Saturday 10 November 2018

Transitive And Ergative Equivalents


Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: ):
By using the ergative standpoint to complement the transitive one in our interpretation of English, we can match up the functions in the various process types. The table of equivalents is given as Table 5-41.


Blogger Comment:

Note that, in the case of identifying clauses, for simplicity, this table presents the transitive equivalents only for decoding clauses, where Token conflates with Identified, and Value with Identifier.  In encoding clauses, it is the Identified Value that corresponds to the Medium, whereas the Identifier Token corresponds to the Agent.

In other words, it is actually the Identified that always corresponds to the Medium, whether Token or Value, and the Identifier varies according to whether the clause is decoding or encoding, corresponding to Range (decoding: Value) or Agent (encoding Token).

Note also that identifying relationals can also afford a Beneficiary (in possessive benefactive clauses).