Mental Clauses Of Cognition

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 246):

They are able to set up another clause or set of clauses as the content of thinking — as the ideas created by cognition.

Why Projected Clauses Are Not Clause Constituents

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 246):

They do not serve as Complements in the ‘mental’ clause since we do not find ‘receptive’ variants with them as Subject …

Mental Clauses Of Emotion: Gradability

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245-6):

The verbs serving as [emotive mental] Process are lexically gradable; they form points on a scale … expressing degrees of affection. … This property of lexical and grammatical gradability is typical of ‘mental’ clauses construing emotions.

The Complement Of An ‘Emanating’ Mental Clause

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245):

In contrast to the Subject, the Complement is realised by a nominal group that can denote entities of any kind …

The Subject Of An ‘Emanating’ Mental Clause

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245):

… the Subject is a nominal group denoting a conscious being …

Mental Clauses Vs Material Clauses [Diagnostic: Unmarked Present Tense]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245):

When the clause refers to present time, the tense of the verbal group serving as [mental] Process is the simple present rather than the present–in–present that is characteristic of ‘material’ clauses.

Emanating Vs Impinging Mental Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245):

This process of sensing may be construed either as flowing from a person’s consciousness [‘like’ type] or as impinging on it [‘please’ type]; but it is not construed as a material act.

Mental Clauses [Characterisation]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 245):

While ‘material’ clauses are concerned with our experience of the material world, ‘mental’ clauses are concerned with our experience of the world of our own consciousness. They are clauses of sensing: a ‘mental’ clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events taking place in our own consciousness.

Process Type Determines Participant Functions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 244-5):

It is important to recognise … that the functions assumed by the participants in any clause are determined by the type of process that is involved.

Abstract Material Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 243-4):

Material clauses do not necessarily represent concrete, physical events; they may represent abstract doings and happenings … But as the process becomes more abstract, so the distinction between Actor and Goal becomes harder to draw. … Even with concrete processes, however, we have to recognise that there are some where the Actor is involuntary, and thus in some respects like a Goal … With more abstract processes, we often find ‘operative’ and ‘receptive’ forms side by side with little difference between them … There is still some difference: if the ‘receptive’ form is used, we can probe for an explicit Actor — we can ask who by?, whereas with the ‘operative’ form we cannot.  And this is what justifies us in still giving a different functional status to the participant in the two cases.

The Case Of A Circumstance Being Inherent In The Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 243):

There are also, in fact, certain circumstances that are construed as inherent in a process. This happens with ‘enhancing’ clauses construing movement of a participant through space: here a circumstance of Place represents the destination of that movement and may be inherent in the process.  For example:

Did these books and articles put groceries on the table?

They carved its image into stone || and placed it on their temples and palaces.

On The Cline Between Participants And Circumstances

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 243):

Scope, Recipient and Client are clearly treated by the grammar as participants; for example, they are all candidates for subjecthood in a ‘receptive’ clause. However, at the same time, they are clearly located some distance towards circumstances on the cline between participants and circumstances, which is reflected in the fact that that, under certain conditions, they may be marked by a preposition [minor Process].

Attribute: Material Vs Relational Clause

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 243):

In a ‘material’ clause, the Attribute is always an optional added specification. In contrast, it is an inherent part of the configuration of a ‘relational’ clause and cannot be left out.

Blogger Comment:

But note that the Attribute is sometimes conflated with the relational process, as in Accuracy matters.

Depictive Attribute

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 242):

There is also a non-resultative variant of the Attribute. This is the depictive Attribute serving to specify the state in which the Actor or Goal is when it takes part in the process …

Resultative Attribute

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 242):

[The Attribute] enters into ‘material’ clauses in a restricted way. In certain clauses with an ‘elaborating’ outcome, the Attribute may be used to construe the resultant qualitative state of the Actor or Goal after the process has been completed … Such Attributes are called resultative Attributes. They are only marginal participants. While they are unlike cicumstances in that they are not marked by prepositions, they are also unlike true participants in that they cannot serve as Subject. There is in fact a closely related circumstance — the resultative Rôle or ‘product’ …

Scope Vs Goal: Grammatical Distinctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 242):

… the Scope cannot be probed by do to or do with, whereas the Goal can. Since nothing is being ‘done to’ it, a Scope element can never have a resultative Attribute added within the clause, as a (transformative) Goal can … Similarly, a Scope element can never be configured with a circumstance of Rôle of the ‘product’ type. The Scope cannot be a personal pronoun, and it cannot normally be modified by a possessive [so don’t cross my path!]. Moreover, although generalised Scope–receptive clauses … are quite common, Scope–receptive clauses with specific Actors are rare. Thus while a Goal readily becomes Subject … it is unusual to make a Scope element ‘modally responsible’ in this way …

Scope: Semantic Vs Grammatical Perspectives

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 241):

Semantically the Scope element is not in any very obvious sense a participant in the process — it is not directly involved in the process by bringing it about, being affected by it or benefiting from it; but grammatically it is treated as a participant. So it can become Subject of the clause …

Light/Vector Verbs & Cognate/Effective Objects

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 241n):

Jespersen (1942: 117) called verbs in such [Process + Scope] constructions ‘light verbs’, and this term is often used in the contemporary literature on English and also on other languages (e.g. Butt, 2003) – another term being ‘vector verb’. The Scope element in examples such as the candidate dances three dances, Waltz, Foxtrot and Quickstep, with an Amateur or Professional partner was traditionally recognised as a ‘cognate object’. Poutsma (1926) had noticed constructions with (in our terms) Process + Scope, characterising the verb realising the Process as having ‘vague meaning’ and calling the Scope an ‘effective object’; he analysed such configurations as ‘intransitive’.

Why Express A Process As Scope?

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 240-1):

… this structure enables us to specify further the number or kind of processes that take place. … The main reason for its prevalence is the greater potential that is open to nouns, in contrast to verbs, for being modified in different ways …

Scope: Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 240):

The Scope may be not an entity at all but rather another name for the process; … Consider I play tennis, where tennis is Scope. The game of tennis is clearly not an entity; there is no such thing as tennis other than the act of playing it.

Scope: Entity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 240):

The Scope may construe an entity which exists independently of the process but which indicates the domain over which the process takes place. An example is You will be crossing some lonely mountains, so make sure you have enough petrol. … some lonely mountains specifies the range of the tourist’s crossing.

Material Clauses With Scopes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 240):

… the Scope is restricted to ‘intransitive’ clauses (with the minor exception of clauses with give). This means that a material clause consisting of ‘nominal group + verbal group + nominal group’ can be either [transitive] Actor + Process + Goal or [intransitive] Actor + Process + Scope.

Material Clauses: 'Scope' [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 293-4):

In contrast the Scope of a ‘material’ clause is not in any way affected by the performance of the process. Rather it either (i) construes the domain over which the process takes place … or (ii) construes the process itself, either in general or specific terms … There is not, in fact, a sharp line between these two; they really lie along a single continuum.

Goal vs Recipient/Client

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 239):

Like the Goal, both Recipient and Client are affected by the process; but while the Goal is the participant that is impacted by the process, the Recipient/Client is the one that benefits from it.

The Realisation Of Recipients And Clients

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 239):

Most typically the Recipient/Client is realised by a nominal group denoting a human being; especially a personal pronoun, and most commonly of all a speech rôle (me, you, us), e.g. me in Mae West’s famous line Peel me a grape! But this is not necessarily so; the Recipient is a plant in did you give the philodendron some water?, and an abstract entity privilege in we... have today been given the rare privilege to be host to the nations of the world on our own soil. Nor, of course, is the ‘benefit’ necessarily beneficial: Claudius is Recipient in Locusta gave Claudius a dose of poison.

The Systemic Environment Of Clients

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 239):

With a Client, the ‘service’ may likewise be construed as the Goal, especially a Goal of the ‘created’ as distinct from the ‘transformed’ type, one that is brought into being by the process – the ‘creative’ type of ‘transitive material’ clause; e.g. a picture, this house in he painted John a picture, built Mary a house. But it is really the process that constitutes the service; hence a Client may also appear in an ‘intransitive’ clause – one that has no Goal, but has either Process + Scope, e.g. played Mary a tune, or else Process only, as in play for me. These last cannot appear without for (play me); in order to show that they are Client it is necessary to add a Scope element in final position (play for me – play a tune for me – play me a tune).

The Transfer Of Possession: Giving Vs Depriving

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 238-9, 239n):

Note that the transfer of possession can alternatively be modelled in the grammar as depriving somebody of something rather than as giving something to somebody; in this model, the original owner is construed either circumstantially as a locative source, as in take/steal/borrow money from a friend, or participantally as the Goal, with the goods being transferred construed circumstantially as Matter, as in rob/deprive him of [‘in respect of’] his money. … 

These two models for construing the experience of transfer of possession are thus grammatically distinct in English. The ‘giving’ model constitutes a distinct type in the grammar of transitivity – the configuration of Actor + Process + Goal + Recipient. In contrast, the ‘depriving’ model is not a distinct one; it is based on a more general pattern of participant + circumstance:

(i) [possession as participant] Actor + Process + Goal + Place (e.g. they took his most cherished belongings from him) or 

(ii) [original owner as participant] Actor + Process + Goal + Matter (e.g. they robbed him of his most cherished belongings).

To account for the relationship between these two lexicogrammatical models in English, we have to move up to the level of semantics.

The Systemic Environment Of Recipients

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 238):

Recipients and Clients occur in systemically different environments. Recipients occur only in ‘transitive transformative’ clauses of the ‘extending’ type; and within that category, they occur with those clauses that denote a transfer of the Actor’s possession of goods – transfer to the Recipient.  Here the Goal represents the ‘goods’ being transferred.

Blogger Comment:

Consider the intransitive instances But I gave generously to you.  Won't you now give to me in return?

'Give' + Scope

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 237n):

And there are clauses with give which, though superficially like transfer of possession, differ from these in that they do not exhibit the contrast between + preposition and – preposition. These are clauses with a nominalised verb as one participant, as in give somebody a kick/punch/kiss/hug. Thus while we can say, he gave the dog a kick, we are much less likely say he gave a kick to the dog. Such clauses are in fact mildly metaphorical variants of clauses where kick, punch, kiss, hug, etc. is a verb serving as the Process: he gave the dog a kick: he kicked the dog. This suggests that the nominalised verb is in fact a Scope rather than a Goal and that what might at first appear to be a Recipient is in fact construed as a Goal (and can thus be probed with do to/with): [Actor:] he [Process:] gave [Goal:] the dog [Scope:] a kick (cf. what he did to the dog was give it a kick but not what he did with the kick was give the dog it) …

Blogger Comments:

i.e.

congruent:

He	gave	the dog	a stick
Actor	Process: material	Recipient	Goal

but

He	gave	the dog	a kick
Actor	Process: material	Goal	Scope

is metaphorical for:

He	kicked	the dog
Actor	Process: material	Goal

So 'give' provides the only means of construing Scope in a transitive clause.

Material Clauses With Recipients

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 238, 238n):

Recipients and Clients occur in systemically different environments … Recipients occur only in ‘transitive transformative’ clauses of the ‘extending’ type; and within that category, they occur with those clauses that denote a transfer of the possession of goods.  Here the Goal represents the ‘goods’ being transferred… 

They are thus the material version of possessive relational clauses. Fawcett (1988) treats them as relational rather than as material. But in our interpretation, they are simply part of a general pattern of agnation between material clauses on the one hand and relational and existential ones on the other: creative material clauses are related to existential clauses and transformative material clauses to relational clauses (more specifically, elaborating transformation — intensive relation, extending transformation — possessive relation, and enhancing transformation — circumstantial relation).

Client vs Behalf

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 237):

Clients tend to be more restricted than Recipients; in I’m doing all this for Mary, for Mary is not a Client but a type of circumstance of Cause (Behalf).