Transitive Model As Linear

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

The transitive is a linear interpretation; and since the only function that can be defined by extension in this way is Goal (together with, perhaps, the analogous functions of Target in a verbal process and Phenomenon* in a mental process of the please [‘impinging’] type), systems which are predominantly transitive in character tend to emphasise the distinction between participants (ie direct participants, Actor and Goal only) and circumstances (all other functions).

Blogger Comment:

* It strikes me that this should be Senser, not Phenomenon.

Range: Common Features Across Process Types [Definition]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

There may be in each type of clause one element which is not so much an entity participating in the process as a refinement of the process itself. This may be the name of a particular variety of the process, which being a noun can then be modified for quantity and for quality … Since here the kind of action, event, behaviour, sensing or saying is specified by the noun, as a participant function, the verb may be entirely general in meaning … Or, secondly, this element may be an entity, but one that plays a part in the process not by acting, or being acted upon, but by marking its domain … It is characteristic of this second type that they are on the borderline of participants and circumstances; there is often a closely related form of prepositional phrase …

Range In Decoding Identifying Relational Clauses: Value

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

… in the identifying, the criteria tend to conflict. For purposes of simplicity, we will interpret the Token as Medium and the Value as Range in all types, although this does ignore some aspects of the patterning of such clauses in text.

Blogger Comment:

To be clear, this only applies to decoding clauses (Identified/Token, Identifier/Value)

In encoding clauses, there is no Range; the Identifier/Token is Agent, and the Identified/Value is Medium.

Range In Attributive Relational Clauses: Attribute

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

In the attributive, the Attribute is clearly analogous to a Range.

Range In Verbal Clauses: Verbiage

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

The two kinds of Verbiage, that which refers to the content, as in describe the apartment, and that which specifies the nature of the verbal process, such as tell a story, are analogous respectively to the material ‘entity Scope’ and ‘process Scope’.

Range In Emanating Mental Clauses: Phenomenon

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 347):

[In the like [‘emanating’] type of mental process] the Phenomenon bears no kind of resemblance to a Goal.  But it does show certain affinities with the Scope.  It figures as Subject, in the ‘receptive’, under similarly restricted conditions; and it appears in expressions, such as enjoy the pleasure, saw the sight, have an understanding of, which are analogous to material Scope expressions of the ‘process’ type, such as play a game, have a game.  So we can interpret the rôle of the Phenomenon in the like type of mental process as a counterpart of that of Scope in the material; it is the element which delimits the boundaries of the sensing.

Agent In ‘Impinging’ Mental Clauses: Phenomenon

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 346-7):

[The please [‘impinging’] type of mental process] shares certain features of an effective material process: it occurs freely in the ‘receptive’ (I’m pleased with it), and it can be generalised as a kind of ‘doing to’ (What does it do to you? — It pleases me).  Here the Phenomenon shows some semblance to an Actor: from the ergative point of view, they are both Agent.

Range In Material & Behavioural Clauses: Scope, Behaviour

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 346):

In a ‘material’, the Range is the Scope; in a ‘behavioural’ clause, the Range is the Behaviour.

The Range [Definition & Distribution]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 346):

The Range is the element that specifies the range or domain of the process. A Range may occur in ‘material’, ‘behavioural’, ‘mental’, ‘verbal’, and 'relational' clauses — but not in ‘existential’ ones.

Beneficiary As Subject

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

The Beneficiary regularly functions as Subject in the clause; in that case the verb is in the ‘receptive’ voice.

Beneficiary In Attributive Relational Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

There are also a few ‘relational’ clauses of the ‘attributive’ mode containing a Beneficiary, for example him in she made him a good wife, it cost him a pretty penny. We shall just refer to this as a Beneficiary, without introducing a more specific term, since these hardly constitute a recognisably distinct rôle in the clause.

Blogger Comment:

Note also identifying clauses of benefaction, such as this affords us many possibilities (p297).

Beneficiary In Material Clauses: Realisation

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

The Beneficiary is realised by (to +) nominal group (Recipient) or (for +) nominal group (Client); the presence of the preposition is determined by textual factors.

Beneficiary In Material & Verbal Clauses: Recipient, Client, Receiver

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

In a ‘material’ clause, the Beneficiary is either the Recipient or the Client. … In a ‘verbal’ clause, the Beneficiary is the Receiver.

The Beneficiary [Definition & Distribution]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

The Beneficiary is the one to whom or for whom the process is said to take place. It appears in ‘material’ and ‘verbal’ clauses, and occasionally in ‘relational’ ones. (In other words, there are no Beneficiaries in ‘mental’, ‘behavioural’ or ‘existential’ clauses.)

Transitive And Ergative In Identifying Relational Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 345):

⁵⁰ Note: Those in the top row are decoding clauses; the receptive is a medio-receptive and hence rare. Those below are encoding; the receptive is a ‘true’ receptive.

Agent In Encoding Identifying Relational Clauses: Assigner

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 343):

By contrast, in an encoding identifying clause, passive• is more or less as frequent as active, e.g. (‘which is the leader?’—) active Tom is the leader, passive the leader is Tom; but only the active will accommodate a further* agency – we do not say they elected the leader Tom. Hence in an active/passive pair such as (‘who are now the main suppliers?’—) active our company are now the main suppliers, passive the main suppliers are now our company, the agentive form is this decision leaves our company the main suppliers; the passive does not readily expand to this decision leaves the main suppliers our company.

Blogger Comments:

• Note that the active/passive distinction at clause rank is now termed 'operative/receptive'.

* Note that in an encoding clause, the Identifier/Token is the Agent.

Agent In Decoding Identifying Relational Clauses: Assigner

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 343):

In the identifying type, it is normally possible to add a feature of agency (an Assigner) provided the clause is operative (Token as Subject): thus, to (‘which is Tom?’—) Tom is (serves as) the leader corresponds an agentive such as they elected Tom the leader; and, with second order Agent, they got Tom elected the leader. We have seen that, with such decoding clauses (those where Token = Identified) the receptive is in any case rather rare.

Agent In Attributive Relational Clauses: Attributor

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 343):

In the attributive type, this is a distinct function analogous to the material Initiator: the one that brings about the attribution, e.g. the heat in the heat turned the milk sour. This is the Attributor.

Agent In Mental Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 343):

In a mental process, it is the Phenomenon — provided the process is encoded in one direction, from phenomenon to consciousness ['impinging'] and not the other way round ['emanating'].

Agent In Material Clauses

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 343):

The Agent is the external agency where there is one.  In a material process, it is the Actor — provided the process is one that has a Goal; otherwise it may be present as the Initiator of the process.

Transitive And Ergative Equivalents

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: ):

By using the ergative standpoint to complement the transitive one in our interpretation of English, we can match up the functions in the various process types. The table of equivalents is given as Table 5-41.

Blogger Comment:

Note that, in the case of identifying clauses, for simplicity, this table presents the transitive equivalents only for decoding clauses, where Token conflates with Identified, and Value with Identifier.  In encoding clauses, it is the Identified Value that corresponds to the Medium, whereas the Identifier Token corresponds to the Agent.

In other words, it is actually the Identified that always corresponds to the Medium, whether Token or Value, and the Identifier varies according to whether the clause is decoding or encoding, corresponding to Range (decoding: Value) or Agent (encoding Token).

Note also that identifying relationals can also afford a Beneficiary (in possessive benefactive clauses).

The Agent [Definition]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 342):

… in addition to the Medium, there may be another participant functioning as an external cause. This participant we will refer to as the Agent. Either the process is represented as self–engendering, in which case there is no separate Agent; or it is represented as engendered from outside, in which case there is another participant functioning as Agent.

The Clause Nucleus

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 341-2):

The Process and the Medium together form the nucleus of an English clause; and this nucleus then determines the range of options that are available to the rest of the clause. Thus the nucleus … represents a small semantic field which may be realised as a clause either alone or in combination with other participant or circumstantial functions.

Medium/Process: Meteorological Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 341):

For the sake of simplicity, we represent meteorological processes such as it’s raining as having no Medium; but it would be more accurate to say that here the Medium is conflated with the Process.

The Medium [Distinguishing Characteristics]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 341):

Except in the special case of the medio–receptive voice, the Medium is obligatory in all processes; and it is the only element that is, other than the process itself. … The Medium is also the only element that is never introduced into the clause by means of a preposition (again with the same exception of medio–receptives); it is treated as something that always participates directly in the process.

The Medium [Definition]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 341, 343):

Every process has associated with it one participant that is the key figure in that process; this is the one through which the process is actualised, and without which there would be no process at all.  Let us call this element the Medium, since it is the entity through the medium of which the process comes into existence. … in a material process the Medium is equivalent to the Actor in an intransitive clause and Goal in a transitive clause. …

Thus the Medium is the nodal participant throughout the system. It is not the doer, nor the causer, but the one that is critically involved, in some way or other according to the particular nature of the process.

Phylogenesis Of The Ergative Pattern

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 340):

The coming of this pattern to predominance in the system of modern English is one of a number of related developments that have been taking place in the language over the past 500 years or more, together amounting to a far–reaching and complex process of semantic change. These changes have tended, as a whole, to emphasise the textual function, in the organisation of English discourse, by comparison with the experiential function; and within the experiential function, to emphasise the cause–&–effect aspect of processes by comparison with the ‘deed–&–extension’ one. … [The English transitivity system] is particularly unstable in the contemporary language, having been put under great pressure by the need for the language continually to adapt itself to a rapidly changing environment, and by the increasing functional demands that have been made on it ever since Chaucer’s time.

The Ergative Pattern

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 340, 340n):

Looked at from this point of view, the variable is not one of extension but one of causation. Some participant is engaged in a process; is the process brought about by that participant, or by some other entity? In this perspective, the lion chased the tourist relates not so much to the lion ran as to the tourist ran: ‘the tourist did some running; either the running was instigated by the tourist himself (intransitive the tourist ran), or else by some external agency (transitive the lion chased the tourist)’. Note however that the terms ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ are no longer appropriate here, since they imply the extension model. The pattern yielded by this second interpretation is known as the ergative pattern. The clauses the lion chased the tourist/the tourist ran form an ergative/non-ergative pair.* …

* In the typological literature on ‘case marking’ or ‘alignment’ systems, such pairs are often referred to as ‘ergative/absolutive’, contrasting with the ‘nominative/accusative’ pair of the transitive model.

The Ergative Model: Causation Of The Process [Defining Variable]

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 286-8):

The arguments for the ergative interpretation are long and technical. But while, as we have seen, there is clear evidence in the grammar for distinguishing one process type from another, there is also clear evidence for saying that, in a more abstract sense, every process is structured in the same way, on the basis of just one variable. This variable relates to the source of the process: what it is that brought it about. The question at issue is: is the process brought about from within, or from outside? 

This is not the same thing as the intransitive/transitive distinction. There, as we saw, the variable is one of extension. The Actor is engaged in a process; does the process extend beyond the Actor, to some other entity, or not?

Pronominal Case Marking Is A Feature Of Mood, Not Transitivity

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 338n):

The account of lexical ergativity has sometimes been supported by reference to pronominal case marking in English. But this is also a mistake; pronominal case marking is not a feature of the experiential system of transitivity but rather of the interpersonal system of mood: the non-oblique (‘nominative’) case is used for Subjects in finite clauses and the oblique (‘accusative’) case in all other environments (including Subjects in non-finite clauses). It is thus related to arguability status, not the transitive model of transitivity.