"A Lexical Entry In The Lexicon"

Fontaine (2017: 7):

While the approaches to lexis mentioned above certainly offer important insights to our understanding of lexis and lexico-grammar, they generally do not discuss in detail issues related to lexical representation or provide an account of what might be needed in terms of a lexical entry in the lexicon. As Martin (2016:45) points out:

Firth's interest in collocation (‘the company words keep’) has been developed in corpus linguistic research – chiefly by Sinclair and his colleagues (e.g. 1966; 1991) but less so in SFL where Halliday's early acknowledgement of the distinction between words and lexical items and the need for a syntagmatic perspective on expectancy relations among lexical items has tended to be backgrounded in relation to an interest in lexis as delicate grammar (the ‘grammarian's dream’, pursued by Hasan, and others).

Blogger Comments:

[1] As previously explained, the notion of lexical representation in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with SFL Theory and, as the neuroscientist Edelman (1989: 228) points out, with 'the known facts of human biology and brain science'. The first of these inconsistencies, at least, accounts for the lack of discussion of such matters in SFL approaches to lexis.

[2] To be clear, the quote from Martin (2016) has no bearing on lexical representation or lexical entries in "the" lexicon; see further below.

[3] Martin's proposition can be analysed as follows:

Halliday's early acknowledgement of the distinction between words and lexical items and the need for a syntagmatic perspective on expectancy relations among lexical items	has	tended to be backgrounded	in relation to an interest in lexis as delicate grammar
Subject	Finite	Predicator	Adjunct
Mood		Residue

To be clear, neither (i) the 'distinction of words and lexical items' nor (ii) 'expectancy relations among lexical items' are "backgrounded in relation to" lexis as most delicate grammar, because both are aspects of 'lexis as most delicate grammar'.

Firstly, 'lexis as most delicate grammar' means that lexical items are theorised as the synthetic realisation of the most delicate lexicogrammatical features. Secondly, the 'distinction of words and lexical items' distinguishes this view of lexis from the word as a grammatical rank, where it is the entry condition to grammatical systems. Thirdly, 'expectancy relations between lexical items' is the syntagmatic dimension of 'lexis as most delicate grammar', collocation, which is exploited to create textual cohesion.