Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 546):
This reconstrual of experience is complex: what were first construed as happenings have become things, with the original things now serving merely as their appendages; but at the same time what were first construed as logical relationships between processes have been reconstrued as processes in their own right. So the transformation of diamond into graphite is caused by ... . It is also complex in another way: the original status accorded to the phenomenon is not lost, but enters into a metaphorical nexus with the new one. So transformation is still a process, as well as being a thing; is caused by, as well as being a process, is still a logical relation between processes. But, as we have seen, the overwhelmingly predominating effect of this reconstrual is a nominalising one, in which other phenomena are transformed into things. This is a major shift in ideational terms, and plays a significant part in the historical semiotic.