David Rose Misrepresenting Halliday On Axis

David Rose replied to Ed McDonald on sys-func on 4/8/22 at 8:45:

These are really important points Ed, that everyone engaging with SFL needs to grapple with (as we are).

That is why I posted MAKH’s own account of his engagement with axis, in the foreword to Martin, Wang & Zhu (reposted below).

1.

His starting point here is not with the paradigmatic or syntagmatic axis, but with the relation between them, as recognised by Saussure. His second point is that most linguists since have ignored this relation. His third point is that his teacher Firth foregrounded it. The fourth is his own effort to describe language ‘biaxially’, and coming to see it as sets of choices (systems). His fifth point is Firth’s very specific conception of the axial relation ‘as the paradigm of options that were available at a given location in the structure’. He then devotes more detail to this point, because it is central to systemic theory. Every system in SFL starts from ‘a given location in the structure’, such as syllable or nom gp. Every feature in a system is realised by a distinct structure, such as Onset+Rhyme or Deictic+Thing. His last point here is that this representation enables us to see the interdependence of diverse system/structure options, which is what ‘opened up metafunctions and rank scale system/structure cycles’ (as you quote me below) as well as strata.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday begins by explaining the difference between the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic axes, not the relation between them. In SFL Theory, the relation between the axes is realisation (symbolic identity).

[2] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday claims that most linguists in the 20th Century focused on the syntagmatic axis rather than the paradigmatic axis, not that they ignored the realisation relation between the axes.

[3] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday claims that Firth was one linguist who did not focus on the syntagmatic axis at the expense of the paradigmatic, not that Firth foregrounded the realisation relation between the axes.

[4] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday is here describing Firth's approach to systems, not the SFL approach that Halliday instigated. For Firth, each element of function structure (e.g. Deictic) is an entry point to a network of choices. For Halliday, it is the formal rank unit (e.g. nominal group) that is the entry condition for the network of choices that specify how the unit is structured in a given instance. Rose fails to notice this important distinction between Firthian linguistics and SFL Theory.

[5] This is misleading, because it is untrue. No single feature specifies the structure of a unit. Instead, a realisation statement associated with a feature specifies the insertion, conflation etc. of elements. Halliday (1995 [1993]: 272) identifies seven types of realisation statement:

(a) 'Insert' an element (e.g., insert subject);

(b) 'Conflate' one element with another (e.g., conflate subject with theme);

(c) Order' an element with respect to another, or to some defined location (e.g., order finite auxiliary before subject);

(d) 'Classify' an element (e.g., classify process as mental: cognition);

(e) "Split' an element into a further configuration (e.g., split mood into subject + finite);

(f) 'Preselect' some feature at a lower rank (e.g., preselect nominal group);

(g) 'Lexify' an element (e.g., lexify subject : it).

[6] This is misleading, because it is untrue. Halliday is concerned with explaining how systems can be elaborated in delicacy and combined into networks. He does not claim that this is what 'opened up metafunctions and rank scale system/structure cycles as well as strata'.

Importantly, this last bare assertion is the crucial point Rose wants to make, and all the misrepresentations that precede it are falsely presented as evidence for what is, logically, a non-sequitur.