John Bateman On The Necessity Of Rank Across Semiotic Systems

John Bateman replied to David Rose on Sysfling on 28/8/23 at 21:03: 

picking up on [your]:

Not sure about necessity of ranks, since lowest lg ranks have only next stratum to operate in

this is an interesting modelling issue. Formally, I would tend to want to include a category even if it is not expanded if it is a logical consequence of other components of the theory. I take rank in this sense — i.e. without some unit of structure there is no place for axis to start its magic.

Also wrt Jim's :

“As systemicists interested in genesis, should we be proposing a major component of our cartography (i.e. a rank, a metafunction or a stratum) in the absence of a distinctive system of valeur?” [Martin 2010]

maybe one ranked unit is enough?

In any case, if I had to put my finger on one reoccurring (quite serious) problem with many many multimodal analyses that I see (including some waving the SFS flag), it would be lack of attention to rank — mostly signalled by system networks hanging wonderously in the air and curious 'multiple options' (e.g. 'either-and' systems) going along with that, mostly, I suspect, because the units aren't clear.

So, I'd be very hesitant to leave out rank.

Blogger Comments:

[1] See David Rose On Ranks, Axis And Strata In Protolanguage.

[2] This is misleading, because it is not true. Firstly, rank is a means of modelling formal constituency, so it only applies to strata that feature formal constituents. In language, these are lexicogrammar on the content plane and phonology and graphology on the expression plane. Since other semiotic systems do not have a lexicogrammar — they cannot be read aloud — rank can only apply to their expression plane. Rank is a local dimension, not a global dimension (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 32).

Secondly, the SFL model of ideational semantics demonstrates that rank is unnecessary, since it has axis, system and structure, but no rank. Instead of a rank scale of forms, there are types of phenomenon: sequence, figure and element (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 49), with each type being the entry condition to systems.

[3] See David Rose On Ranks, Axis And Strata In Protolanguage.

[4] To be clear, the problem here not the absence of rank, but the absence of entry conditions. These are provided by rank units in lexicogrammar and phonology/graphology, but there are no rank units on the content plane of a semiotic system other than language, because only language has a lexicogrammar.

[5] See [2] and [4].