Not Recognising The 'Word' As A Syntactic Unit In English

Fawcett (2010: 255, 255-6n):

h < mountain, h <+ s

In traditional grammar, the existing element mountain in such an example would be described as the 'base' and the element as a "suffix". Here, however, we shall not use these terms. The reason is that there is no need (in English but not necessarily in other languages) to recognise the 'word' as a syntactic unit — though this was done in Scale and Category Grammar and in early Systemic Functional Grammar (e.g., as described in Berry 1975:85). …

¹⁵ There is only place that I can think of where a systemic functional linguist actually shows what the implications of placing the categories of 'word' and 'morpheme' on the 'rank scale' are for the representation of text-sentences. This is in Berry (1975:9), a work that provides a very useful 'fleshing out' of the concepts in Halliday's "Categories". Morphology is simply ignored in most other introductions to SFL. Indeed, this lack of discussion can be taken as indirect evidence for the rather different view of the 'word' and the 'morpheme' taken here — at least with respect to English. See the discussion in Section 10.5.2 of Chapter 10 of the problems for the 'rank scale' concept of languages such as Japanese, Mohawk and Swahili.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is potentially misleading. Like Scale & Category Grammar, (current) SFL Theory models syntax and morphology as a rank scale that includes the word and morpheme as units.

[2] To be clear, placing the word and morpheme on the rank scale means that groups consist of words and words consist of morphemes. In SFL Theory, this has no implication for the representation of text sentences, mainly because 'text sentence' is not a rank in SFL Theory, and if it was, its structure would be represented at that rank, and not at the rank of word or morpheme.

[3] This is not misleading, because it is true. One reason for this is that the priority of SFL Theory is function, not form (and system, not structure). Another reason is the priority given to the clause in a functional theory that interprets grammar in terms of meaning. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 10):

The clause is the central processing unit in the lexicogrammar – in the specific sense that it is in the clause that meanings of different kinds are mapped into an integrated grammatical structure.

[4] To be clear, on the one hand, this is a non-sequitur, because a lack of discussion does not logically entail a different point of view. On the other hand, it is true that Fawcett takes a very different view to the word and morpheme in English.

[5] See the examination of that discussion here, where Fawcett makes the false assumption that the same systems operate at the same rank across different languages.