Tuesday 1 May 2012

Identifying Clause: Decoding Is Medium + Range, Encoding Is Agent + Medium

Halliday (1994: 165):
[With] decoding clauses (those where Token = Identified/Medium) the passive [ie receptive] is … rather rare. By contrast, in an encoding identifying clause, where the Token is Identifier/Agent and the Value is Identified/Medium, passive [ie receptive] is more or less as frequent as active [ie operative] … but only the active [ie operative] will accommodate a further agency …