Sunday 29 October 2017

What Fawcett Means By 'Lexicogrammar'

Fawcett (2010: 37-8):
In using the term "lexicogrammar" here, then, I am starting from the concept that a grammar is a 'model of language' (which is not the way that Halliday uses the term "grammar") and I am then incorporating into it, by prefixing it with "lexico", Halliday's important point that 'lexis' must be integrated with 'syntax' (or 'grammar') in any such model. But I have to point out that this is a hybrid term that does not correspond to Halliday's normal use of the term "lexicogrammar" — and, having made the point that the model must include lexis (and indeed intonation and punctuation), I shall normally use the shorter term "grammar" in the rest of the book, when referring to the concept of a model of the sentence-generating component of language.

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[1] To be clear, for Fawcett, a grammar is a model of language in which lexis is integrated with syntax — hence "lexicogrammar" — and which also includes intonation and punctuation.  When normally using the term 'grammar', however, he is only referring to the sentence-generating component.

[2] Halliday uses the term 'grammar' as shorthand for 'lexicogrammar' (wording), and locates its systems on a level of symbolic abstraction (stratum) between semantics (meaning) and phonology (sounding).  For Halliday, it is the grammar that construes (intellectually constructs) the semantics.  Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 22, 10):
Grammar is the central processing unit of language, the powerhouse where meanings are created …
The clause is the central processing unit in the lexicogrammar — in the specific sense that it is in the clause that meanings of different kinds are mapped into an integrated grammatical structure.
[3] This is potentially misleading, since, for Halliday, syntax is not equivalent to grammar, but merely one aspect of it — modelled as the rank scale.

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