The ‘As Participant’ Or ‘As Process’ Contrast In Intensive Relational Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 290):

The contrast between ‘as participant’ and ‘as process’ is, as we have just noted, a grammatical one and in a sense it applies also to ‘intensive’ clauses. Thus we have for example:

the meaning of ‘kita:bun’ is ‘book’/ ‘kita:bun’ means ‘book’,
the name of his mother is Anna/ his mother is called Anna,
examples of amphibians are frogs, toads and salamanders/ amphibians are exemplified by frogs, toads and salamanders

But a special feature of the ‘intensive’ type is that the sense of ‘meaning’, ‘name’, ‘example’ and the like may be left implicit in the participant (for the reason, see Matthiessen, 1991a): ‘kita:bun’ is ‘book’, his mother is Anna.