Robin Fawcett On 'Forget' + Location

Using the alias 'Dmytro Poremskyi', Robin Fawcett wrote to sys-func on 23 Sept 2021, at 05:13 and on 25 Sept 2021, at 02:42:

I'm curious to know your (functionally grounded) opinion regarding the following usage recommendation:

(taken from Oxford American Wordpower Dictionary for Learners of English)

It is obvious that one may find quite a few instances of 'forget' + location: place across oral and written corpora, but do you think SFG could shed some light upon the reason behind the (prescriptive?) preference here? I wonder if it can be somehow linked to process type analysis, perhaps involving the comparison with 'leave' ...

… However, quite a few native speakers of different varieties of English would maintain that it is perfectly normal to forget something somewhere:

Do you think SFL can account for this seeming deviation?

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Fawcett's first extract distinguishes four usages of 'forget':

1. forget about something
2. fail to remember to do something
3. fail to bring something with you
4. stop thinking about something

and the claim that a Location cannot be construed with 'forget' applies only to the third usage.

In Fawcett's second extract, on the other hand, the writer mistakenly assumes that the claim applies to all usages of 'forget'. Of course, other usages of 'forget' can be construed with a Location, as exemplified by:

However, in the third usage, above, 'forget' serves the same function as the verbal group complex 'forget to bring', and so serves as a material Process:

The reason why at home cannot be added in this usage of 'forget' is that such a 'rest' Location (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 317) is inconsistent with the directed motion of 'bring'. Cf He is bringing his passport at home. However, when directional 'bring' is made explicit, with or without 'forget', directional Locations can be construed:

In Fawcett's Systemic Functional Syntax, the Cardiff Grammar, there is no verbal group, and so, no verbal group complex. This is one reason why Fawcett is unable to answer his own question.

Robin Fawcett On Michæl Halliday's Grammatical Systems As Semantic

Robin Fawcett wrote to Sysfling on 23 Jun 2019 at 15:49:

My concern in my short memoir was to remind us all of his role in welcoming and re-enforcing the fundamental message of Halliday''s important 1966 paper — and in particular through his insightful introductions to the sections of the book. These were the first intimations of a concept that Halliday was exploring — and often seems completely committed to — in his writings on the late 1960s and early 1970s (and indeed in Halliday 1985, though less so in Halliday 1994). This was the concept that the system networks of TRANSITIVITY, MOOD, THEME and LOGIOC-SEMANTIC RELATIONS provide choices between meaning — i.e. semantic features), not forms …

Blogger Comments:

See the immediately preceding post.

For the second time in two days, Fawcett uses the tragic untimely death of a colleague as a pretext for promoting the SFL theoretical architecture that Halliday abandoned after 1978, largely because Fawcett mistakenly believes that Halliday's superseded model leaves room in the SFL architecture for his theory of syntax at the level below semantics.

For why Fawcett's model does not withstand close scrutiny, see the explanations here.

With regard to Fawcett and tragic untimely deaths, see here for Fawcett's public dishonest treatment of me at the time of my mother's cruel, premature death from mesothelioma.

Robin Fawcett Misrepresenting Michæl Halliday's Theorising

 Robin Fawcett wrote to Sysfling on 22 Jun 2019 at 11:10:

… the development of the Cardiff Model of language and its use (although our main focus, like Halliday's, has remained on language — and in our case on the cognitive-interactive modelling of language and its use). 

… Halliday's first tentative explorations of his theoretical shift (in Halliday 1966), from treating system networks as choices at the level of form to treating them as choices at the level of meaning. 

… a series of Halliday's descriptions of areas of English grammar, ranging from his early system networks (from Halliday 1964), which were of course conceived of as being at the level of form, to later descriptions, some of which illustrate the concept that they can be interpreted as being choices between semantic features. …

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, since it implies that Halliday's theory is not concerned with a "cognitive-interactive modelling of language and its use".  The difference lies in how these dimensions are understood.  Halliday understands the interactive dimension of language as the interpersonal metafunction, understands use in terms of variation along the cline of instantiation, and understands cognition in terms of meaning.  In their work subtitled A Language-based Approach to Cognition, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: ix-x) write:

It seems to us that our dialogue is relevant to current debates in cognitive science. In one sense, we are offering it as an alternative to mainstream currents in this area, since we are saying that cognition "is" (that is, can most profitably be modelled as) not thinking but meaning: the "mental" map is in fact a semiotic map, and "cognition" is just a way of talking about language. In modelling knowledge as meaning, we are treating it as a linguistic construct: hence, as something that is construed in the lexicogrammar. Instead of explaining language by reference to cognitive processes, we explain cognition by reference to linguistic processes. But at the same time this is an "alternative" only if it is assumed that the "cognitive" approach is in some sense natural, or unmarked.

[2] This is misleading.  The stratal distinction of form vs meaning is the distinction in Fawcett's model, but never in Halliday's.  Even when Halliday did propose a level of form (Halliday 1961), the distinction was substance vs form vs situation.  In this early model, the analogue of "meaning" was termed 'context' and construed as an interface between form and situation:

However, by 1976, if not before, Halliday had stratified language in its current formulation. Halliday & Hasan (1976: 5):

[3] To be clear, in Halliday (1978), the systems of transitivity, mood and theme were construed as semantic systems that specified different metafunctional structures that were mapped onto the clause.  However, this model was soon reconstrued, largely due to the need to systematically account for grammatical metaphor as an incongruence between semantic selections and lexicogrammatical selections. As Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429) later explained in their description of semantic systems:

… grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures.

∞

For more of Fawcett's misrepresentations of Halliday's theorising, see the clarifying critiques here.

Robin Fawcett On Complement Vs Adjunct

Robin Fawcett wrote to the sysfling list at 11:11 on 16/11/15:

• It’s been read by everyone  

• Ivy handed the vase to Peter.

My position (like that of a good many other SFL scholars) was (and is) that the referents of the nominal groups within these are Participant Roles rather than Circumstantial Roles (since they are explicitly ‘predicted’ by the Process), and that the underlined portions should therefore, in a functional analysis, be treated as Complements rather than Adjuncts. 

… for me the formal evidence of the presence of a preposition was weaker than the functional evidence that if Peter in Peter was handed the vase by Ivy is a PR, Peter in Ivy handed the vase to Peter is a PR too, this being evidence for treating to Peter as a Complement.) 

My point is not to try to persuade you that I was right…

Blogger Comments:

[1] In SFL theory, where meaning is immanent rather than transcendent, participants such as Senser and Actor are not referents of nominal groups, but functions of nominal groups at clause rank.

[2] In SFL theory, nominal groups within prepositional phrases are designated as indirect participants (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 261).  No-one who understands SFL theory would argue that these nominal groups serve as circumstances.

[3] The underlined portions are not nominal groups; they are prepositional phrases.  (Fawcett's argument about the function of nominal groups is here used to justify a claim about the function of prepositional phrases.)  The nominal groups within the prepositional phrases do function as Complements, but at group/phrase rank, not clause rank.  Each serves as Complement of its minor Predicator.

by	everyone
minor Predicator	Complement

to	Peter
minor Predicator	Complement

Fawcett assumes, without providing any supporting argument, that an experiential participant should be treated as interpersonal Complement and that an experiential circumstance should be treated as interpersonal Adjunct.  However, the criteria for determining interpersonal Complement and Adjunct are not experiential but interpersonal.  Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 122-3):

A Complement is an element within the Residue that has the potential of being Subject but is not; in other words, it is an element that has the potential for being given the interpersonally elevated status of modal responsibility — something that can be the nub of the argument. …

An Adjunct is an element that has not got the potential of being Subject; that is, it cannot be elevated to the interpersonal status of modal responsibility.

In Fawcett's examples, neither by everyone nor to Peter has the potential of being Subject, and so both are Adjuncts, not Complements.  What does have the potential of being Subject is the Complement within each of these prepositional phrases: everyone and Peter.

The motivation for realising Agent, Beneficiary or Range as a prepositional phrase is textual.  Halliday and Matthiessen (2004: 295-6):

… the choice of ‘plus or minus preposition’ with Agent, Beneficiary and Range … serves a textual function. … The principle is as follows. If a participant other than the Medium is in a place of prominence in the message, it tends to take a preposition (i.e. to be construed as ‘indirect’ participant); otherwise it does not. Prominence in the message means functioning either (i) as marked Theme (i.e. Theme but not Subject) or (ii) as ‘late news’ — that is, occurring after some other participant, or circumstance, that already follows the Process. In other words, prominence comes from occurring either earlier or later than expected in the clause; and it is this that is being reinforced by the presence of the preposition. The preposition has become a signal of special status in the message.

See clause transitivity and mood analyses here.

See also previous argumentation here.

See further on indirect participants here.

[4] Fawcett posted this on the sysfling list after the person he was arguing with had died and could no longer put his case.  As this post demonstrates, it was the man who can no longer defend himself that better understood SFL theory and the reasoning behind its categories.

Robin Fawcett On Why Hypotaxis Is Unnecessary

Robin Fawcett wrote to the sysfling list on 30 June 2014 at 09:57:

Just consider the concept of Hypotaxis" for a moment. It models a relationship between, let us say, two clauses, such that one clause is said to be "dependent" on another, but without functioning as an element of it - so without "filling`' it, in Cardiff Grammar terms.

An IFG analysis of "She knows his name" would show that "his name" is a nominal group that fills a Complement/Phenomenon, whereas an analysis of "She knows that he is called Peter" would show "that he is called Peter" as a clause that would be said to be "dependent on" the "main" clause but without filling an element of it. But that misses out a central aspect of the functional analysis. i.e. that "that he is called Peter"Is a Phenomenon in the Process of "someone knowing something". Moreover, this analysis asks us to accept that "She knows" is a main clause. I find that a rather unpersuasive position to take, because we recognize it - don't we? - as an incomplete clause that requires its Complement/ Phenomenon to complete it.

Blogger Comments:

[1] In the case of mental projection, the distinction between embedded clauses and dependent clauses is a very useful and important one.  It is the distinction between a pre-projected fact (embedded clause) and a reported idea (dependent clause).  It is the distinction between a metaphenomenon that is the Range or Agent of the mental Process (embedded clause) and a metaphenomenon that is projected into semiotic existence by the mental Process.  See sample analyses here, and Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 441-482).

However, contrary to claim made by Fawcett, an IFG analysis of She knows that he is called Peter would not

"show "that he is called Peter" as a clause that would be said to be "dependent on" the "main" clause but without filling an element of it".  

The clause that he is called Peter is here an embedded fact, not a dependent clause — She knows (the fact) that he is called Peter — and as such, functions as the Phenomenon of the clause, thereby "filling an element" or "completing the clause" in Fawcett's terms.  See analysis  here.  Cf agnate receptive clause: (the fact) that he is called Peter is known by/to her; agnate theme predication clause: it is (the fact) that he is called Peter that she knows.

In other words, Fawcett has misunderstood and misrepresented the IFG analysis of this clause and then "argued" against his own misunderstanding/misrepresentation in favour of the default SFL analysis.

[2] Unlike Halliday & Matthiessen (2004), Fawcett provides no actual reasoned grammatical argumentation for his unintentional agreement with them, merely:

… the central aspect of the functional analysis …
I find that a rather unpersuasive position to take …
… we recognise it — don't we? — as …

This might be compared to what Fawcett wrote on the Sysfling list at 02:32:43 (GMT) on 9/1/12:

Not all readers will be comfortable with my next point, which is that I suggest that contributions to sysfling that relate to how a given piece of text should be analysed should be expressed in the framework of the assumption that we are scientists of language, i.e. scholars who are seeking, using scientific methods appropriate to our subject of investigation, to understand the nature of language. But this means that we should regard it as inadequate to simply say "I would analyse Text X as follows: ....", without giving reasons for preferring that analysis to others that might be proposed.

Halliday & Matthiessen On Fawcett's Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504): 

His abandonment of the distinction between attributive and identifying seems harder to motivate, since this cannot in fact be explained as a textual (thematic) system in the way that Fawcett proposes.

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 229):

Note therefore that Identified–Identifier cannot simply be explained as Given–New in an ‘identifying’ clause; not surprisingly, since the former are experiential functions whereas the latter are textual.

Halliday & Matthiessen On Fawcett's Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504): 

Fawcett incorporates into the “relational: possessive” category, processes of giving and acquiring; reduces the circumstantial to locational processes only; and includes within these, processes of going and sending. As is to be expected, this alternative analysis embodies certain generalisations that are not made in our account of figures, and ignores certain others which are.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505):

Fawcett’s alternative model for relational processes, with its particular features such as treating ‘giving’ and ‘placing’ as agentive possessives and locatives (‘make…have’, ‘make…be at’) rather than as material dispositives, has to be understood in its total explanatory context: 

(i) in relation to its repercussions within the transitivity system, both the trinocular perspective on transitivity itself (from above, as generalisations about meaning; from roundabout, its consequences for agnateness, delicacy and the move towards lexis; from below, as regularities in the realisation) and the overall topology of content — transitivity in relation to the semantic construal of causality, agency, disposal, and so on; 

(ii) in relation to Fawcett’s architectural design, which differs from ours in having a single system–structure cycle for the two strata of semantics and lexicogrammar (his “syntax”) and then adding a further level of description that is expressed in cognitive terms.

‡

The model of Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 212) has the explanatory advantage of revealing the following consistent systemic proportionalities:

Thus static location in space [enhancement] is construed relationally …

but dynamic motion is construed materially … 

static possession [extension] is construed relationally …

but dynamic transfer of possession is construed materially …

and static quality [elaboration] is construed relationally … 

but dynamic change in quality is construed materially …

which reflects the more general contrast in the ideational semantics (Halliday & Matthiessen 1999: 131):

The domain outside this conscious-semiotic [sensing, saying] centre of the ideational universe is then quintessentially either active (doing) or inert (being) …

Halliday & Matthiessen On Fawcett's Extra-Linguistic Knowledge

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429):

It follows then … that for us [Fawcett’s (extra-linguistic)] “knowledge of the universe” is construed as meaning rather than as knowledge. This meaning is in the first instance created in language; but we have noted that meaning is created in other semiotic systems as well, both other social-semiotic systems and other semiotic systems such as perception. Our account gives language more of a central integrative rôle in the overall system. It is the one semiotic system which is able to construe meanings from semiotic systems in general.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 3):

We contend that the conception of ‘knowledge’ as something that exists independently of language, and may then be coded or made manifest in language, is illusory. All knowledge is constituted in semiotic systems, with language as the most central; and all such representations of knowledge are constructed from language in the first place.

Halliday & Matthiessen On Fawcett's System–Structure Cycle

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 429): 

In Fawcett’s model, there is only one system–structure cycle within the content plane: systems are interpreted as the semantics, linked through a “realisational component” to [content] form, which includes items and syntax, the latter being modelled structurally but not systemically; […] in our model there are two system-structure cycles, one in the semantics and one in the lexicogrammar. Terms in semantic systems are realised in semantic structures; and semantic systems and structures are in turn realised in lexicogrammatical ones.

… grammatical metaphor is a central reason in our account for treating axis and stratification as independent dimensions, so that we have both semantic systems and structures and lexicogrammatical systems and structures. Since we [unlike Fawcett] allow for a stratification of content systems into semantics and lexicogrammar, we are in a stronger position to construe knowledge in terms of meaning. That is, the semantics can become more powerful and extensive if the lexicogrammar includes systems.

—∞—

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 25):

The stratification of the content plane had immense significance in the evolution of the human species — it is not an exaggeration to say that it turned Homo … into Homo sapiens. It opened up the power of language and in so doing created the modern human brain.

Robin Fawcett On Modulation

On 25/10/12 on the Sysfling list in an email titled 'on the modal operator', Sharon Shaw (肖祎) asked:

how do you classify the phrase "be necessary" and "be allowed to" in the modal system? do they belong to the modal operator ?

to which Robin Fawcett replied:

A good question!  As it happens, I can provide you with an answer - or rather, the two answers that are needed, because the two cases are different.  Notice that we can say "Ivy is allowed to eat that" but not "Ivy is necessary to eat that " - though we can say "Ivy is necessary (to/for the success of this project)".

Let us take "be necessary" first.  I'm guessing, but I suspect that Sharon may be thinking of examples such as 

"It is necessary (for Ivy) to be there."  

This is an example of the construction that is best described, in functional terms, as an "evaluative enhanced theme" construction.  (This is in contrast with the "experiential enhanced theme" construction, as throughly researched and described in Huang 1996 and 2003.)  Thus the experiential meaning of "It is necessary (for Ivy) to be there" is the same as that of "For Ivy) to be there is necessary", and in both cases the analysis is that "(For Ivy) to be there" is a Subject/Carrier and "necessary" is a Complement/Attribute.  

But in our example the Performer has chosen to make the evaluative Attribute "necessary" the Theme, and to "enhance" it by preceding it by the experientially empty Subject "it" (followed by a form of "be").  See Chapter 10 of Fawcett 2009 for a full description of this construction and its meanings.    

What about Sharon's second example of "be allowed to"?   This is just one example of an area of the lexicogrammar that is seriously underdescribed (even in Quirk et al 1985).  It is the area of meanings and forms that are typically realized in a modal verb that expounds the (Finite) Operator - but which are also realized in expressions such as "be allowed to", "be able to", "be likely to", "be supposed to", "be going to" and "have got to" (to cite just the few examples that most big grammars refer to, typically as minor aberrations).  But such examples are merely the tip of a pretty large iceberg, and the description in IFG is, as Halliday himself says (1994: 362), "no more than a thumbnail sketch" (e.g. it surprisingly omits "be able to", "be obliged to" and "be inclined to").   (The relevant section in Halliday 1994 is pp 355-63, this being unchanged in Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 616-25.)

The need for a fuller SFG description of this area was the reason why, in my contribution to the 'second round' of  festschrift volumes for Michael Halliday published in 1907 (Continuing Discourse on Language: a Functional Perspective, edited by Hasan, Matthiessen and Webster), I chose to provide a SFG account of this area of the lexicogrammar.  I wanted to contribute a description of an area that (i) was reasonably fully described in the Cardiff Grammar and - in the context of a volume that was intended as a tribute to Halliday - (ii) was not a direct alternative to the description in IFG.  Indeed, my hope was that it be a contribution to the common pool of SFG descriptions, and one that could be incorporated in any future revision of IFG.*

The statistics in Biber et al 1999 suggest that in most text types well over one in every 200 words is of the type illustrated here, so this is no way a fringe area of the lexicogrammar of English. It demands a description in its own right, rather than as an a"add-on" to an account of the modal verbs. So the full description of this area constitutes a major paper, which is probably to long to be accepted as an attachment on sysfling. So I attach the first section and, if you wish to have the full paper, complete with diagrams of how to analyse texts that contain such examples, please email me and I will send you a copy.

As I say in the above attachment, a description of this area of meanings and forms requires us to recognize more elements in the structure of the clause than are used in IFG , because more that one such trio of Auxiliary + Auxiliary Extension + Infinitive may occur in the same clause, e.g.

"He is bound to going to be willing to attend the meeting (if she asks him nicely)."

In the Cardiff Grammar these are all treated as elements of the clause rather than the "verbal group" - a unit that many systemicists - and not only those who use the Cardiff Model - have long since rejected. For a brief summary of the reasons for treating the elements of Halliday's "verbal group" as elements of the clause and for references to the the publication that sets out the full argument, see Footnote 27 on pp 49-50 of Fawcett 2008 (which also provides a readable introduction to the Cardiff Grammar's method of clause analysis). Alternatively, if you wish to use Halliday's verbal group you can simply treat these elements as elements of it.

Blogger Comment:

Neither of Sharon's examples includes elements that function as Modal operators in the verbal group.  As Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 592) point out:

the semantic domain of modality is construed in more than one place in the grammar; for example, it is construed by clauses such as I suppose and it is possible, by verbal groups with finite modal operators such as may and by adverbial groups and modal adverbs such as perhaps.

In it is necessary, the semantic domain of obligation is realised grammatically as an attributive clause; while in Ivy is allowed to eat that, obligation is realised grammatically as a verbal group complex (see Halliday & Matthiesssen 2004: 513) — which is, of course, why such cases are not discussed in their section on the verbal group.  (Fawcett's error on this latter point may be the source of Mick O'Donnell's similar confusion; see Mick O'Donnell On Process Types.)

See also: 
Robin Fawcett On The Verbal Group 
Qualities Of Projection

Robin Fawcett On The Nominal Group

On 3 Aug 2012, on sysfling John Polias wrote:

Any thoughts on whether 'kind of' in the following nominal group is a measure numerative (eg p.334 IFG3) or not. It seems to be less about delimiting than about likening (I suppose likening is also a delimiting strategy).

a kind of giant mutated axolotl

Robin Fawcett replied on the same day:

Dear John (and any others interested in this fascinating area of the lexicoframmar),

I do indeed have 'thoughts' on this matter! Two papers, in fact - but I hasten to add that it's not your fault that you haven't heard of them. 

The two papers are:

(1a) Fawcett, Robin P., 2006. ‘Establishing the grammar of “typicity” in English: an exercise in scientific inquiry.’ In Huang, Guowen., Chang, Chenguang & Dai, Fan, (eds.) Functional Linguistics as Appliable Linguistics, Guangzhou: Sun Yat-sen University Press, 159-262. Reprinted from Educational Research on Foreign Languages and Art. No. 2, 3-34 and No. 3, 71-91, Guangzhou: Guangdong Teachers College of Foreign Language and Arts, 2006. 921-52. (Also available as Fawcett 2007c.

(1b) Fawcett, Robin P., 2007a. Establishing the Grammar of ‘Typicity’ in English: an Exercise in Scientific Inquiry.COMMUNAL Working Papers No. 21. Cardiff: Computational Linguistics Unit, Cardiff University (ISSN No. 0967-0254). Reprinted from Fawcett, Robin P., 2006. Available for fawcett@cardiff.ac.uk.

(2) Fawcett, Robin P., 2007b. ‘Modelling “selection” between referents in the English nominal group: an essay in scientific inquiry in linguistics’. In Butler, Christopher S., Hidalgo Downing, R., & Lavid, J., Functional Perspectives on Grammar and Discourse: In Honour of Angela Downing, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 165-204.

As you can see from the titles, both papers are about (i) an aspect of lexicogrammar (the phenomenon that I have termed 'typicity' in (1a and 1b) and about the broader concept of 'selection between referents' in (2) and (ii) the methodologies that I used in working on identifying (a) the full range of data that are necessarily involved in considering this topic and (b) the resulting system network, realization rules and summary of the structures generated by the outputs from those realization rules.* Your example is just one of a wide set of data that need to be considered, some with overt realizations, as in your example, and some with covert realizations, as in the ambiguous example The army have recently acquired a new tank [Is it just a single new tank, or a new type of tank?] and BP have developed a new engine oil [which is unambiguous, because the head is a 'mass' noun]. Typicity, overt or covert, occurs quite frequently in most types of text, and I have suggested the concept of a typic determiner to handle its overt realizations. This new element in the nominal group is a later development in the more general concept of 'selection between referents' in the grammar of the nominal group.

Thus, if in five of them the item five is a quantifying determiner, so too are a large number in a large number of them and two kilos in two kilos of sugar - and several other types of determiner. This is on the model of other types of determiner that are filled by a nominal group, as described in Fawcett 2007b. My concept of 'selection' is taken up and used in Mathiessen's Lexical Cartography (1995: 655), where he refers back to my earlier work, which I should perhaps therefore list here too:

Fawcett, Robin P., 1974-6/81. ‘Some proposals for systemic syntax: Parts 1, 2 and 3’. In MALS Journal 1.2, 1-15, 2.1. 43-68, 2.2 36-68. Reprinted 1981 as Some Proposals for Systemic Syntax. Pontypridd: Polytechnic of Wales (now University of Glamorgan).

I would start with Fawcett 2007b, if you have it in your university library (as I expect you do) but there is far more in Fawcett 2006 and 2007a about typicity, and about the use of corpora in resolving the question of what structure to use to model its realizations.

If you, John, or any other interested person, would like an electronic version of either Fawcett 2007a or 2007b (or both), please ask.

Robin

Robin Fawcett

Emeritus Professor of Linguistics

Cardiff University

* It is, of course, the structures that are the outputs from the use of the grammar that are what most SFL grammars in fact describe - rathe than the grammar itself. Grammars such as Halliday's Introduction to Functional Grammar and my Invitation to Systemic Functional Linguistics (Fawcett 2008) are written to provide readers with a descriptive framework for analyzing texts, which is not the same thing as a grammar (which, in SFL, consists of the system network and its associated realization rules/statements).

Blogger Comment:

An example of this type of structure is given on p333 of IFG3: a kind of owl, where a kind of is analysed as an extended Numerative, but of the category type (not measure), subcategory variety.  These are discussed on the following page.

Robin Fawcett On 'Would'

On 9 May 2012, on the Sysfling list, S.S. Deol wrote:

Dear All

You may comment on the use of would in the following sentence taken from an interview of a film actor:

I was doing what the script demanded and my director would scream at me saying......

To which Robin Fawcett  replied on 9 May:

A good question!  It has a simple answer, but it is one that upsets the neat patterns of system networks that we systemicists like to draw (e.g as discussed - and exemplified - in Bache, Carl, 2008.  English Tense and Aspect in Halliday’s Systemic Functional Grammar: A Critical Appraisal and an Alternative.  London: Equinox).  …

In a systemic functional grammar, the meaning of an item such as would  is captured by the selection expression of features that have been 'chosen' in the traversal of the system network.   In the Cardiff version of SFG the meaning of would in the key clause of your text-sentence (my director would scream at me) is expressed by the following selection expression (where 'trp' stands for 'time reference point'): 

[past trp, real, long period in past, repeated].

(Here 'repeated' stands for 'repeated regularly'.)  It has no connotations of 'will', 'willingness', 'intention' etc, as other uses of would have.  Its nearest systemic relationship is with another meaning that lies outside the canonical model of 'time', i.e. used to, in which the meaning is, in terms of its semantic features:

[past trp, real, long period in past, simple].

So we can refer to the multiply repeated event in your example by saying either 

My director would scream at me. 

or, using the closely related meaning that does not restrict the meaning to repeated events, represented here by [simple]: 

My director used to scream at me.

But the first is the more precise meaning, because it expresses both 'long period' and 'repetition'.  In contrast, with a 'stative' process such as 'living' we can only say I used to live in London and not *I would live in London,  because part of the meaning of would is that the event was repeated over a relatively long period of time.  (In contrast, we CAN say I would stay with my aunt (whenever I visited London, because 'staying' lasts for a relatively short period of time.)  So the 'aspectual type' of the process of the event interacts in complex ways with 'time meanings'.

Blogger Comment:

The simple answer is that, in the SFL framework, this would functions interpersonally as the Modal operator of median usuality that realises the Finite element in the Mood of the clause as exchange.  The relevant system networks are on pages 135 (clause) and 349 (verbal group) of Halliday & Matthiessen (2004).

Robin Fawcett On Stratal Relations [1]

In a discussion on Sysfling [29/6/11], Robin Fawcett opined:

Indeed, if Michael Halliday and Christian Matthiessen had formed a clear view of the way in which the choices described in their Construing Experience through Meaning determine the choices in the major system networks of the lexicogrammar, they would surely have said so in that book. I have looked hard for a section that makes this connection, but I have yet to find it. This suggests that the model proposed there is simply one possible, half-complete hypothesis that needs to be subject to the normal process in science of development, testing, evaluation, revision (or rejection), retesting, re-evaluation, and so on.

Blogger Comments:

(1) Here are some of the quotes that Robin Fawcett was unable to find.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375):

More specifically, inter-stratal realisation is specified by means of inter-stratal preselection: contextual features are realised by preselection within the semantic system, semantic features are realised by preselection within the lexicogrammatical system, and lexicogrammatical features are realised by preselection within the phonological/graphological system.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 378):

The realisational relationship between semantics and lexicogrammar is one of preselection: semantic features … are realised in lexicogrammar by means of prespecification of lexicogrammatical information, most centrally preselection of lexicogrammatical features.

(2) Regarding the notion that strata "determine" one another, note that higher stratal choices do not cause lower stratal choices.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 25):

In any stratal system (i.e. any system where there are two strata such that one is the realisation of the other) there is no temporal or causal ordering between the strata. … the relationship is an intensive one, not a causal circumstantial one.

(3) On realisation as an analogue of cause:effect in classical physics:

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

… we do not yet fully understand the nature of the relationship that is the semiotic analogue of the “cause : effect” of classical physics: this is the problem of realisation.

Having had his claim falsified, Fawcett subsequently re-interpreted his original question (extending it) in an attempt to obscure the falsification.  This is a subtype of the logical fallacy known as the 'red herring':

The red herring is as much a debate tactic as it is a logical fallacy. It is a fallacy of distraction, and is committed when a listener attempts to divert an arguer from his argument by introducing another topic.

http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/red-herring/

Robin Fawcett On Stratal Relations [2]

In a discussion on Sysfling [1/7/11], Robin Fawcett reacted to the three quotes [in Part 1] from Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 375, 378, 25) as follows:

In the first two passages we are given a picture of 'preselection' as 'predetermination', and so as something approaching 'causation'. Then in [the third] we are told that the relationship is not like that. But we are not told WHY it is not. We are offered instead a metaphor (taken from the terms of the Sydney Grammar itself), but not an explanation as to WHY the relationship is an 'intensive' one. 

The reader of these three passages will surely ask: How can it be true that choices made at one stratum are realized in choices at a lower stratum, without this being some type of 'pre-determination'? Passage [3] presents the relationship as a great mystery!

Blogger Comments:

Among other things, Fawcett does not understand that:

1. the theoretical dimension of stratification is organised on the principle of intensive identification — it is not a metaphor, it is what stratification means in this way of modelling language: higher level Value is realised by lower level Token;
2. the strata are thus different levels of symbolic abstraction of the same phenomenon (language) — there can be no chain of command across different levels of symbolic abstraction;
3. semantic features being realised by the 'preselection' of lexicogrammatical features simply means that features at the higher level of abstraction entail features at the lower level of symbolic abstraction — same phenomenon, different levels of abstraction.  For example, the logico-semantic relation of 'cause' can be realised incongruently by the preselection of lexicogrammatical features relating to participants, processes or circumstances at clause rank.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 94) anticipated Fawcett's misinterpretation (in the very same text):

Such selections have been referred to as “pre-selections”, but in order to avoid any connotations of temporal sequence, we prefer the term “selection” for such relations in the ideation base.