"The Fact That The Coverage Of Groups Is Far Fuller In The Cardiff Grammar"

Fawcett (2010: 270):

One of the major differences between the Sydney and the Cardiff frameworks is the fact that the coverage of groups is far fuller in the Cardiff Grammar than it is in the Sydney Grammar. See especially Tucker (1998) for a definitive description of the quality group and Fawcett (in press) for a fairly full account of all four of the classes of group that are recognised in the Cardiff Grammar. In large measure, it is the evidence from this mass of descriptive detail that has led us to replace the predictions of the 'rank scale' by probabilities as to what classes of unit fills what elements of structure.

Thus there is still considerable scope for the further development of the description of groups in the Sydney Grammar, and it may be that as this happens the over-narrow predictions set out in IFG will be replaced by a more wide-ranging statement — possibly expressed in terms of probabilities, as here.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This bare assertion, unsupported by evidence, is misleading. On the one hand, as previously demonstrated, every group structure of the Cardiff Grammar has an SFL counterpart. On the other hand, the Cardiff Grammar posits additional classes of group, quality and quantity, which, as previously demonstrated:

• are theoretically redundant,
• complicate the description unnecessarily, and
• introduce theoretical inconsistencies.

Moreover, as far as nominal groups are concerned, from the perspective of SFL Theory, the Cardiff Grammar fails to distinguish between embedding and submodification, as previously demonstrated.

[2] This is misleading, because it is not true. Fawcett's "over-narrow predictions" are the limitations on embedding that he falsely ascribes to SFL Theory, as a result of his failure to understand embedding in terms of rankshift and the principle of exhaustiveness, as previously demonstrated.