Fawcett's Understanding Of "The Concepts Underlying IFG"

Fawcett (2010: 285-6):

The core of the IFG framework still appears to be the concept of units on the 'rank scale' — even though it is mentioned only occasionally in IFG and not at all in "Systemic theory". Moreover, the concept of class (which is always 'class of unit') is tied into the 'rank scale' too, in that it is defined in terms of its patterns of operation in the unit next above on the 'rank scale'. The concept of element of structure continues to serve a vital role in the theory, though it receives little overt recognition. The concept of delicacy seems to hover between being a theoretical category and a descriptive convenience. (Systemically the more important concept is dependence, and structurally, as I suggested in Section 10.3.4 of Chapter 10, showing structures with varying degrees of delicacy adds unnecessary complexity to the representation of texts.) And exponence in "Categories" was a concept waiting to be redefined as realisation, and then needing to be split up into specific realisation operations. The original concept of 'exponence' has no role in the theory of syntax that underlies IFG, though 'realisation' is used as the general term for the interstratal relationship. To these concepts from "Categories" Halliday has added three further ones: 'multiple structures' in the clause, and 'parataxis' and 'hypotaxis'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is still misleading, because it is still untrue. On the one hand, the rank scale provides the organisation of Halliday (1994), and the entry conditions to grammatical systems. On the other hand, the rank scale is, of course, mentioned in "Systemic Theory". Halliday (1995 [1993]: 273):

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, units (e.g. groups) are classified (e.g. nominal) according to the elements of structure of the higher rank that they prototypically realise (e.g. participant).

[3] This is misleading, though comically so, because all editions of IFG pay far more attention to elements of structure — at clause rank: participants, processes and circumstances — than they do to the systems that specify them.

[4] This is misleading, also comically so, because delicacy is the ordering principle of the system network (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 20), which is the fundamental formalism of Systemic Functional Theory.

[5] This is misleading, because taxis (interdependency) is not more important than delicacy, if only because taxis is confined to the logical metafunction, whereas delicacy is a dimension of every system of all metafunctions.

[6] This is still misleading, because it is still untrue, no matter how many times Fawcett repeats it (the logical fallacy known as the argument from repetition). On the one hand, the organising principle of such structures is composition (extension), not delicacy (elaboration). On the other hand, the bare assertion that they add unnecessary complexity to the description is invalidated by the additional explanatory potential that they provide.

[7] This is misleading. On the one hand, the term 'exponence' (Halliday 1961) was not redefined as realisation. Instead, SFL Theory distinguishes two different types of relation that were conflated in Firth's use of the term: realisation and instantiation. On the other hand, the concept of realisation is not "split up into specific realisation operations". That is, realisation operations are not subtypes of the concept of realisation, but statements that identify circumstances in which the relation obtains. 

[8] This is misleading. On the one hand, the two relations inherent in the original concept of 'exponence', realisation and instantiation, both play very important rôles in SFL Theory. On the other hand, realisation is not merely the relation between strata. Realisation obtains wherever there is a relation of symbolic abstraction, as, for example, between:

• function and form,
• system and structure,
• selection expression and lexical item.

And importantly, SFL Theory reduces syntax (and morphology) to a rank scale of formal units, which is not what Fawcett means by "the theory of syntax that underlies IFG".

[9] This is seriously misleading, because it misrepresents SFL Theory as simply the addition of metafunction structures and taxis to Scale & Category Grammar; see the following post for evidence that invalidates the claim.