Thanks for the comment, and I hope for a better distinction to be made between what I have come to know about SFL proper and it permutation in New Testament studies.

Second, I have read quite a bit of the SFL literature, particularly those applying Halliday’s model. There seems to be great interest in Halliday in South America. These practitioners are the ones that I find engaging the opposing theories in the literature, but then not resolving the core differences other than to change the terminology.

Regarding Halliday predating other information structure models, his ‘Transivity’ articles primarily sketched the outline of his proposed model, but did not develop syntax much until the 80s from what I can tell. The work of Firbas clearly predates this, and forms the basis for most of the other functional approaches. Givon and Dik had full models by the early 80s, though both have continued to modify them in response to problems that arise from new data and applications. The rise of RT has had a significant impact as well, forcing linguists to incorporate some kind of cognitive element into their model. I would expect the same from Halliday, regardless of whether he was first or not.

Fundamentally Halliday’s work on cohesion and coherence are helpful and worthwhile. I think there are easier ways of reaching the same conclusions, but to each his own. My greatest frustration is the application of SFL to areas for which they are ill-suited. I think for those pursuing a Brown and Yule style analysis, some of Halliday’s work would be a great resource. I had not realized how far the practitioners in NT had moved from Halliday himself. Ultimately, it is these practitioners that I am addressing in my research, and their incarnation of SFL. If they are misapplying the model, I do not have the time or interest to learn Halliday to correct their work. As I stated earlier, SFL offers little for the kinds of questions I am trying to answer, particularly in the cross-linguistic context of Bible translation. I will do some reworking of the post to differentiate SFL proper from NT.

Regarding “markedness clines” I am simply trying to describe the implementation, and do not expect Halliday to use the term. Halliday himself seems far more interested in the asymmetrical system of the decisions than in a prominence-based ranking of semantic weight. This is good to know.

I find it interesting that Fawcett of Cardiff is working to revise and simplify the SFL framework, at least according to some recent articles by Butler on “focus” and information structure. I began looking into Fawcett’s work, but it still seems very much an English-based model of syntax. If you can suggest sound, representative treatments applying SFL to a non-configurational language like Greek, I will gladly read it. Most of what I have found regards Spanish, and is what generated my comment about changing the terminology where the framework does not fit, rather than addressing possible flaws in the framework itself.

Again, thanks for the helpful feedback. I will be shifting to directly addressing NT practitioners from here on out.

Again, thanks for offering the clarification.

I have been following your posts with interest, and was aware that
you were saying things about SFL which were not true of core SFL, but
seem to be true of SFL in biblical studies (e.g., the markenesss issue).
However, last time this site would not let me post, I hope this time
different.

Some points:

a) You are right saying most in SFL do not address those in other
theories. It is a problem. However, in some cases, the work of Halliday
predates that of the others (except Prague School, which he does acknowledge.
For instance, on Theme, Halliday first published on this in 1967.
Functional Grammar, Relevance Theory, Role and Reference Grammar
all arose later. Equally so with Halliday and Hasan’s work on
Cohesion in English, where they were first, and later works were
derivative.

b) Introduction to Functional Grammar does not cover markedness
clines. True. The function of the book is a “simple” introduction
to grammar for university students of English. Markedness clines
would probably confuse them. (Hasan likes to say that there
is not such think as marked options – each option is the appropriate
choice for particular contexts).

Actually, Halliday would not use the term (I think) ‘markedness clines’.
What he does argue is that some choices in systems are equal valued
(e.g., choice between past and present tense, while others are skewed
(e.g., active passive).

However, there are clearly problems with this: it is a central
notion in SFL that the probabilities of linguistic choices are
very much in relation to the context of situation of the text,
which Halliday seems to forget in his writing of sytemic probabilities.

In any case, I am happy that you have come to see that SOME of the
problems in biblical SFL re not due to SFL itself, but some practicioner’s
own contribution.

Mick O’Donnell