Monday 27 May 2013

Hypotactic Verbal Group Complex: Elaborating A Process: Phase

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 499):
Here the verb in the primary group is a very general one of the ‘intensive: ascriptive’ class, and it is elaborated by the verb in the secondary verbal group. The semantic relation between the two is one of phase. The basic notion is ‘be (intensive) + do’, using ‘do’ to stand for any process.