The Potential Of Elements For Construing Experience: Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 265):

Processes are realised by verbal groups, where, typically, the only lexical material is the verb itself, functioning as Event (material action or event, conscious or verbal process, or relation). Apart from the adverbial complement of a phrasal verb, which may serve to construct a distinct lexical item e.g. make out (I can’t make out the difference), come to (she’ll come to in a minute), let on (don’t let on about this), &c., all contrasts made by the verbal group are grammatical ones — tense and other quasi-temporal systems, and modality. There is no lexical expansion classifying processes into taxonomies or assigning them sets of contrasting qualities.

The Potential Of Elements For Construing Experience: Qualities

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 265):

Qualities are attached to things, and so contribute to this overall expansion [of participants]. They also have possibilities of expansion of their own, by submodification (at least for intensity, but sometimes along other lines as well: very long, dark blue, red hot).

The Potential Of Elements For Construing Experience: Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 265):

Participants are realised by nominal groups, which allow more or less indefinite expansion (through the univariate structure of modification). This expansion is the grammar’s way of constructing taxonomies of things: grouping them into classes, assigning properties to them, quantifying them and then uniquely identifying any individual thing, or any number, set or class of things in relation to the “here–&–now” of the speech event. the expansion involves open sets of things and qualities, realised by lexical items; but it can also capture a circumstance, realised by a prepositional phrase, or an entire figure, realised by a clause, and put it to use as a quality in describing or identifying such a thing or set of things, e.g. this unique 20-piece handpainted china dinner service with optional accessories never before offered for sale at such a bargain price.

The Metaphorical Drift Toward “Thinginess”

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 264):

… the drift towards ‘thinginess’ is the culminating and most clearly articulated form of a shift which can be characterised in more general terms as a shift towards the experiential — towards that mode of construing experience that is most readily organised into paradigmatic sets and contrasts. Things are more easily taxonomised than qualities, qualities than processes, and processes more easily than circumstances or relations. Since the ‘noun-ness’ is being used to construe phenomena that start out as something else than a noun, metaphors will inevitably be abstract.

Two Predominant Motifs In Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 263-4):

It is possible to distinguish two predominant motifs in the phenomena characterised here: one major or primary and one minor or secondary one.

(i) The primary motif is clearly the drift towards ‘thing’.

(ii) The secondary motif is what appears as a tendency in the opposite direction: the move from ‘thing’ into what might be interpreted as a manifestation of ‘quality’ (qualifying, possessive or classifying expansions of the 'thing').

The Phylogenesis Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 263):

In the semantic construction of experience, ‘process’ and ‘participant’ emerge as prototypical categories […]. But as in any semiotic endeavour there are always some domains of uncertainty; are rain, wind, thunder processes or things? Are fear, worry, regret processes or qualities? Examples like these prevent the categories from being too reified and rigid, and provide a kind of gateway of analogy through which a phenomenon can drift or be propelled from one category to another.

In transcategorisation some other semantic feature triggers the propulsion; e.g. dark + make/become = darken, flake + like/composed of = flaky.  In metaphor, however, the phenomenon is reconstrued as another category; what is being exploited is the potential that arises — but only after the categories have first been construed as distinct; not otherwise — of treating every phenomenon in more ways than one. In this process the original interpretation is not supplanted; it is combined with the new one into a more complex whole.

Rank Shift, Class Shift & Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 259-60):

Rank shift is not inherently metaphorical. There is a parallel here between rank shift and class shift. In origin, both these could be described as metaphorical semogenic processes: a verb or adjective is metamorphosed into a noun (a shift of class, e.g. strong : strength, lose : loss), a clause is metamorphosed into a group (a shift of rank, e.g. they went bankrupt : their bankruptcy). But as a synchronic relation neither of these necessarily involves metaphor; there may be no systematic alternation such as there is between a metaphoric and a congruent form. We have already discussed non-metaphorical forms of class shift, under the heading of transcategorisation. […] Class shift becomes metaphorical when the “shifted” term creates a semantic junction with the original.

The Effect Of Grammatical Metaphor On Semantic Relations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 258):

The overall effect of the grammatical metaphor is that semantic relations between one element and another, and between one figure and another, become progressively less explicit as the degree of metaphoricity increases.

Syndromes Of Elemental Metaphors: Figure With Process => Figure With Process As Thing

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 254-5):

Those illustrated here are variants of the figure => element syndrome, where only part of the figure is reconstrued as a participant…

(1) They surveyed the property => (They) did a survey of the property

(2) They started to survey the property => (They) started a survey of the property

(3) They discussed in the early afternoon => Their discussion took place (in the early afternoon)

Syndromes Of Elemental Metaphors: Sequence => Figure

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 252-4):

Here the syndrome … occurs in a more general environment, that of construing a sequence on the model of a figure — grammatically, the sequence is construed not as a clause complex but as a clause.

they shredded the documents before they departed for the airport => they shredded the documents before their departure for the airport 

they shredded the documents before they departed for the airport => their shredding of the documents preceded their departure for the airport

These examples of a ‘sequence => figure’ metaphor both involve a sequence of the expansion type. However, this type of metaphoric shift also occurs with projection sequences; for example:

The colonel declared his innocence.

— where the congruent form would be a projection, either hypotactic or paratactic:

The colonel declared that he was innocent.
The colonel declared, “I am innocent”.

Syndromes Of Elemental Metaphors: Figure => Element

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 250-2):

Here a figure is being construed metaphorically on the model of a participant: grammatically, the figure is construed not as a clause but as a nominal group. There is a shift in rank from figure to element, and concomitantly a shift in status among the elements making up the construction.

he was arrested by the police => his arrest by the police 
(…) bond rapidly => rapid bonding occurs 
the group decided yesterday => yesterday’s decision by the group 
the accused appeared to be innocent => the apparent innocence of the accused 
he argues cogently => the cogency of his argument

Syndromes Of Elemental Metaphors: Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 250):

These syndromes of elemental metaphors fall into three general types, not very sharply distinct but worth using as a conceptual framework. The distinction relates to the rank where the metaphoric reconstrual takes place: (I) from figure to element, (II) from sequence to figure, (III) from figure with process to figure with process as thing.

Syntagmatic And Paradigmatic Aspects Of Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 249):

Syntagmatically, instances of grammatical metaphor typically occur not in isolation but in organic clusters or “syndromes”. Paradigmatically, there will typically be other wordings intermediate between an instance of grammatical metaphor and its “most congruent” agnate variant.

Verbal Group Complex And The Cline From Figure To Sequence

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 248):

Note that where the grammar has a simple verbal group, this construes a single ‘process’ element in the figure. Where the clause contains a verbal group complex, while this (congruently) still construes a single ‘process’ it is now somewhere along the cline towards a sequence of two figures. Thus: the government deregistered the union —> the government moved to deregister the union —> the government moved/acted (in order) to deregister the union.

Sequences: Taxis And Temporal & Causal Ordering

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 245):

A sequence is construed congruently by the grammar as a clause nexus joined by a conjunction. A nexus may be either paratactic or hypotactic. Where the sequence is construed paratactically, the preferred order is the iconic one; thus in the case of ‘time’ and ‘cause’, “precedent, then subsequent”, “cause, so effect”. The alternative causal sequence “effect, for cause” (as in I strove with none, for none was worth my strife) is rather infrequent; while the alternative temporal sequence apparently does not occur. 

(These relationships can of course be expressed cohesively — that is, without being construed as grammatical structures at all: I strove with none. The reason was that … .) 

Where the sequence is construed hypotactically, either order is possible: “after precedent, subsequent” / “subsequent, after precedent”; “because cause, effect” / “effect, because cause”. 

Note also “precedent, before subsequent” / “before subsequent, precedent”; “cause, so that effect” / “so that effect, cause” — where tying the relator to the ‘effect’ typically implies intentionality. … 

The reason for this disparity is that hypotaxis construes an order of its own — ordering in dependence; whereas in parataxis, the only ordering is that being imposed by the grammar on the experiential phenomena themselves.

Clusters Of Grammatical Metaphors: Syndromes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 244):

When we find grammatical metaphors in discourse, they nearly always cluster into what we are calling syndromes; these are typical clusterings of metaphorical effects among which there is some kind of interdependence (for example, in the government decided => the government’s decision, there is an obvious relationship between decide => decision, process as thing, and the government => the government’s, participant as possessor of the thing).

Junctional Elements Vs Ordinary Elements

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 244):

Metaphoric elements […] are junctional in that they embody a junction of two semantic categories. In previous chapters, 3–5, we dealt just with elements that could be assigned to a single category: process, thing, quality &c. We shall refer to these as ‘ordinary’ elements, and contrast them with ‘junctional’ elements which are those that embody grammatical metaphor. Junctional elements will always have two categories in their description, e.g. ‘process thing’, ‘circumstantial quality’, ‘relator process’.

How Did Junctional Elements Evolve?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 243):

… it seems that meaning-making by transcategorising has evolved, through intermediate stages, into meaning-making by metaphorising; there is no sharp line between deriving a thing from a process, as ‘one who makes’, ‘that which is made’, and construing a process as a thing ‘making, creation’; with ‘action of making, act of making’ somewhere in between.

Grammatical Metaphor: Junctional Elements

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 243):

What is the status of such fictitious objects or pseudo-things? Unlike the other elements, which lose their original status in being transcategorised (for example shaker is no longer a process, even though it derives from shake), these elements do not: shakiness is still a quality, development is still a process — only they have been construed into things. They are thus a fusion, or ‘junction’, of two semantic elemental categories: shakiness is a ‘quality thing’, development is a ‘process thing’. All such junctional elements involve grammatical metaphor.

From Transcategorising Lexemes To Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 243):

What for example would be the semantic interpretation of [the transcategorisations] shakiness, awakening, analysis, development?  Here we find ourselves using precisely the terms of our own metalanguage in the definition: ‘quality of being shaky’, ‘process of being awake, or causing to become awake’, ‘process of analysing, developing’. When this happens, it is a signal that a phenomenon of this other kind — quality or process — is being treated as if it was a thing. The grammar has constructed an imaginary or fictitious object, called shakiness, by transcategorising the quality shaky; similarly, by transcategorising the process develop it has created a pseudo-thing called development.

Transcategorisation: Shifting Lexemes From One Class To Another

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 242):

The phenomenon of transcategorising elements would seem to be a feature of the grammar of every language. This implies two things: (i) that each etymon belongs inherently to a major class; (ii) that at least some etymons can be transferred to another class — by some means, syntactic and/or morphological.

Interpersonal Significance Of Ideational Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 242):

But the interpersonal significance of grammatical metaphor is likely to be felt most clearly at the macroscopic level, in the overall pattern of interpersonal relationships, and the ideological orientation, that emerge over the course of a text.

Interpersonal Significance Of Ideational Metaphor: Negotiability

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 241-2):

In a similar way, phenomena in the ideation base also map onto constructs of interpersonal meaning. For example, a congruent figure maps onto a move in a dialogic exchange; it is enacted interpersonally as a proposition or a proposal. It follows that when phenomena are reconstrued metaphorically within the ideation base, there are also interpersonal consequences. For instance, the figure ‘atomic nucleus + absorb + energy’ can be enacted interpersonally as a proposition that is open to negotiation: The atomic nucleus absorbs energy — Does it? — Yes, it does — No, it can’t.   However, when this figure is reconstrued as the participant ‘absorption (+ of energy) (+ by atomic nucleus)’, it no longer has the potential for being enacted interpersonally as a proposition; rather, it would be taken for granted in discourse. You can’t argue with the absorption of energy by the nucleus since it is not enacted as an arguable proposition. Such interpersonal differences can have a powerful rhetorical effect in persuasive discourse. (There is an analogous effect with respect to proposals in regulatory discourse.)

Textual Significance Of Ideational Metaphor: Textual Status

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 241):

Ideationally, grammatical metaphor is a resource for reconstruing experience so that, alongside congruent configurations, we also have alternative metaphorical ones. At the same time, these different configurations map onto different textual patterns. For example, a figure maps onto a message; but a participant maps onto part of a message, so that a figure construed as if it was a participant can be given a textual status within that message.

The Metaphorical Mode Of Construal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 241):

The metaphoric shift does not mean that the natural relationship between meaning and wording is destroyed; rather, this relationship is extended further when new domains of realisation are opened up to semantic categories through metaphor. The shift does however create a greater distance from the everyday experience; the metaphorical mode of construal makes it possible to recast that everyday experience, retaining only certain features from the congruent wording but adding others that it did not include.

Ideational Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 241):

The metaphors we are considering here are in fact all shifts within the ideational realm — from sequence to figure, from figure to participant, and so on — and their primary effect is ideational. They constitute a resource for reconstruing experience along certain lines, redeploying the same categories that have evolved in the congruent mode of construing experience.

Given Theme & Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 239):

The significant point is that the Theme of an English clause has to be nominal. Not that there cannot exist other kinds of Theme — adverbials, prepositional phrases or even verbs; but these construe Themes which are highly marked (verbal Themes in particular), embodying features of contrast which are not appropriate in these contexts. The only kind of grammatical entity that construes the message in precisely the way required, without special effects, is a nominal — which may be a nominal group or else a nominalised clause or clause complex.

Theme & Information

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 239):

If the Theme of a clause (realised as the element in first position) is also explicitly located as Given, this has a very strong ‘backgrounding’ effect: the message is ‘you already know this; now use it as a stepping-off point for a further move, to something you don’t know’. By the same token, the remainder of the clause (either the whole of it or the culminating element) is strongly ‘foregrounded’. The total construction is obviously a powerful device for reasoning and argumentation.

Why Semantics & Grammar? Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237-8):

Why then in our present interpretation have we to recognise two parts, one a lexicogrammar and one a semantics? Because the system continued to evolve beyond that point [congruent construals], enriching itself (i.e. engendering a richer model of experience) by forcing apart the two ‘facets’ of the sign so that each could take on a new partner — sequences could be realised by other things than clause complexes, processes could be realised by other things than verbs, and so on. […] It is this step that gives rise to grammatical metaphor. When a sequence is realised as a clause complex, or a process as a verb, this is congruent: it is the clause complex, and the verb, in the function in which it evolved. When a sequence is realised as something other than a clause complex, or a process as something other than a verb, this is metaphorical. Some other grammatical unit is supplanting them in these functions.

Why Semantics And Grammar Are Modelled As Two Separate Strata

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 237):

Of course, what we are recognising here as two distinct constructions, the semantic and the grammatical, never had or could have had any existence the one prior to the other; they are our analytic representation of the overall semioticising of experience — how experience is construed into meaning. If the congruent form had been the only form of construal, we would probably not have needed to think of semantics and grammar as two separate strata: they would be merely two facets of the content plane, interpreted on the one hand as function and on the other as form.

Congruent Forms

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 236-7):

… from the standpoint of the evolution of language, when we say they are the congruent forms we are claiming not merely that they evolved first, but that this is why they evolved. One of the contexts in which grammar came into being — one of its metafunctions — was that of construing human experience; and, as we have seen, the model that emerged was one that construed the continuum of goings-on into taxonomies: taxonomies of parts (meronymic) and taxonomies of kinds (hyponymic). The central construct was that of the ‘figure’; figures could be further constructed into ‘sequences’ and also deconstructed into ‘elements’. How did the grammar construe this hierarchy of phenomena? — as clauses, clauses complexes, and elements in the structure of the clause …

Metaphorical Relationship As Directional

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 235):

On all these grounds [of semogenetic and derivational priority] we have to acknowledge that the metaphorical relationship is not a symmetrical one: there is a definite directionality to it, such that one end of the continuum is metaphorical and the other is what we shall call congruent.

Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 235): 

We would not, in considering grammatical metaphor, maintain a simple dichotymy between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’; rather we would propose that there is a continuum whose poles are ‘least metaphorical’ and ‘most metaphorical’.

Lexical & Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 234):

Thus in many instances, not unexpectedly, lexical and grammatical metaphor go together. … But they are not automatically associated, and in most instances of grammatical metaphor, if we reword in a less metaphorical direction, we can retain the same lexical items, merely changing their word class [transcategorisation] (often with morphological variation, e.g. we act effectively / the effectiveness of our actions).

Lexical Metaphors Have Grammatical Implications

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 234):

… lexical metaphors have grammatical implications: they occur at the lexical degree of delicacy in the overall system, but precisely because grammar and lexis form a continuum related by delicacy, lexical domains are in fact more delicate elaborations of grammatical ones. So, for example, if understanding is construed metaphorically as grasping, it follows that a high degree of understanding can also be construed according to the same material model: understand very well => grasp firmly, as in she grasped the principles firmly. Similarly, if intensity is construed metaphorically in terms of location or movement in abstract space, this lexical reconstrual also has grammatical consequences, e.g. in terms of circumstantial elements within metaphorical figures: prices fell sharply, prices rose to a new high, costs hit the ceiling, and so on.

Lexical Metaphorical Syndromes: Most Favoured Motifs

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 233n):

Because of the vastness of lexis, we do not have a general description of lexical metaphorical domains within the overall ideation base. But it is possible to discern that a central resource for metaphor is human bodily experience; and that the human body itself, concrete phenomena located in space-time, and features of daily social life are the most favoured metaphorical motifs.

Lexical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 233):

There are two other characteristics of lexical metaphors which are also central to metaphor in its grammatical sense. The first is syntagmatic: lexical metaphors tend to occur in regular clusters, which we shall refer to here as “syndromes” … The second is paradigmatic: lexical metaphors typically involve a shift towards the concrete, a move in the direction of “objectifying” (‘making like an object’, not ‘making objective’) …

Lexical & Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 233):

Lexical and grammatical metaphor are not two different phenomena; they are both aspects of the same general metaphorical strategy by which we expand our semantic resources for construing experience. The main distinction between them is one of delicacy. Grammatical metaphor involves the reconstrual of one domain in terms of another domain, where both are of a very general kind … Lexical metaphor also involves the reconstrual of one domain in terms of another domain; but these domains are more delicate in the overall semantic system.

Grammatical Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 227):

We have seen that sequences, figures, and elements are congruently realised in the grammar as follows: 

	clause complex	clause	group
sequence	ü
figure		ü
element			ü

But these resources may be expanded by taking up further options in realisation; for example, sequences may alternatively be realised by clauses and even groups.  This what we refer to as grammatical metaphor.  Grammatical metaphor expands the semantic potential of the system.

The Power Of Ideational Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 225-6):

The ideational base as we have presented it so far, with its framework of sequences, figures and elements, serves well enough for construing the experience of daily life, and for organising and exchanging commonsense knowledge. But it proves inadequate to meet the semiotic demands of advanced technology and theoretical science. In the construction of scientific knowledge, the system needs to invoke the power of metaphor on a more global scale.

Transphenomenal Motifs & The Construal Of Experience

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 225):

Thus our concept of “construing experience through meaning” refers to the construal in human consciousness of an ideational system in which such [transphenomenal] motifs play a crucial part. Expansion and projection are, as we put it earlier, fractal principles; they generate organisation within many environments in the ideation base, at different strata and at different ranks within one stratum. These environments are thus related to one another through the local manifestations of these different motifs; and this opens up the system’s potential for alternative construals of experience … . What this means is, that whatever is construed can also be reconstrued, giving yet another dimension to the topology of semantic space.

Other Transphenomenal Motifs

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 225):

There are other “transphenomenal” motifs, often related to these [fractal types], which are more specific in their scope; for example the foregrounding of perceptual space, and of the concrete having extension in space, so that these serve as models for construing more abstract, non-spatial realms; and more specifically, the spatial construction of the human body as an orientational framework.

Elaboration As Auto-Genetic Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 224-5):

Here we have foregrounded especially the motif of elaborating, with particular reference to its manifestation in the identifying and ascriptive figures of being. We have tried to show how elaboration makes it possible to “import” extra-linguistic experience into the meaning base by actively construing it (as in ‘that [thing there] is a circle’); and also to “transport” meanings internally from one region of the ideation base in order to construe new meanings in another (as in ‘balance means you hold it in your fingers and it does not go’).  The extension of meaning in delicacy — not merely generalising across different types but construing such types into dimensional and open-ended taxonomies — is a function of the elaborating potential, exploiting the basic dimensions of the system itself.

Fractal Types As Auto-Genetic Potential

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 224):

The fractal types of projection and expansion are also a primary resource by which the semantic system creates new meanings. […] The ideation base thus itself embodies, auto-genetically, the principles on which it is organised and enabled to develop further, such that the primary systems of ideational meaning then serve as a grid within which more delicate categories are construed.

Fractal Agnation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 223-4): 

… the fractal types constitute an additional order of agnation that is projected onto the ideational system as a whole. We can refer to this as fractal agnation. Because of this, a qualifying sequence and a figure of circumstantial being, such as cause, are agnate; they are both manifestations of the fractal type of enhancement.

The Sense In Which Expansion & Projection Are 'Fractal Types'

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 223): 

Since projection and expansion operate across the various categories of phenomena, we referred to them as transphenomenal categories. As transphenomenal categories, they are meaning types that are in some sense “meta” to the organisation of the ideation base: they are principles of construing our experience of the world that generate identical patterns of semantic organisation which are of variable magnitude and which occur in variable semantic environments. Such patterns therefore constitute fractal types.

Transforming Experience Into Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 222):

These two motifs [meaning as expansion and meaning by projection] together have made it possible for human beings to transform experience into meaning, taking the experience of meaning itself — the “inner” processes of consciousness — as the central figures, and those with the ability to mean — prototypically humans themselves — as the central participants. These then serve as the point of reference for construing “outer” experience, the complementary experiences of the processes of doing and being.

Fundamental Semantic Motif: Meaning By Projection

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 222): 

The second motif is that of meaning by projection: the way new dimensions of semantic space are created by the orders of human consciousness, sensing and saying — by projecting into existence another order of reality, one that is constituted by language itself.

Fundamental Semantic Motif: Meaning As Expansion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 222): 

The first of these is meaning as expansion: the way regions of semantic space are opened up and defined by the three vectors of elaboration, extension and enhancement — elaborating a region that is already as it were staked out, extending the region’s boundaries to take in more, and enhancing the region’s potential by enrichment from its environment.

Participants And Macro Circumstances: 3 Kinds Of Mixed Categories

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 220):

The grammar does draw a line between the two: participant as nominal group, circumstance as prepositional phrase. But because of the continuous nature of the distinction, we find three kinds of mixed categories: (i) participants that may look like circumstances (being introduced by prepositions); (ii) circumstances that may look like participants (being introduced without prepositions); and (iii) pairs where one is a circumstance, the other a participant, but with very little difference in their meaning.

The Overlap Of Participants And Macro Circumstances

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 218-9):

We referred to the cline from participants to circumstances as the “degree of involvement” in the actualisation of the process. This degree of involvement ranged from the closest, the Medium, which is part of the nucleus of the figure, to those that appear most remote, circumstances such as Matter (e.g. concerning your request) and Angle (e.g. in my own opinion). Somewhere in the middle was an area of overlap, where participants and circumstances are very closely akin. The two overlap because there are some functions which can be construed either as a form of participant in the process or as a circumstance attendant on it.

The Relation Of Macro Circumstantial Elements To Figures

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 218):

… looking at these same circumstantial elements from a complementary standpoint, from the point of view of their own internal composition […] a prepositional phrase represents a figure in miniature, with a structure analogous to one component of a figure — closest, perhaps, to Process + Range (so we refer to the participant in the circumstantial phrase as a “Minirange”). This means that, shifting our perspective, we can also suggest how the circumstantial elements are related to different figures. Table 5(5) combines the two perspectives, showing their relationship both to participants and to figures.

The Relation Of Macro Circumstantial Elements To Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 218):

Looking at them as oblique “cases”, from the point of view of their function in the larger figure, two points emerged: one, that participants and circumstances taken together formed a cline, rather than being separated by a clear boundary; the second, that some of the circumstantial elements could be ‘paired off’ with participants, being seen as a more oblique manifestation of a similar rôle.

Macro Circumstances: Subsidiary Processes And Indirect Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 218):

Those circumstantial elements that are realised by prepositional phrases are rather more complex, since they include another element — a participant — in their makeup. In such cases the element realised by the nominal group is still functioning as a participant in the process — but indirectly, being implicated only through the mediation of a preposition. That this is possible is because the preposition itself constitutes a subsidiary kind of ‘process’; one that does not function as a process in the main figure but is nevertheless related systematically to the spectrum of process types — mainly, though not exclusively, to processes of being.

Simple Circumstances: Location & Cause

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 217):

There are some adverbial expressions realising other types of circumstances, e.g. everywhere (Location: space), recently (Location: time); as well as others that might be interpreted differently because of the nature of the quality itself, e.g. pointlessly ‘in a pointless manner’ or ‘for no good reason’ (Cause).

Simple Circumstances: Manner

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 217):

[Simple circumstances] are qualities — but construed not as qualities of a particular participant but as qualities of a figure as a whole […]. The usual function is as circumstance of Manner, with the meaning ‘in such a way’, ‘to such a degree’; and if the manner of doing determines the quality of the outcome there may be very little difference between a circumstance of this kind and a resultative Attribute: cf. don’t chop the parsley too fine / too finely.*

* Also, poetically, depictive Attribute: Do not go gentle into that goodnight.