Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 147-8):
Throughout the history of the study of language, in all the major traditions, grammarians and philosophers have focussed primarily on figures of doing. Certain subtypes have been fairly well explored: usually those having some special structural feature, such as figures involving transfer of possession ('giving') where there is an additional participant role (Beneficiary, recognised in traditional grammar as indirect or dative object). And figures of doing in their very simplest form (John ran, Mary threw the ball) have remained for more than two millennia as the foundation of the theory of transitivity. But there has been little attempt at a systematic treatment of the total range of material clauses with their intersecting features and subtypes. Here we shall refer to three major distinctions that have traditionally been recognised; and then take one further step … bringing together figures of doing and being.