Sunday 16 June 2013

Enhancing Hypotactic Verbal Group Complexes: Modulation Causative

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 513):
Only one or two modulations have causative equivalents; for example:
John remembered to do it
causative: Mary reminded John to do it
However, there are a special set that exist only as causatives, where the meaning is simply that of agency: make, cause, force, require, let, allow, permit, etc. These admit of three degrees of modulation:
high: this made (forced, required) them (to) accept our terms
median: this had (got, obliged) them (to) accept our terms
low: this let (allowed, permitted) them (to) accept our terms