Misunderstanding Halliday's Representations Of Hypotactic Structures

Fawcett (2010: 318-9):

But matters are in fact even more complex, because recursive structures can occur within 'unit complexes' of both the 'paratactic' and the 'hypotactic' types (as is illustrated on pp. 216-9 of IFG). Thus there can be more than one layer of structure between each 'basic rank', e.g., as in the three layers of hypotactically related clauses in the two examples in Figure 2 in Section 2.6.1 of Chapter 2, and similarly in Halliday's example of I don't mind if you leave as soon as you've finished, shown in Figure 7-2 on p. 217 of IFG. (This example would have essentially the same representation as (a) in Figure 2.)

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the only analyses that match Fawcett's description are Figures 7-2 and 7-3 in Halliday (1994: 217):

[2] This is misleading. The layers of structure in a clause complex are at the rank of clause — not "between" ranks.

[3] To be clear, the two examples in Figure 2 present one layer of structure — α β γ— not three.

[4] To be clear, Halliday's Figure 7-2 presents two layers of structure, not three. See [1] above.

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Figure 7-2 presents two layers of structure, whereas Figure 2 presents only one layer. 

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It is clear, from the above, that Fawcett is unable to understand Halliday's representations of hypotactic structure.