"Making Lexical Representation In Terms Of A Mental Lexicon More Explicit In SFL"

Fontaine (2017: 8-9):

Cognitive studies, including evidence from psycholinguistics, seem unanimous in accepting the need for a mental lexicon and one that plays an important role in both language production and language understanding according to Butler (2009:59). He goes on to say that “in language production the activation of an item from the lexicon must be accompanied, or at least closely followed, by the pairing of that item with a syntactic configuration which, in combination with the lexical item, begins to realise the conceptual structure being expressed. This is clearly easier in a model which contains a lexicon than in one which does not” (ibid.). The question remains then whether something could be gained (or lost) by making lexical representation in terms of a mental lexicon more explicit in SFL.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, evidence from other theories, with different theoretical assumptions, is not evidence for what is needed in SFL Theory. Moreover, SFL Theory already demonstrates that lexicogrammar can be modelled without resorting to a mental lexicon. More importantly, as neuroscientist Gerald Edelman (1989: 228) has demonstrated, the notion of lexical representations in a mental lexicon is inconsistent with 'the known facts of human biology and brain science'.

[2] To be clear, this is an instance of the logical fallacy known as 'begging the question' (petitio principii):

In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true.

Butler assumes language production involves a lexicon in which items are activated, and concludes that a model of language production requires the inclusion of a lexicon.

[3] To be clear, this question does not "remain". Because 'lexical representation in terms of a mental lexicon' is inconsistent with SFL Theory, introducing it into SFL Theory necessarily results in a loss of theoretical consistency.