Friday 27 December 2019

Attributes Ascribed To A Fact Clause Serving As Carrier


Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 540-1):
In an ‘attributive’ clause, the Attribute ascribed to the fact clause serving as Carrier is realised by a nominal group with an adjective or noun as Head belonging to one of a small number of classes. These are illustrated in Table 7-27. Several of the types are similar to classes of interpersonal Adjunct and two of them can also be related to types of sensing in ‘mental’ clauses.³⁴ We shall return to this area in Chapter 10, Section 10.3.1, showing that certain ‘attributive’ clauses with fact clauses as Carrier and Attributes of assessment form part of the realisation of a semantic system of assessment. The nouns in it is include fact nouns such as fact, idea, but they also include nouns of evaluation such as pity, shame, nuisance that are less likely to function as Head/Thing in nominal groups with a fact clause as Postmodifier/Qualifier.
³⁴ The ‘attributive’ clause may have an agnate ‘mental’ clause of the “please” type: it is surprising (to me) that ... ~ it surprises me that ...; the equivalent of the Senser in the ‘mental’ clause is a circumstance of Angle