at a higher rank and formal syntagms at the lower rank is specified as realisation.

[4] To be clear, in contradiction of SFL Theory, Fawcett here gives priority to the view 'from below', classes of form that realise functions, instead of the view 'from above', the functions that are realised by forms.

[5] To be clear, in SFL Theory, Complement is an element of interpersonal structure at clause rank, which may be conflated with most, if not all, types of participant in experiential structures. Any restrictions on the class of unit that realises a Complement thus depend on the type of participant with which it is conflated.