Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 150-1):
In what we are calling its "particularist" modelling the grammar is categorising experience for us (or we are categorising experience through our grammar) by construing a small number of different types of figure, differentiated according to what kind of process is taking place and what kinds of participant are involved — in what relationships to each other and to the process.What is the principle on which the grammar categorises experience? In the most general terms, as we have seen, the principle is that all phenomena can be interpreted as falling within a small number of broad experiential domains:
- those happening "inside", within the realm of our own consciousness;
- those happening "outside", in the perceptual world that lies around us;
- those that are not kinds of happening at all, but rather kinds of being and of relating to something else.
We have referred to these as, respectively:(1) figures of sensing — or, more inclusively (since 'languaging' is treated as a distinct phenomenal realm), (1) figures of sensing and(2) figures of saying;(3) figures of doing — or, more explicitly (since the word 'doing' might suggest intentionality), figures of doing & happening;(4) figures of being — or, more accurately (since 'having' is construed as a kind of relative 'being'), figures of being & having.Each of these types of figure has its own special character, as revealed by the way it is organised in the lexicogrammar. We are not attempting to spell out here the grammatical features by which they are differentiated. But we shall characterise them briefly in semantic terms with reference to the forms of participation involved.