Misunderstanding 'Accountability At All Ranks' And The Rank Scale

Fawcett (2010: 336):

Clearly, the abolition of the 'verbal group' seriously affects the standard claim of the concept of the 'rank scale' that there should be 'accountability at all ranks'. While it might just possibly be arguable that we should treat Linkers such as and, Binders such as because and even perhaps Adjuncts such as therefore as 'minor' exceptions (leaving aside for the moment the various other problems for the 'rank scale' concept that we have noted) it is simply not possible to claim that the elements of the clause are always (or even typically) filled by groups, once the Operator, the Auxiliaries and the Main Verb are all recognised as clause elements, because these are clearly not filled by groups. The abolition of the 'verbal group' therefore leaves a considerable hole in any description of a language that is expected to illustrate the 'rank scale' concept.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, this misunderstands the notion of 'accountability at all ranks'. In Scale-&-Category Grammar, Halliday (2002 [1966]: 120) defined this as 'chain-exhaustive assignment to constituents', and in SFL Theory (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 84), this is know as the principle of exhaustiveness:

The general principle of exhaustiveness means that everything in the wording has some function at every rank (cf. Halliday, 1961, 1966c).

That is, 'accountability at all ranks' does not refer to the units on the rank scale of formal constituency, such as the verbal group, but to the assignment of functions to the constituents of a rank unit.

[2] To be clear, the limiting case of a group is a single word: a one-word group is still a group, as demonstrated by nominal groups consisting of only one pronoun.

[3] To be clear, as previously demonstrated, these "problems" can indeed be left aside.

[4] To be clear, this repeats Fawcett's serious misunderstanding of the rank scale. The rank scale is a model of formal constituency: clauses consist of groups, which consist of words, which consist of morphemes. This is distinct from function-form relations in which a functional element at a higher rank is realised by a formal unit of the rank below. For example, the claim that a clause consists of groups ± phrases does not entail that a functional element of a clause, such as Theme, is realised by a single group or phrase.

[5] This would indeed be true, since the hole would be where the verbal group had been removed.