Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):
And even within our own configurational model of English there is often considerable 'play'. A good example of this is Fawcett (1987). …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 (for discussion of this area, see Davidse, 1996b). 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.(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; cf. Davidse, 1996a.)
Blogger Comments:
To be clear, this is a tactful identification of some of the inconsistencies in Fawcett' model.