"Lexical Meaning Is Seen As Primarily Collocational"

Fontaine (2017: 12):

At this point, I would like to refer to a lexicological approach to lexical analysis as described by Hanks (2013), which has two main advantages in my view. The first is that it makes clear the distinction between the lexeme as meaning potential and the lexical item as instance. The second is that lexical meaning is seen as primarily collocational and in this sense seems very much in line with what Halliday was proposing in his 1961 paper.

In the remainder of this section, Hanks’ (2013) approach to pattern analysis is adapted within SFL, drawing on the discussion of context given above and illustrated with a brief example to demonstrate how this might work.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, in SFL Theory, the distinction between potential and instance applies to all strata, and so, to lexical items and the lexicogrammatical features that they realise. Fontaine is clearly unaware of this.

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, collocation is concerned with relations on the syntagmatic axis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 59), whereas the theoretical priority of SFL Theory is the paradigmatic axis (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 49).

[3] To be clear, even in his first theory, Scale and Category Grammar which, following Firth, gave equal weight to system and structure, Halliday (2002 [1961]: 60) identified both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic dimensions of lexis, lexical sets and collocation, as theoretically necessary:

What are needed are theoretical categories for the formal description of lexis. It seems that two fundamental categories are needed, which we may call collocation and set.