Fawcett's Reasons For The Lack Of Discussion Of Solutions To Problems In SFL

Fawcett (2010: 312-3, 313n):

We need to ask why there has been so little discussion of alternative systemic functional solutions to problems in SFL. The reason is partly the example that is set by Halliday himself. He, like many others, has a strong dislike for the type of supposedly 'hard-nosed' combative argumentation that was so popular in the heyday of Chomskyan linguistics. This may be at least part of the reason why Halliday has only rarely responded to criticisms, and why he hardly ever comments adversely on alternative proposals from within SFL — and so why there is so little 'debate' in SFL. 

On the rare occasions when he does reply to a criticism, his typical response is to concede courteously that the point needs consideration (as he did with respect to Matthews' idea of treating Linkers such as and as "markers"), while at the same time continuing to assert the value of the original concept. The problem is that, with the passage of time and the repeated re-presentation of the original concept (both his own works and, often, in the various introductions to his ideas by others) the criticism gets forgotten and the original concept, despite its weaknesses, survives.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the reason there has been so little discussion of the problem of the rank scale is that the only people who think it a problem are those who cannot understand it. On the other hand, alternative solutions to non-problems have been proposed, not only by Fawcett, but also by others, most notably Martin.

[2] This speculation confuses debate, in general, with one particular type of debate — the type exemplified by Matthews (1966) and Fawcett (2010: 238n, 256n):

… its existence is therefore an embarrassment for the 'rank scale' concept …

We might note that the data that we are about to consider are yet another serious source of embarrassment for the concept of the 'rank scale'.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. When Halliday later formulated Systemic Functional Grammar, he did indeed treat these as structure markers. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 611):

The logico-semantic relation is marked by a conjunction – either by a non-structural one that is used only in this way, i.e. only cohesively, such as for example, furthermore, consequently; or by a structural one whose prototypical function is to mark the continuing clause in a paratactic clause nexus. … the latter are simply analysed as structure markers and are obligatorily thematic as structural Theme.

[4] To be clear, as this blog has demonstrated, this is not true in the case of either the rank scale or structure markers.

∞

It might be mentioned that Fawcett and his fellows are not so keen to have Fawcett's "solutions" discussed. See, for example, here.

Misrepresenting Halliday (1993) On The Realisation Statement 'Order'

Fawcett (2010: 181):

Interestingly, Halliday's original version of his Operation (c) specifies that the task of locating elements in the appropriate sequence in a unit should be achieved by 'ordering' elements in relation to each other — but in "Systemic theory" he adds, after the words "order an element with respect to another", the further words "or to some defined location". This wording seems to suggest that Halliday may wish to extend his original approach to 'ordering' to include the Cardiff Grammar concept of a '(numbered) place in a unit' — and perhaps even to embrace the concept of a 'potential structure' (i.e., an 'ordered list of elements at places in a unit') — as introduced in Fawcett (1973/81). Since this concept has actually been used in the Penman implementation of the Sydney Grammar (as noted in Section 10.4.2 of Chapter 10), it is possible that Halliday's wording here may be intended to reflect the adoption in the Penman implementation of my concept of 'places'.

 Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, since 'operation' is Fawcett's term only, not Halliday's. Where Fawcett's term demonstrates that his model is limited to text generation by computers, Halliday's model is concerned with the system-&-process of human language, whose material substrate is biological, rather than technological.

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. The concept of a '(numbered) place in a unit' only arises from giving priority to the view 'from below' — structure over system, form over function — in a model that is concerned with adapting theory to the limitations of computers.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. In SFL Theory, potential is modelled as system, not structure. Halliday explicitly rejected the Chomskyan notion of language as an inventory of structures.

However, the notion of semantic 'structure potential', varying for genre (text type) appears in the work of Hasan (1985: 64ff), though Halliday himself did not adopt his wife's model. It can also be noted here that Martin (1992) misunderstands Hasan's 'Generic Structure Potential' as modelling genre, rather than semantics varying according to genre.

[4] To be clear, the Penman 'implementation of the Sydney Grammar' was an adaptation of SFL Theory to the limitations of computers.

Misrepresenting Halliday (1966) In A Footnote

Fawcett (2010: 48n):

To understand fully what is at stake here, we must recognise the fact that linguists employ two main metaphors for thinking about the levels of language. In the longer established metaphor, the more abstract phenomena such as 'meanings' of various types are regarded as 'higher', and the more concrete phenomena, such as the spoken and written forms of language, are thought of as 'lower'. But in the metaphor implied in the use of Hockett's terms "deep structure" and "surface structure" (as later taken over by Chomsky and others) this model is inverted. In this metaphor, the extension of the model of syntax to take account of 'semantics' involves the addition of a 'deep' or 'underlying' representation, this being seen as the 'level' within syntax that is nearest to meaning. In other words, in choosing to give "Some notes on 'deep' grammar" the title he did, Halliday was adopting the terminology of the then dominant theoretical model of language. In contrast, he had presented in "Categories" a diagram in which the relationships are horizontal, in which "context" is on the left, "form" is in the middle" and "substance" is on the right. After Halliday (1966/76), however, he quickly moved to the use of the model of language in which 'context' and 'meaning' are higher than 'form' and in which 'substance' is lower. It seems that he was influenced in this — at least in part — by the way in which the relationships between the strata of language are represented in Lamb's Stratificational Grammar (from which Halliday took the word "realisation" for its use in denoting the relationship between levels). So in Halliday (1977/78:128), for example, we find a model in which 'meaning' is above 'form' and 'phonetics' is below.

Blogger Comments:

[1] Here Fawcett misleads by contrasting 'meaning' with 'spoken and written forms of language' instead of 'form'.  In Fawcett's own model, it is meaning that is the higher level of abstraction, and form that is the "more concrete".  Spoken and written forms of language, on the other hand, are language — i.e. all strata — that vary at points along the cline of instantiation, according to the contextual feature of mode.

[2] In terms of present-day SFL theory, Fawcett here confuses the dimension of symbolic abstraction ("more abstract" vs "more concrete"), in this case: stratification, with the dimension of instantiation ("deep" vs "surface").  The "inversion" is not of the stratification hierarchy, but in the representation of the cline of instantiation, where "deep" (potential) is schematised above "surface" (instance).

[3] Here Fawcett tries to make sense of his confusion by locating potential ("deep or underlying") as a higher level of symbolic abstraction within his level of form ("the level within syntax that is nearest to meaning").  In terms of Fawcett's own model (Figure 4), "deep or underlying" at the level of form actually corresponds to his bottom-left module, the intersection of potential and form: realisation rules/statements. 

[4] This is misleading because it misrepresents Halliday.  Halliday (1966) is concerned with arguing for the system as the underlying form of representation ('deep grammar').  The deep vs surface distinction in this early paper is not the stratification of levels of abstraction.

[5] This is misleading because it implies that Halliday (1966) is a reworking of the stratification hierarchy in Halliday (1961).  Trivially, but unsurprisingly, the diagram in Halliday (1961) is laid out in the opposite way to Fawcett's description, as shown below:

[6] This confuses the orientation of diagrams (theoretical expression) with levels of symbolic abstraction (theoretical content).

[7] The theoretical advantage of the term 'realisation' is that it explicitly identifies the relation between strata as an identifying: intensive: symbolic between a lower Token and a higher Value.  This is a case of turning the theory back onto itself.

The Reasons Why Fawcett Prefers The Term 'Realisation Rule'

Fawcett (2010: 40n):

At various points in his writings, Halliday contrasts the systemic functional view of 'language as a resource' with the Chomskyan view of 'language as a set of rules'. Hence his strong preference for the term "realisation statement" over "realisation rule". Like many other systemic functional linguists, however, I take the view that, in defining the 'resource', we necessarily use a type of 'rule'. Thus a system network is itself a set of 'rules' about what features may be chosen under what conditions. This was first demonstrated in a fully explicit manner in the appendices to Hudson (1976), and similar 'rules' are found in the representation of the system network in a computer implementation in Prolog (as described in Fawcett, Tucker & Lin 1993). And realisation statements are even more obviously a type of 'rule'. In other words, while a systemic functional grammar does not have 'phrase structure rules' and 'transformational rules', it does have other types of rule. Here, then, we shall treat the terms "realisation rule" and "realisation statement" as interchangeable.

Blogger Comment:

[1]  The word 'rule' is problematic because encompasses two distinct types of modality: modulation  (obligation) and modalisation (usuality/probability).  As modulation, it also encompasses two distinct types of speech function: command and (modulated) statement; and the latter nullifies the distinction between 'rule' and 'statement'.

The term 'realisation statement', on the other hand, has the advantage of both specifying statement, rather than command, and encompassing probability (modalisation) as a property of system potential.

[2] This is an instance of the logical fallacy known as Argumentum Ad Populum, since it invokes the beliefs of (unspecified) others as support for the proposition.

[3] On the one hand, this is a bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument: the logical fallacy known as Ipse Dixit.  On the other hand, it is demonstrably false, since the notion of 'defining' does not entail the notion 'rule'.

[4] The use of thus here is misleading, since it gives the false impression that the statement that it begins follows logically from the preceding unsupported bare assertion.

[5] Since this is a bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument, the reference to Hudson (1976) constitutes an instance of the logical fallacy known as Appeal To Authority (Argumentum Ad Verecundum).

To be clear, a system network is organised on the basis of logical relations, such as:

• elaboration (delicacy)
• extension: alternation (disjunct options)
• extension: addition (conjunct options)
• enhancement: condition (entry conditions)

and to "read out" a traversal of a network is to produce statements of the type:

if X, then either Y or Z, and if both Z and A, then B or C.

For strict sense in which statements are a type of rule, see [1] above.

[6] Here Fawcett cites his own work as evidence in support of his own view.  This might be interpreted as the logical fallacies known as Appeal To Accomplishment and, on the basis of this critique, False Authority.

[7] This is another bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument.  For the strict sense in which realisation statements are a type of rule, see [1] above.

[8] On the one hand, this is another bare assertion, unsupported by reasoned argument.  On the other hand, it makes use of the logical fallacy known as Argument From Repetition (Argumentum Ad Nauseam).

[9] Here Fawcett, having purported to argue for 'rule' over 'statement', concludes by regarding the alternatives as interchangeable.