David Kellogg On Rank, Axis And Metafunction

David Kellogg wrote to sys-func on 5/7/22 at 6:54:

Chris--your inventory of the architecture of SFL doesn't include RANK (or AXIS). Three possible reasons occur to me....

a) The Cardiff grammar is more strictly Firthian and works with "pieces" of language rather than with the clear hierarchy of units. We can actually see this in the diagramme because the arrow that connects "realization rules/statements" to "system networks" isn't realization or activation but rather "re-entry". So there actually isn't a rank scale. (This is also implicit in the rather vague expression "richly described tree structure", which my old syntax teacher Andy Radford would have heartily approved of....)

b) "Rank" is an organizing principle within Structure (just as System and Structure are principles within Axis). The inventory only includes the basic concepts from the IFG intro and not the points of origin, principles or meta-principles which order them. (It's an inventory and not an actual building!)

c) "Rank" isn't all pervasive in the way that, say, metafunction is. For example, Halliday and Matthiessen are agnostic about whether rank exists across the level of context or even semantics, but they have no such doubts about system, structure, instantiation, or metafunction. (On the other hand, H&M are agnostic about whether metafunction exists at the level of phonology and phonetics and I am much less so....)

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the architectural dimensions are those provided by Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 20):

[2] To be clear, as dimensions, rank and axis are local, rather than global. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 32):

[3] For a close examination of Fawcett's theory of functional syntax, the Cardiff Grammar, see here.

[4] To be clear, paradigmatic and syntagmatic are orders of the local dimension axis; see [2].

[5] See [1].

[6] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 87):

At the rank of tone group:

• the system of TONALITY — choice in the distribution of tone groups — realises the distribution of information units (textual metafunction);
• the system of TONICITY — choice in the placement of tonic prominence — realises the culmination of New information (textual metafunction);
• the system of TONE — choice in the major pitch movement — realises the system of KEY (interpersonal metafunction);
• the systems of TONE SEQUENCE and TONE CONCORD realise the systems of TAXIS and LOGICO-SEMANTIC TYPE (logical metafunction).