Saturday 26 May 2018

Possession & Circumstantiation As Participant vs Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 289-90):
With ‘possessive’ and ‘circumstantial’ clauses, there is thus a systemic contrast between ‘possession/circumstantiation as participant’ and ‘possession/circumstantiation as process’. The contrast is a general one, construed in the grammatical zone of lexicogrammar rather than the lexical one; and just as with the ‘like’/‘please’ contrast in the grammar of ‘mental’ clauses, we often find lexical pairs manifesting the contrast such as be x’s/be owned, be like/resemble, be with/accompany, be in/inhabit, be around/surround, be opposite of/face, be about/concern – but just as in the mental case there may be gaps in the lexical paradigm.