I think you’re right that systems have to be the starting point, rather than structures.
Hence my suggestion to start from types of nom gp...naming, pronominal and non-pronominal. That was Christian’s systemic approach in his 1995 LGC, which he named individuation. He also proposed the nom gp function Facet, in place of Pre-Deictic and Pre-Numerative, realised by an embedded nom gp. That was renamed Focus in Martin, Matthiessen and Painter 2010. It replaces the need for a dual analysis of Head dissociated from Thing (which isn’t systemically motivated). That’s what I mean by simpler.
So no, ‘Head’ doesn't come into my reasoning. Simply different realisations of Thing... proper nouns specify an entity uniquely, pronouns specify by person, proximity, number, nouns need specifying... hence deixis, epithesis etc.
Martin, Doran and Zhang (2021) is far more than an introduction to the Word issues on nom gps. It explains all this and lots more.
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[1] To be clear, this is also the modus operandi of Systemic Functional Linguistics. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 49):
Being a ‘functional grammar’ means that priority is given to the view ‘from above’; that is, grammar is seen as a resource for making meaning – it is a semanticky kind of grammar. But the focus of attention is still on the grammar itself. Giving priority to the view ‘from above’ means that the organising principle adopted is that of system: the grammar is seen as a network of interrelated meaningful choices. In other words, the dominant axis is the paradigmatic one: the fundamental components of the grammar are sets of mutually defining contrastive features. Explaining something consists not in stating how it is structured but in showing how it is related to other things: its pattern of systemic relationships, or agnateness…
However, in Systemic Functional Grammar: A Next Step Into The Theory — Axial Relations (Martin 2013), Rose's mentor takes the opposite view and derives systems from structures. Evidence here.
[2] To be clear, pronominal and non-pronominal are not types of nominal group, but classes of the form that serve as the Thing of nominal groups.
[3] This is misleading, because it is the opposite of what is true. The Facet/Focus function is an element of experiential structure when the experiential Thing and logical Head do not coincide. Determining this fact requires the analysis of both logical and experiential structures, and Matthiessen (1995: 653-63) and Martin et al (2010: 169-70) provide both analyses.
[4] And vice versa đ
[5] As previously noted, Martin, Doran & Zhang (2021: 271) create descriptive inconsistencies by misconstruing a structure marker as a structural unit, in an unranked form they invent called a 'subjacency duplex':
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