Locating 'Thing' In Lexicogrammatical Space

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 386):

We can use these scales – countability, animacy, generality – as a way of locating the thing in lexicogrammatical space. A fourth factor, that of the metaphoric propensity of nouns (their potential for construing qualities and processes as things). Certain special classes of noun can be identified by reference to the grammar of process types: for example, nouns construing different types of projection. But a more detailed categorisation of things, in terms of their association with roles in the various process types, should emerge after more systematic investigation of the large-scale corpus data that are now available.

Cline Of Animacy

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 385):

Here again the grammar makes a categorical distinction: (a) conscious things, which are those referred to as he/she, (b) non-conscious things, those referred to as it. … while there is a clear foundation in the world of experience, with people at one end and inanimate or abstract objects at the other, many things (like non-human animals) lie in between; and, as always, the grammar is free to construe the world as it pleases. 

The conscious/non-conscious distinction can also therefore be looked at as a cline; and it is one that has received a lot of attention in typological linguistics, under the name of animacy. This, as already remarked, refers to the likelihood of any thing to occur as Actor in a transitive material process, the ‘most animate’ in this sense being, obviously, post-infancy humans.

Functional Potential Of Nouns & Pronouns

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 385):

… we can identify a small number of vectors along which words capable of functioning as Thing are ordered in terms of the grammar, so that the functional potential of any one noun or pronoun will be suggested by its location on each of these vectors. These are:

1. countability: count/mass
2. animacy: conscious/non-conscious
3. generality: general/particular … 

We can use these scales — countability, animacy, generality — as a way of locating things in lexicogrammatical space.

Material Subtypes Differentiated By Outcome Of Medium

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 230n):

… seen from a different perspective from that of the traditional transitive/intransitive model, these two functions, the intransitive Actor and the transitive Goal, are actually one and the same — the Medium. The differentiation of different sub-types of ‘material’ clauses is thus based on the combination of Medium + Process in the first instance. One might have expected that it would be based on Actor + Process instead, as the traditional model would suggest; but it turns out that although they have been favoured by philosophers of language drawing on action theory, distinctions based on Actor + Process such as animacy, potency and volitionality are less central to the system of ‘material’ clauses than distinctions based on Medium + Process. In fact, the grammar of transitivity is more centrally concerned with consciousness rather than with animacy, potency or volitionality.