‘Verbal’ Reporting Of Proposals

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 460):

The parallel between quoting and reporting is not so close with proposals as with propositions, because reported proposals merge gradually into causatives without any clear line in between. Thus not only are there many verbs used in quoting which are not used in reporting … but also there are many verbs used to report that are not used to quote, verbs expressing a wide variety of rhetorical processes such as persuade, forbid, undertake, encourage, recommend …

Reporting Proposals

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 458):

Like propositions, proposals can also be reported: projected hypotactically (1) by ‘verbal’ clauses as ‘indirect speech’ or (2) by ‘mental’ clauses as ‘indirect thought’. The former involves indirect commands, offers and suggestions; the latter desired (ideas of) states of affair. One central feature they share is the mode of projected proposal: it is ‘irrealis’, or non-actualised, and the projecting clause represents the verbal or mental force of actualisation.

Quoting Thoughts

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 456, 457):

Here a thought is represented as if it was a wording, for example I thought 'I'll just inquire' … The implication is ‘I said to myself…’; and this expression is often used, recognising the fact that one can think in words. Only certain mental process verbs are regularly used to quote in this way, such as think, wonder, reflect, surmise.

Verbs Used In Quoting & Reporting Propositions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 455-6):

Verbs used in reporting statements and questions are often the same as those used in quoting; … but there is one significant difference.  In quoting, the independent status of the proposition, including its mood, is preserved; hence the speech function is as explicit as in the ‘original’.  In reporting, on the other hand, the speech function is, or may be, obscured, and is therefore made explicit in the reporting verb.  Three things follow.  (1) In quoting, the word say can project sayings of every mood, whereas in reporting we find say, ask, and tell … (2) Many semantically complex verbs for elaborated speech functions are used only in reporting, for example insinuate … These verbs are seldom used to quote; there is too much experiential distance between them and the actual speech event.  (3) On the other hand, many verbs that assign interpersonal and/or behavioural features to the speech event, and are used to quote, especially in narrative contexts, are never used to report because they do not contain the feature ‘say’.

Quoting Sounds

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 455):

While minor clauses can be quoted, they cannot be reported; that is, the quoting clause nexus He said “Ah!” has no reporting agnate.  Similarly, while non-linguistic sounds can be quoted (often with go as the Process, as in she went (sound of a sigh)), they cannot be reported.

Reporting Speech

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 453, 454):

It is possible to ‘report’ a saying by representing it as a meaning. This is the ‘reported speech’, or ‘indirect speech’, of traditional Western grammars; … But the principle behind this hypotactic representation of a verbal event is that it is not, in fact, being presented as true to the wording; the speaker is reporting the gist of what was said, and the wording may be quite different from the original … This is not to suggest, of course, that when a speaker uses the paratactic, ‘direct’ form he is always repeating the exact words; far from it. But the idealised function of the paratactic structure is to represent the wording; whereas with hypotaxis the idealised function is to represent the sense, or gist.

Projection: Recombination Of Associated Variables

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 453):

These two represent the basic patterns of projection — quoting speech and reporting thought … . But, by the familiar semogenic process of recombination of associated variables (more simply known as filling up the holes), other forms have come to exist alongside — reporting speech and quoting thought.

Quoting Vs Reporting: Dialogic Features Of Locutions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 453):

And while paratactic projection can represent any dialogic features of what was said, hypotactic projection cannot; for example, vocative elements and minor speech functions can be quoted but not reported.

Mental Projection Of Ideas: Why Reporting (Hypotaxis) Is Typical

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 452):

When something is projected as a meaning, we are not representing ‘the very words’, because there are no words. If we want to argue about whether or not the experts held this opinion, we have no observed event as a point of reference. Hence in combination with the tactic system the basic pattern for projecting meanings is not parataxis, which treats the projection as a free-standing event, but hypotaxis, which makes it dependent on the mental process clause.

Construing Levels Of Projection (Viewed ‘From Above’ And ‘From Below’)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 451, 452):

Something that is projected as a meaning is still a phenomenon of language — it is what was referred to above as a ‘metaphenomenon’; but it is presented at a different level — semantic, not lexicogrammatical. When something is projected as meaning it has already been ‘processed’ by the linguistic system — it is a phenomenon of experience that has been construed as meaning; but processed only once, not twice as in the case of wording, where a phenomenon of experience is construed first as meaning and then in turn as wording. … A wording is, as it were, twice cooked. … We are unconsciously aware [sic] that when something has the status of a wording it lies not at one but at two removes from experience; it has undergone two steps in the realisation process. … We have described the process ‘from above’, from the point of view of how experience is first construed as meaning (‘semanticised’) and then as wording (‘grammaticalised’). But looked at ‘from below’, a wording is closer to expression than a meaning is … .

Cognitively Projected Propositions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 450-1):

In the environment of ‘mental’ projection, the contrast between statement and question is not concerned with the speech functional orientation of giving vs demanding information but rather with the status of the validity of the information.  In a statement, it is fixed with respect to the polarity and the elements of transitivity (realised by an indirect declarative clause optionally introduced by that), but in a question, it is open with respect [to] the polarity (realised by an indirect yes/no interrogative clause introduced by whether or if) or one (or more) of the elements of transitivity (realised by an indirect wh- interrogative clause introduced by who, which, when, where, etc).  Consequently, mental clauses representing an ‘undecided’ state of mind are used to project indirect questions.  These include clauses of wondering and doubting, finding out and checking, and contemplating, which tend to be characterised by special lexical verbs such as wonder, ascertain …

Mental Clauses Of The ‘Cognitive’ Type

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 449):

… these always project propositions. Here a proposition is, as it were, created cognitively; it is brought into existence by a process of thinking.

Verbal Quoting Clauses: General Verbs

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 448):

In addition [to say], we find the verb go used in quoting clauses.  This verb is also used to project representations of non-linguistic semiosis, as in the tyres went [sound of screeching].  A recent addition to quoting verbs in casual speech is be like; for example, I was like ‘Are you in the right show? …

Metaphenomena: Participanthood

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 441):

Metaphenomena — projections — can be associated only with certain types of process, essentially saying and sensing, plus in certain circumstances being; … . … Complication arises because the names of metaphenomena, nouns such as belief and fact, can sometimes enter into material processes where the metaphenomena by themselves cannot. … In other words, although projections cannot participate in processes other than those of consciousness, the names of projections can, because they can be used to label events or states of affairs.

Macrophenomenon (Expansion) Vs Metaphenomenon (Projection)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 440-1):

[Consider] we saw that the boats had been turned.  If I say I can see the boats turning, this is an event.  A process ‘the boats are turning’ is being treated as a single complex phenomenon — a macrophenomenon … .  If I say I can see that the boats are turning, this is a projection.  The process ‘the boats are turning’ is being treated as the projection or idea of a phenomenon — a metaphenomenon, something not just bigger but of a different order of reality.

Process Nominal Groups

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 439-40):

[Consider] we saw the turning of the boats.  Here the process has been nominalised at the word rank, with turning as noun … .  The structure is that of a nominal group having [a] prepositional phrase with of as Postmodifier; the Complement of the of phrase corresponds to what would be the Complement if the process was realised as a clause. … Where there would be an explicit Subject, if the process was realised as a clause, what corresponds to this is the ‘possessor’ of the process, as in his handling of the situation …

Grammatical Construal Of Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 425):

There is a gradual loss of information, in the way a process is construed in the grammar, as one moves from the finite free clause [to the bound finite clause to the bound non-finite clause] to the prepositional phrase … ( … this loss of information is carried still further through the use of grammatical metaphor).