"The Network"

Fawcett (2010: 302):

The brief summary given here shows only what happens for one unit. If the output is to be a sentence with more than one layer of structure — as is typically the case — then the network will first be entered to generate a clause and its elements, and then re-entered to generate any 'lower' unit that is required. This may be a nominal group, as here, or one of the other various types of group. The important point is that each such re-entry to the network adds a new unit to the structure, each with its own internal structure. And, as I have pointed out on numerous occasions in the main part of the book, language has an amazing ability to generate units within units — clauses within clauses, groups within groups, clauses within groups, and so on. Yet the simple principles for generating structure that have been illustrated here are sufficient (with a small number of extensions) to cover all of these cases.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Fawcett does not supply this network. Given that the same network is said to specify the structures of both clauses and groups, it cannot be any network already devised by Halliday or Matthiessen.