"The Question About Where The Lexical Items Are"

Fontaine (2017: 7-8):

It is often assumed that as the system networks become more delicate in terms of systemic choice, we find lexis in the most delicate systems. However, this is problematic in a number of ways. It is difficult to see how a lexeme could be represented as a choice in the system networks (although see Fawcett, 1994). The term ‘lexeme’ is used here in contrast to ‘lexical item’ in order to distinguish between an abstract entry in the mental lexicon (lexeme) and an instance of a lexeme in use (lexical item). However, the question is whether SFL needs to model lexemes or not. Questions of lexical representation have not been explicitly explored in detail, although Tucker’s work (1996, 1998, 2006, 2009) comes very close. The position of lexis in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) is, theoretically, fully integrated into the grammar if we accept the theory’s assumption that “there is no need to postulate a separate ‘lexicon’ as a pre-existing entity on which the grammar is made to operate” (Halliday and Matthiessen, 1999: 199). If this is the case, it leaves open the question about where the lexical items are. One interpretation of lexis as most delicate grammar is that they are somehow the end point of a bundle of system choices, which leads to a single lexical option.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This unsourced assumption is misleading. To be clear, in SFL Theory, we do not "find lexis in the most delicate systems" and a lexical item is not "a choice in the system networks". Instead, different bundles of features of the most delicate systems specify different lexical items. That is, a lexical item and the features that specify it are different levels of symbolic abstraction: with lexical item as Token and its features as Value.

[2] This confirms that Fontaine assumes a mental lexicon of lexical representations, which, as previously explained, is inconsistent with both SFL Theory and the known facts of human biology and brain science.

[3] This interpretation (by Hunston & Francis 2000) is misleading. To be clear, lexical items are not "the end point of a bundle of system choices which leads to a single lexical option"; see [1] above. The "end points" in systems are the features that are conjointly realised by lexical items.