Why 'Syntagmatic Probabilities' Are No Replacement For The Rank Scale

Fawcett (2010: 338):

These systemic probabilities and the model's ability to vary them play a major role in the computer generation of text in the Cardiff Grammar. But from the viewpoint of the text analyst — whether a human or a computer — what is needed is the 'realisation' of these systemic probabilities as structural probabilities. In other words, probabilities that are ultimately semantic and paradigmatic have to be expressed in terms of probabilities that are formal and syntagmatic. And, within the wide range of syntagmatic probabilities at the level of form, is the particular set which states the relative likelihood that a given unit will fill a given element of another unit (or an element of the same class of unit higher in the structure). It is this aspect of the syntagmatic probabilities that replaces the concept of the 'rank scale'.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the notion of systemic probabilities realised as 'structural/syntagmatic probabilities' is inconsistent with Fawcett's model (Figure 4, p36), because probability is the quantification of potential, whereas Fawcett (incongruously) models syntagmatic structure as instance.

[2] To be clear, syntagmatic probabilities can not replace the concept of 'the rank scale' because the rank scale is a model formal constituency, whereas syntagmatic probabilities, as form-function relations, are not.