Misunderstanding Huddleston On Minimal Bracketing

 Fawcett (2010: 319):

I agree with Huddleston (1988:148-9), therefore, when he says that "hypotactic univariate structures do not lend themselves satisfactorily to the minimal bracketing principle", i.e., to a representation of such structures as "α β γ" . 

Huddleston devotes four pages to a discussion of 'maximal' vs. 'minimal' bracketing and an examination of Halliday's illustrative analyses (pp. 148-51), and his strongly worded conclusion (which seems to be justified) is that "the α β γ structure is unmotivated and inconsistently applied" (1988:151).

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the 'minimal bracketing principle' is ranked constituent analysis, which construes formal constituency as a rank scale; see Halliday (1994: 20-8). Hypotactic univariate structures, on the other hand, are complexes of units of the rank scale. There is no inconsistency between the two notions: the former defines the units which are complexed in the latter.

[2] To be clear, here Fawcett glosses 'to the minimal bracketing principle' as 'to a representation of such structures as α β γ'. This demonstrates that Fawcett does not understand Huddleston's argument; see [1].

[3] To be clear, Fawcett does not provide Huddleston's argument. Endorsing Huddleston's conclusion without providing his argument amounts to a fallacious use of the argument from authority.