The focus of this chapter is on the organization of the clause to realize the experiential meaning component of ideational meanings (the other component – logical meanings – is covered in a good deal of detail in the first year course-book Functional Grammar: an introduction for the EFL student (Freddi 2004). In investigating experiential meaning, we are studying its realization at the level of the clause as representation. Language in the experiential function imposes an order on the flow of events. As Halliday says (1994: xxxiv), “it is postulated that in all languages the content systems are organized into ideational, interpersonal and textual components”. However, he also points out that the descriptive categories are particular and not all languages ‘realize’ these components in the same way. The transitivity system is that system of grammar in and by which speakers/writers in English realize experiential meanings, in and by which they encode their experiences of the world around them. As you know, in the experiential function every clause in English can be seen to be made up of combinations of participants and
THE TRANSITIVITY SYSTEM
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circumstances revolving around the obligatory Process. But there are almost endless possibilities as to how we encode our experience(s) in this transitivity structure. Moreover, just what part of our experience goes into which constituent part of this structure is by no means fixed and will vary widely from speaker to speaker, situation to situation.
Transitivity, then, is the name for that part of the grammar in and by which speakers to realize ideational meanings in the clause; and speakers encode their experiential reality by their choice in wording, by their choice of Process type (the Process, as you know, is the core of the Transitivity system) and their choice of participant roles and circumstances. Thus, when we analyze the clause as representation, it is not enough to describe only the Process types, but we must also take note of the participant roles associated with the Process and the possible selection of circumstances.
We will now discuss the system of Transitivity in greater detail (definitions and many examples have been taken from M.A.K. Halliday 1994, Eggins 1994, and Gerot and Wignell 1994, ad Thompson 1996).
The external world experiences are made up of actions, events, things happening with people or things (participants) involved. Sometimes the participants do things to make things happen (they are Actors in this case) or the participants may just bear the brunt of the actions (They are Goals in this case), or they initiate an action which is taken by another participant (in this case they are Agents).
There may be only one participant, as in the example “I know”, or there may be a number of participants, as in the example “I made her take a train”, which consists of three participants (Agent, Actor, and Goal). After some exercises reviewing the 7 Processes (material, mental, verbal, behavioral, relational, existential and causative), we will explore the analysis of Processes and participants in more detail.
6.1 Material Processes
• Material Processes and Participants Actor and Goal
TASK 1: Which of the following examples would you consider material Processes? What participant roles do you identify? (Examples adapted from Eggins 1998)
1. Diana went to New York.
2. There were huge lines of people at the Red Cross center.
3. Diana donated blood.
4. Her blood was tested immediately.
5. Diana was one of thousands of donors.
MATERIAL PROCESSES AND PARTICIPANTS
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• Tip
One way to decide if a Process is a material one or not is to ask the question: What did X do?
A way to decide if a participant is a Goal is to ask the questions: What did X do to Y ? or What happened to Y?
• Material Processes and Participant Range
There is a third type of participant role in material Processes that has a more distant relationship to the Process than do the roles of Actor and Goal. Halliday classifies this participant as Range because the participant role is less directly related to the Process; it is not who is doing something or what is being acted upon, but rather its ‘scope’. For example, in He climbed Mt. Everest twice, the mountain exists independently of the Process. Mountain specifies the range, or ‘scope’, of the man’s climb. The same is true for Morgana played the piano.
Another type of Range may be actually another name for the Process, such as sing a song. In this case, the participant song is not really an entity that exists independently of the Process; it is part of the Process itself. ‘To sing a song’ should be considered the Process. Thus, song would be labelled Range.
Many examples of Range participants are those that occur in expressions with verbs such as do, have, give, take, make, e.g. the common expressions and idioms, take or have a bath, give a hand, take a photo, take a nap, take a walk, etc.. Halliday argues that these constructions (‘NG-as-Range-as-Process’) have most likely developed due to the verbal forms being de-lexicalized (i.e., lexically
‘empty’ or so called ‘dummy’ verbs) and to the greater potential that there is for the modification of the noun, such as have a hot bath, do a little work (Halliday 1994, 147).
Compare the following pairs of Range/Goal:
1. Make a mistake/ make a sandwich 2. Kick a habit/ kick a ball
3. Serve dinner/ serve the ball 4. Give a smile/ give a present
TASK 2: Identify the participants in the following examples: key is provided in the discussion.
1. They built a bridge.
2. They were playing.
3. They played bridge.
• Tip
Ask the following questions for examples (1), (2) and (3) above.
1) Ask: Who did what to whom/what? Who did something and Who or What had something done to it? “What did they do to the bridge?” Answer: “They built it.” We have They as Actor and bridge as Goal.
2) Ask: Who did what to whom/what? “What were they doing?” Answer: “They were playing.”
Here we have They as Actor. There is only one participant.
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3) Ask: Who did what to whom/what? If you ask “What did they do to the bridge?” The answer,
“They played it” is nonsensical. You could ask, however: “What did they play?” and the answer would be: “They played bridge” because bridge is a card game; it is the ‘scope’ of the playing, it is another name for the Process. in Example (3), the participant role of ‘bridge’ is labelled Range rather than Goal.
• Other tips for Range:
A Range cannot be a personal pronoun; it also cannot usually be modified by a possessive (ex.
That's my bridge makes no sense in example (3) above, but it can be in example (1), if the speaker is the engineer or construction worker who helped build it.
Ranges cannot be followed by attributes of result, as can be seen in the following examples (see Halliday 1994: 148):
a) They beat the fields flat.
Example (a) means that “They beat the fields until they were flat”. In this example, we have an Actor as participant (They) and a material Process (beat), a Goal as participant (fields) and a resultative attribute (flat).
b) She crossed the fields.
In Example (b), we have an Actor (She) and a material Process (crossed), but fields has the participant role of Range. In fact, we cannot say: “She crossed the fields flat”.
• Material Processes and Participant Beneficiary
Keeping in mind that the labelling of participants signals the relationship between the participant and the Process, we need to take into consideration a further participant role. In this case the participant is not created by or resulting from the Process, but the participant benefits from the Process (examples from Eggins 1994):
1. Diana gave them her blood in the Red Cross Center.
2. They gave her blood to one of the survivors.
In the examples above, Example (1) Diana is an Actor and her blood is Goal; in example (2), They is Actor and her blood is Goal. We can say that participants them in 1) and one of the survivors in 2) benefit from the Process of giving. This kind of participant role is called Beneficiary. In both examples there are three participants, each having a different role in the action: Actor, Goal and Beneficiary.
Actually, the role of Beneficiary can be further analyzed as regards the manner in which the participants benefit. In other words, they can either (a) receive goods or (b) services are done for them. In case (a), they would be called Recipients and in case (b), Clients. The preposition to is used with Recipients and the preposition for is used with Clients. In Examples (1) and (2) above, both Beneficiaries are Recipients. In material Processes, the Recipient usually occurs only if there is a Goal, as in Examples (1) and (2). In Example (3) below, the participant her brother who was seriously injured is Client.
3. Diana gave her blood for her brother who was seriously injured.
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Clients, as Halliday points out (1994: 145), are “more restricted” than Recipients and the semantics of the Beneficiary can be at times realized as a circumstance of Behalf, as in Example (4) below.
4. Jane is giving the lecture for Dave.
You will recall that expressions of Behalf typically represent a person, on whose behalf an action is undertaken – who it is for (Halliday 1994: 155). While Clients can occur without prepositions without a change in meaning, the circumstance cannot: we could say, “Diana gave her brother who was seriously injured her blood”, but “Jane is giving the lecture for Dave” does not mean “Jane is giving Dave the lecture.”.
TASK 3: Identify participants.
1. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm.
2. The teacher tripped in the corridor.
3. The Medici dismissed Michelangelo.
4. He made a mistake.
5. The gun discharged.
6. I posted a letter to a friend.
7. Rooney scored a goal.
8. Two fatal shots were fired.
9. Dave threw a party for Morgana.
10. I dropped the pen.
11. Jack climbed the fence in a hurry.
TASK 4: Notice the different constructions/representations of events through the choice of Processes and participants in the following 4 examples.
1. Police shoot 11 dead in Salisbury riot2 (from The Guardian)
Riot police shot and killed 11 African demonstrators and wounded 15 others here today in the Highfield African township on the outskirts of Salisbury.
2. Rioting blacks shot dead by police as ANC leaders meet (from The Times)
Eleven Africans were shot dead and 15 wounded when Rhodesian police opened fire on a rioting crowd of about 2,000 in the African Highfield township of Salisbury this afternoon.
3. The riots in Salisbury (editorial after the event, from The Times)
The rioting and sad loss of life in Salisbury are a warning that tension in that country is rising as decisive moves about its future seem to be in the offing. The leaders of the African National Council have blamed the police, but deplore the factionalism that is really responsible.
4.3
2 Texts in Examples (1) – (3) are taken from Lee 1992. For a very thorough and interesting analysis of the complete excerpts, read 91-108.
50
.
Because he's been fishing for sticklebacks.
Because he makes choccy cornflake cakes.
Because he runs miles with the dog through the mud.
Because he can't wait to hold his little sister Because you care.
CAREX
Antibacterial Moisturising Handwash, Hand Lotion and Hand Gel NB. 'sticklebacks' is a small fish with spikes along its back.
The Process types tell us what kind of action is going on or if any 'action' is going on at all. Circumstances tell about the Extent, Location, Manner, Cause, Contingency, Accompaniment, Role, Matter, and Angle of the action going on. In other words, they answer the questions, ‘how long’, ‘how far’ (Extent), ‘when ’ and ‘where’ (Location:Time/Space), ‘how’ or with ‘what’ or ‘what like’ (Manner), ‘why’ (Cause), ‘under what conditions’ (Contingency), ‘with whom’ (Accompaniment), ‘what as’ (Role), ‘what about’ (Matter), and ‘says who’ (Angle) (Halliday 1994: 151). See Gerot and Wignell 1994: 52-53 for simple examples.
As you have already studied, Circumstances are realized by AGs, PPs and, to a lesser degree, also by NGs. (For more on groups and phrases see Chapter 4 in this course-book and chapter 9 in Thompson 1996). Circumstances realized as PPs can include a nominal element which introduces a
3This advertisement was part of a corpus collected for a dissertation entitled, Pubblicità femminile contemporanea sulla rivista “Good Housekeeping”: un’analisi funzionale, presented by Jenny Bellini, thesis supervisor D.R. Miller, co-advisor, M. Lipson, A.A. 1999-2000.
MATERIAL PROCESSES AND CIRCUMSTANCES
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‘minor’ participant. Halliday refers to these participants as “… ‘indirect’ participants in the main Process.” (Halliday 1994: 158.)
TASK 5: Review of circumstances. Identify the type of circumstances in the following examples.
1. Police shoot 11 dead in Salisbury riot.
2. The USA, unlike Italy, is a federation of states.
3. Many people survived thanks to the courage of the faceless fire-fighters.
4. Morgana waited on line with Dave for hours.
5. She was travelling as a tourist.
6. Rooney scored a goal in both games.
In this section, material Processes and the participants involved have been reviewed. A distinction has been made between Goal and Range (the latter is a participant involved but not directly affected by the action) and two new participant roles have been introduced: Recipients and Clients, two kinds of Beneficiaries (Beneficiary is the participant that benefits from the action).
The labels of participants reflect the relationships they have with the Process.
6.2 Mental Processes
While material Processes construct what is happening or being done in the external world, mental Processes construct what take place in the inner world (for ex. She cares).
Halliday calls mental Processes those which encode meanings of thinking or feeling. Examples: to think, to hope, to like, to dislike. You would do well to review the comparison of the grammar of material and mental Processes in the first year course-book Functional Grammar: an introduction for the EFL student, Freddi 2004. As with all Processes, the labels of the participants in a clause with mental Processes reflect the function these elements have in the mental Process: the participants are Senser and Phenomenon (what is Sensed). As you know, the Senser has consciousness – in order to think, feel, and perceive The second participant is the Phenomenon, what is perceived by the conscious Senser. With these clauses the question “Who did what” is no longer applicable. You ask different questions, questions not about actions, but about thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. “What did X think or feel?”. While with material Processes one can say He resigned, with mental Processes utterances with only one participant, such as He thought or I like, make no sense. Mental Processes involve – at least potentially – two participants: a human conscious participant, the Senser (the active participant) and the second participant, though not necessarily explicit, the Phenomenon (the non-active participant). The Phenomenon may be only potential or understood from the context; it could also be a grammatical ‘Fact’.
Recall too that mental Process verbs are divided into three classes: cognitive (thinking) and affective (liking) and perceptive (feeling).
Examples of mental Processes:
SUMMARY
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I hate spinaci.
Senser mental: affective Phenomenon
Her question baffles me
Phenomenon Pr.: mental: cognitive Senser
They heard the sirens.
Senser Pr.:mental: perceptive Phenomenon
The positions of Senser and Phenomenon can be reversed (what the first year course-book talked about in terms of ‘bidirectional semantics’):
In mental Processes, there is ALWAYS one participant who is HUMAN, but at times one may want to give ‘human’ characteristics to inanimate objects, such as in the statement: “My car hates winter!” (see table below). Examples without an explicit Phenomenon or explicit Senser are also illustrated in the table below.
My car hates winter.
Senser Pr.: mental: affect Phenomenon
The truth hurts.
Phenomenon Pr.: mental: affect
I understood!
Senser Pr.: mental: cognitive
TASK 6: Identify the class of the following mental Processes: cognitive, affective, perceptive.
1. We don't know what they want.
2. They wonder why it all happened.
3. I wanted to donate my blood.
4. They don't give a damn about us.
5. I felt the heat on my neck from far away.
6. They all appreciated the endless efforts of volunteer rescue teams . 7. I saw the firemen run up the stairs while we were running out.
I enjoy sci fi movies.
Senser Pr.: mental: affective Phenomenon
Sci fi movies please/delight me.
Phenomenon Pr.: mental:affective Senser
53 8. We all need a little help from our friends.
Mental Processes differ from material ones in that cognitive mental Processes can project: I think he's really helpful.
We must keep in mind, however, that there is a difference between projected thought with mental Processes and embedded facts (Halliday 1994: 264- 8). For purposes of review, let’s look at the following two examples.
1. Maria thought that the train was going to Milan. (projection) 2. Maria realized that the train was going to Milan. (embedded Fact)
In Example (1), the participant Maria is a Senser and the Process is a projecting mental Process (cognitive); In Example (2), Maria is Senser and the Process is again a mental Process (cognitive), but it is not projecting Maria’s subjective thought, it is not projecting a subjectively ‘thought’ idea.
In this example, Maria is merely recognizing, or acknowledging, or ‘taking cognizance of’ what is being grammatically represented as a ‘Meta-Phenomenon’, or a ‘Fact’: that the train was going to Milan. In Example (1) there is a participant who is thinking and projecting a subjectively thought, or conceived, idea. In contrast, in Example (2), the ‘Fact’ that the train was going to Milan is not considered to be projected by the mental Process. In short, in the second clause, we are not dealing with an idea, but with a Fact.
As Halliday says (1994: 267), “it is possible for a fact to enter into a mental Process without being projected by it”; the Fact ‘enters into’ the environment of the mental Process clause but is considered to be ‘pre-packaged’, and thus embedded within the clause. The meaning of the clause in Example (2) is that the ‘train was going to Milan’ and Maria realized this (fact). The Fact is mentally processed and the participant is made to recognize or acknowledge it; With projection, conversely, it is the animate participant who has opinions that s/he projects, as in Example (1).
Other examples of embedded facts are
3. Maria regrets [[that the train is going to Milan]].
4. It worries Maria [[that the train is going to Milan]].
In Examples (3) and (4), we have a Fact, “That the train is going to Milan” as a Meta-Phenomenon that Maria regrets, or that worries her.
• Tip
√ How to distinguish a projected idea from an embedded fact?
Try to insert “the fact that” or “the case that” into the clauses as below. A projected idea would be a separate hypotactic clause and cannot therefore be preceded by the fact (Halliday, 1994, 267):
1. Maria thought (the fact that) the train was going to Milan – NO 2. Maria realized (it was the case) that the train was going to Milan.
3. Maria regrets (the fact) that the train is going to Milan.
4. (The fact) that the train is going to Milan worries Maria.
MENTAL PROCESSES AND PROJECTION
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5. Maria admitted (the fact) that she had made a mistake.
Of the 5 examples, only statement (1) is a projected idea. The others are examples of Facts as
“Phenomenon within the mental Process clause” (Halliday, 1994: 267).
Two important ways in which mental Processes differ from material ones are that they can
• have ‘facts’ as participants: The fact that he's always late really bothers us.
• project ideas: “I'll go and give blood”, she thought.
6.3 Verbal Processes
Some verbal Processes are immediately recognizable such as, say, tell, remark, observe, point out, report, announce, shout, cry, ask, demand, inquire, query, interrupt, reply, explain, protest, warn, insist. Other verbal Processes, such as insinuate, imply, remind, hypothesize, deny, make out, claim, pretend, maintain are less easily recognizable but also fall within this
category.
As you’ll remember, the active participant in verbal Processes is a Sayer, which need not be a conscious being: “My recipe says red wine!” The other participants include the Receiver and Verbiage. The Receiver is the one to whom the verbal Process is directed (the Beneficiary of a verbal message). The Verbiage is what was said: it can be (a) the content of what is said or (b) the name or label of saying (Halliday 1994: 141). Examples of Verbiage for these two cases are:
(a) Can you describe the man you saw or what he was wearing?
(a) Can you describe the man you saw or what he was wearing?