Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 152):
Sensing is clearly modelled as a process of human consciousness, with the Senser as a human being — so much so that merely coming to occupy that role is sufficient to endow the participant in question with human-like consciousness. The Phenomenon, on the other hand, is given a somewhat ambivalent status: in one of its guises (as in Do you like those colours?) it seems to be just a part of the environment; but in its other guise (as in Do those colours please you?) it seems to be playing a more active role.Why does it give this impression? Partly no doubt because of the agnate form Are you pleased by those colours? where the Phenomenon those colours is brought in indirectly, like an instrument or means. But this is part of a larger syndrome whereby, on the one hand, there are other related 'sensing' figures like How do those colours strike you?, where the verb strike suggests a fairly violent kind of action; and on the other hand, the prototypical form of a 'doing' figure seems quite analogous to these, as in Were those boys hitting you? (with those boys as Actor, you as Goal).
Blogger Comments:
Is it really the case that if we think or say the octopus can obviously see the crab, we are endowing the octopus — or any animal with sensory organs — with human-like consciousness?