Process Types: The Grammar Provides A Flexible Semantic Space

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 516):

In construing experience in this way, the grammar is providing a resource for thinking with. A strict taxonomy of separate process types would impose too much discontinuity, while a bipolar continuum would precisely be too polarised. What the grammar offers is, rather, a flexible semantic space, continuous and elastic, which can be contorted and expanded without losing its topological order. Since it evolved with the human species, it is full of anomalies, contradictions and compromises; precisely the properties which make it possible for a child to learn, because only a system of this kind could accommodate the disorder that is inherent in experience itself.

The Grammar Of Clauses As A Theory Of Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514-5):

This part of the grammar, then — the grammar of clauses — , constitutes a theory about the types of process that make up human experience. In English (which is probably fairly typical), the three principal categories that we are calling the material, mental and relational are rather clearly distinct on a number of formal grounds; the other three appear as mixed or intermediate categories lying on the borderlines. (In fact the category of verbal process is more clearly distinct than the other two; and in view of its central place in the semantic system, we have treated it throughout the present study as a primary category.) The total picture is of a continuum; but not between two poles — rather something that we would represent in the form of a circle.

Existential Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514):

What is said to exist may be an entity, something that persists through time, like there’s a letter for you; but it may also, in many languages, be a happening, as in there was a fight. Here we have something that could alternatively be construed as a material process (people were fighting), which suggests that “existential” processes are another intermediate type, something between the relational and material.

Realisation As Identifying Process & Instantiation As Attributive Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514): 

They [relational processes] are modelled, in fact, on the two basic relationships that characterise semiotic systems: realisation (identifying processes such as this is (‘realises’) my sister), and instantiation (attributive processes such as she is (‘instantiates’) a student of law).

Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514): 

… these [verbal processes] shade into something else, which the grammar again construes as phenomenally distinct: relations of identity (including symbolic identity, like red means stop) and attribution. Expressions of this kind, which in English often have the verb be, hardly seem to fit the label “process” at all; but the grammar firmly represents them as such, so we call them “relational processes”.

Verbal (Symbolic) Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514): 

Language itself, of course, is a form of human behaviour; “languaging” constitutes, for the grammar, another distinct type of process, that of “verbal” (or better, “symbolic”) processes. An act of saying is not simply externalising inner events; it is actively transforming them, into an event of a different kind. It then resembles other semiotic events, many of which do not require a conscious information source (… the light says stop).

Behavioural Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 514):

Here [in English] the grammar postulates a third type of process intermediate between these two [material and mental]: “behavioural” processes, in which inner events are externalised as bodily behaviour, like staring, thinking (in the sense of pondering) or crying.

Material Vs Mental Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513-4): 

At the same time, while recognising a general category of “process” to construe our experience of change, the grammar also recognises that not all processes are alike. As human beings we become aware (and again we can see this in the actions of tiny infants) that phenomena fall into two distinct types: those happening outside ourselves, which we can see and hear, and those happening within our own consciousness — thoughts and feelings, and also the sensations of seeing and hearing, as distinct from whatever is seen or heard. The grammar construes this as a distinction between “material processes” and “mental processes”. Mental processes are specifically attributed to conscious beings …

Circumstantial Function Of Prepositional Phrases

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513):

Typically, the most complex is the class of circumstantial elements, because these are themselves often formed as complex constructions; there may be simple words (a class of adverbs), but here may also be constructs like English prepositional phrases, the function of which is to bring in other potential participants but to bring them in indirectly … The theory behind this is that there are two ways in which an entity can be involved: either directly as a participant in the process, or indirectly in a circumstantial rôle, such as the place where the process happens. This indirect participant is often construed as participating in a kind of secondary process tangential to the main one (grammatically, a prepositional phrase is a reduced variant of a clause).

From Process Differentiation To Word Classes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513):

… construing processes in this way clearly depends on generalising whole classes of phenomena; the grammar sets up classes of process, of participant, and of circumstance. There are various ways of doing this; one that is familiar in many languages is by means of a taxonomy of different kinds of word. The classes of word may be distinguished by their internal form, or by the way they are able to enter into larger constructions (or both).

The Evolutionary Emergence Of Common Words Denoting Classes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 513):

[A] significant step that took place in human grammars … was … the evolution of common nouns — or rather, of common words, since verbs are “common” in this sense: that is, words denoting classes rather than individuals. It is usually assumed that these evolved out of “proper” words, prototypically the names of individual persons; the ontogenetic evidence suggests that this is one source but not the only one, another source being rather in the interpersonal function.

The Experiential Metafunction Construes Change

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

The basic component of all experience is change: when something changes from one state to another, it projects itself on to our consciousness. This may be something in the external environment … The grammar construes this experience of change in the form of a process configuration: the fundamental element of grammar is the clause, and the clause presents the parameters within which processes may unfold. 

The grammar does this by deconstructing the process into component parts. Typically … these are of three kinds: first the process itself, secondly certain phenomena construed as participants in the process, and thirdly, other phenomena that are associated with the process circumstantially.

It Is The Grammar That Construes The Semantics Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512): 

In all these metafunctions, the language does not take over and reproduce some readymade semantic space. There is no such space until the grammar comes along to construe it.

Discourse [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512):

… the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts.

What The Textual Metafunction Enables

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 512): 

Textually, the grammar is the creating of information; it engenders discourse, the patterned forms of wording that constitute meaningful semiotic contexts. From one point of view, therefore, this “textual” metafunction has an enabling force, since it is this that allows the other two to operate at all. But at the same time, it brings into being a world of its own, a world that is constituted semiotically. With the textual metafunction language not only construes and enacts our reality but also becomes part of the reality that it is construing and enacting.

The Interpersonal Metafunction Constructs Social Relationships

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Interpersonally, the grammar is not a theory but a way of doing; it is our construction of social relationships, both those that define society and our own place in it, and those that pertain to the immediate dialogic situation. This constitutes the “interpersonal” metafunction, whereby language constructs our social collective and, thereby, our personal being. The word “construct” is used to suggest a form of enactment — though something on which we inevitably build a theory, of ourself and the various “others” to whom we relate.

Ideational Metafunction: Experiential And Logical

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

Ideationally, the grammar is a theory of human experience; it is our interpretation of all that goes on around us, and also inside ourselves. There are two parts to this: one the representation of the processes themselves, which we refer to as the “experiential”; the other the representation of the relations between one process and another, and it is this that we refer to as the “logical”. The two together construe the “ideational” metafunction, whereby language construes our experiential world.  The word “construe” is used to suggest an intellectual construction — though one that, of course, we then use as a guide to action.

The Multiple Aspects Of The Content Plane: Metafunctions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 511):

We have stressed all along that a language is a system for creating meaning; and that its meaning potential has evolved around three motifs — what we refer to as the “metafunctions” of ideational, interpersonal and textual, with the ideational in turn comprising an experiential component and a logical component. These are the multiple aspects of the content plane — the grammar (in its usual sense of lexicogrammar) and the semantics. Since the powerhouse of language lies in the grammar, we shall refer to them here as aspects of the grammar; but it is important to insist that they could not be “in” the one without also being “in” the other. It makes no sense to ask whether the metafunctions are grammatical or semantic; the only possible answer would be “yes”.

Interpreting Physical And Biological Systems As Semiotic Systems

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

Meanwhile what has become clear is that there is the (by now) familiar interplay between phenomenon and observer. Wehave talked of physical, biological, social and semiotic systems as being categories of phenomena — which in an important sense they are. But they may also be thought of as different stances taken by the observer; thus we find physical and biological systems being interpreted as semiotic systems, in a kind of intellectual game which turns out to reveal new aspects of physical and biological processes. It is obviously beyond our scope — and indeed beyond our capabilities — to pursue these matters here. But they add a whole new dimension to our grammatics, to the concept of a theory of grammar as a metatheory of human experience.

Blogger Comment:

On the other hand, construals of experience as physical and biological systems are semiotic systems: language supported by other semiotic modes made possible by language.  As such, the models can be reconstrued in terms of linguistic theory.

The Problem Of Cracking The Code Of Language As A Semiotic System–&–Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 510):

There are two aspects to this problem. One is that we do not yet fully understand the nature of a linguistic fact: this is the problem of instantiation. The other is that we do not yet fully understand the relationship that is the semiotic analogue of the “cause : effect” of classical physics: this is the problem of realisation.

Why Language Is The Prototypical Human Semiotic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509-10):

Language is set apart, however, as the prototypical semiotic system, on a variety of different grounds:

it is the only one that evolved specifically as a semiotic system;

it is the one semiotic into which all others can be “translated”; and

it is the one whereby the human species as a whole, and each individual member of that species, construes experience and constructs a social order.

In this last respect, all other semiotic systems are derivative: they have meaning potential only by reference to models of experience, and forms of social relationship, that have already been established in language. It is this that justifies us in taking language as the prototype of systems of meaning.

Blogger Comment:

Beyond the narrow world of one species, Homo sapiens, language is least typical of all semiotic systems, being mostly confined to humans and being, on the SFL model, the only semiotic system with a stratified content plane.

Studying Language As Different System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

It can be studied as a physical system, in acoustics and in the physical aspect of articulation (air pressure measurements and so on). It can be studied as a biological system, in the physiological aspects of articulation and in the neurophysiology of the brain. It can be studied as a social system, as the primary mode of human interaction. And of course it can be studied as a semiotic system, in the core areas of lexicogrammar, phonology and semantics.

Why Meaning Is Value That Can Only Be Construed Symbolically

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

Meaning can be thought of (and was thought of by Saussure) as just a kind of social value; but it is value in a significantly different sense — value that is construed symbolically. Meaning can only be construed symbolically, because it is intrinsically paradigmatic, as Saussure understood and built into his own definition of valeur.

Relating System–&–Process Types By Adding Components

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 509):

A biological system is a physical system with the added component of “life”; it is a living physical system. In comparable terms, a social system is a biological system with the added component of “value” (which explains the need for a synoptic approach, since value is something that is manifested in forms of structure). A semiotic system, then, is a social system with the added component of “meaning”. […] Semiotic systems are social systems where value has been further transformed into meaning.

Blogger Comment:

Semiotic systems are the means by which social (and other) systems form.  No semiosis, no social system. In the unfolding of the universe, physical systems preceded biological systems, and biological systems preceded social systems; but social systems didn't precede semiotic systems.

Different System–&–Process Types Require Different Perspectives

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

For understanding physical systems, the critical approach was that of measurement; the dominant theme was mathematics, and the perspective essentially a synoptic one. But this did not serve well for interpreting biological systems; these are better understood in terms of change, so the perspective had to be altered, to become dynamic, with evolution as the dominant theme. For social systems, however, the dynamic perspective lacked explanatory power, and in the [20th] century it was overtaken by another synoptic approach, the theme of structuralism. Our conception of the nature of social systems has been largely moulded in structuralist terms.

The Problem Of System–Instance Relations Across Different System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

What is problematic is the relationship between the system and the instance; or, to put it another way, what is the nature of a “fact” in these different realms of experience? A biological fact is different from a physical fact, and a social fact is different again; the relationship between that which can be observed, and the system–&–process lying behind what is observed, is significantly harder to establish when the system is a social system, because the phenomena involved are simultaneously all three kinds.

An Ordering In The Make Up Of System–&–Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 508):

Physical systems are just physical systems. Biological systems, however, are not just biological systems; they are at once both biological and physical. Social systems are all three: social, biological and social. This makes them increasingly difficult for us to comprehend. This is not the same as saying that social systems are more complex than biological ones, or biological than physical; there are too many ways in which things can be complex, for any such observation to make sense. But they are increasingly complex in this particular respect; and this means that it is increasingly difficult to recognise the essential nature of the phenomena concerned.

Why A ‘Linear’ Taxonomy Of System–&–Process Types?

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 507):

There is an ordering among these four types of system, which we can appreciate most readily, perhaps, at the “meta” level: this is the order in which they have come to be studied and interpreted, in the past five hundred years of human scholarship. […] In other words, there was a certain intellectual distance to be covered in bringing a comparable kind of insight into these different types of system–&–process.

The Terms 'Semiotic' And ‘System’

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 507):

As we conceive of it, the term “semiotic” is framed within a linear taxonomy of “physical – biological – social – semiotic”; and the term “system” is a shortened form of “system–&–process”, there being no single word that encapsulates both the synoptic and dynamic perspectives (we have referred to the term “climatic system” with the same observation on how it is to be understood).

Polysystemicity Of The Semantic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 506):

The system is polysystemic from the point of view of contextual diversification: given a particular context type or a set of related types, some parts of the overall semantic system will be deployed in a systematic way whereas others will remain inactive. For instance, if contexts where the goal is to instruct somebody to a procedure were the only source of evidence for the semantic system, we could safely ignore figures of sensing and saying and the logical relationship of projection. And yet in the general system, which is the overall meaning–making resource deployed across all the different types of context, these figures and sequences turn out to be essential both to the functioning of the semantic system and to our understanding of its fundamental principles.

Complementarities In The Semantic System

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505-6): 

The system often embodies complementarities providing more than one way of construing similar types of experience — for example, construing perception either as inert sensing or as active behaviour, or construing phenomena of all kinds either congruently or metaphorically. If one is concerned with a restricted, designed semiotic system, then the appropriate strategy, when one is faced with more than one option in natural language, may be to select one canonical form; but if one’s concern is with language as a whole, the only response that will hold up in the long term is to acknowledge the variation and explore its function.

Choosing Between Descriptions: Fawcett’s Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505):

Fawcett’s alternative model for relational processes, with its particular features such as treating ‘giving’ and ‘placing’ as agentive possessives and locatives (‘make…have’, ‘make…be at’) rather than as material dispositives, has to be understood in its total explanatory context: 

(i) in relation to its repercussions within the transitivity system, both the trinocular perspective on transitivity itself (from above, as generalisations about meaning; from roundabout, its consequences for agnateness, delicacy and the move towards lexis; from below, as regularities in the realisation) and the overall topology of content — transitivity in relation to the semantic construal of causality, agency, disposal, and so on; 

(ii) in relation to Fawcett’s architectural design, which differs from ours in having a single system–structure cycle for the two strata of semantics and lexicogrammar (his “syntax”) and then adding a further level of description that is expressed in cognitive terms.

Choosing Between Descriptions

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 505):

This is not to say, of course, when a choice is made among a set of alternative descriptions for representing features in grammar that are inherently indeterminate, like the types of process in a transitivity system, that the choice is insignificant, or merely random. On the contrary: it resonates through the grammatics as a whole (or should do, if the description has any claim to be comprehensive). Again there is the analogy between the grammatics and the grammar: just as no region of the grammar is isolated from the rest, so every descriptive statement has consequences throughout the description.

No Unique ‘Correct’ Description

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

… there is no unique ‘correct description’ of a semiotic system, or any other phenomena that have to do with meaning. Stratal relations are not relations of cause & effect, and a stratified system cannot be reduced to constructions of content–expression pairs.

Fawcett’s Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

His abandonment of the distinction between attributive and identifying seems harder to motivate, since this cannot in fact be explained as a textual (thematic) system in the way that Fawcett proposes.

Fawcett’s Relational Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

Fawcett incorporates into the “relational: possessive” category, processes of giving and acquiring; reduces the circumstantial to locational processes only; and includes within these, processes of going and sending. As is to be expected, this alternative analysis embodies certain generalisations that are not made in our account of figures, and ignores certain others which are.

Martin’s Nuclear Transitivity As Orientation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

As we have already noted, Martin, in his systemic treatment of processes in Tagalog, offers a different interpretation of nuclear transitivity: he defines it in terms of orientation, rather than configuration, and hence operates with a significantly different concept of participant function.

Trinocular Perspective

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 504):

A stratified semiotic defines three perspectives, which (following the most familiar metaphor) we refer to as ‘from above’, ‘from roundabout’, and ‘from below’: looking at a given stratum from above means treating it as the expression of some content, looking at it from below means treating it as the content of some expression, while looking at it from roundabout means treating it in the context of (i.e. in relation to other features of) its own stratum.

Process Types As Regions In An N–Dimensional Semantic Space

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503-4): 

In our treatment of figures in the ideation base, we stressed the fluidity of the boundaries among the various types of figure: doing–&–happening, sensing, saying, being–&–having. We construe these in the grammar as a system of process types: at primary delicacy, material, mental, verbal, relational. These are sections on a continuum — or better, regions in an n–dimensional semantic space; but they are not demarcated by any uniquely self-selecting set of criteria.

Grammatics As Metaphor For The Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503):

We have tried to show that such indeterminacy [inherent in language] as a positive feature, and build it into our meta-construal — not as some wayward or exceptional extravagance but as an unmarked state of affairs that is recognised to be the norm. To this extent, our grammatics becomes itself a metaphor for the grammar — that is, to the extent that we are able to enact this indeterminacy in our own representations.

The Inherent Indeterminacy Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503): 

We have drawn attention at various points to the overall indeterminacy of language, something that we see as a necessary condition of its ability to function in the construal of experience. Our experience of the ‘goings-on’ in and around ourselves is so rich and multi-faceted that no semiotic system that attempted to impose on it a rule-bound, determinate frame of reference would be ‘functional’ as a resource for survival.

Why Take A Two-Stratal Approach To Transitivity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503): 

… we treat transitivity both within semantics (the paradigmatic and syntagmatic organisation of figures) and within lexicogrammar (the grammar of transitivity): it is a system construed within the content plane of language — both in the ideational component in the lexicogrammar and in the ideation base. This two-stratal approach to transitivity makes it possible to model the resource of grammatical metaphor and is fundamental to work on multilingual systems for generating text.

Alternative Perspectives On Transitivity

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 503):

The participant rôles Medium, Agent, Range and Beneficiary embody not just a different degree of generality from the process-specific participant rôles Actor, Goal, Recipient; Senser, Phenomenon; etc but more importantly, a different perspective. They capture different kinds of facts about the transitivity system of a language.

The Basis Of Process Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 495):

… the process types used in systemic interpretations are based on considerations of the nature of nuclear transitivity — how participants interact, what kinds of entities they are, whether projection is possible, etc.

Agent [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 494):

… in addition to the Medium, there may be another participant functioning as an external cause. … Either the process is represented as self-engendering, in which case there is no separate Agent; or it is represented as engendered from outside, in which case there is another participant functioning as Agent.

Medium: Characteristics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 494):

… the Medium is restricted relative to the Process in the same way regardless of whether the clause is effective (+ Agent) or middle …

the Medium is the participant that is most bonded to the Process by lexical collocation.

the Medium is the element which combines with the Process to form the clause nucleus; it is the nucleus which determines how the process is subclassified and interpreted …

the Medium is the one participant that cannot be treated circumstantially; hence (other than one special kind of clause, the medio-passive) it is never mediated by a preposition.

Medium [Defined]

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 493-4):

Every process has associated with it one participant that is the key figure in that process; this is the one through which the process is actualised, and without which there would be no process at all. … It is the entity through the medium of which the process comes into existence.

Being–&–Having And Expansion Types

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 490):

…the different types of expansion (elaboration, extension and enhancement) are manifested as different subtypes of being & having — intensive, possessive, and circumstantial…

Figures Of Sensing: Metaphenomena

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 490):

…one of the other reasons for recognising sensing as a distinct type: as we have seen, a figure of sensing may combine with a metaphenomenon or fact (It frightened/surprised/pleased John that there was no reply to his letter). They are, of course, quite different from figures of doing in this respect. For example, while metaphenomena can please and frighten conscious beings (sensing), they cannot open doors (doing).

Figures Of Sensing: Impinging Vs Emanating

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 489):

In other words, a figure of sensing, configured as Senser + Process + Phenomenon, can be represented either as the Phenomenon impinging on the Senser’s mental processing (effective: Phenomenon as Agent) or as the Senser’s mental processing ranging over the Phenomenon (middle: Phenomenon as Range). This kind of a reversal of perspective on the figure (like/please, fear/frighten, believe/convince, etc.) is a special feature of sensing and one important reason for recognising it as a distinct type. (This is also true of the metaphorical variant; cf. John was afraid of the dog : The dog was scary [to John].)

Ideational Metaphor

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 489):

Grammatical metaphors do reorganise experience; that is one reason why they are identified as metaphors, rather than simply being incorporated into the congruent options.

Intentionality: Ideational

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 478):

Intentionality can be construed in the clause as circumstances of Manner (‘according to plan’, e.g. he found the book by chance; he turned left by mistake; he turned left intentionally) and as verbal group complexes of projection or enhancement realising the Process (e.g. she intended to leave at 4; she happened to be in the neighbourhood). It may also be a factor in certain lexical contrasts within delicate process types; but we have found no evidence that intentionality is a primary variable in the semantic system of figures and its grammatical construal in transitivity. Rather, whether an example is read as construing something as intentional or non-intentional will depend on a variety of factors, such as the consciousness of the most active participant.

Intentionality: Interpersonal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 478):

In English, intentionality can be enacted within the interpersonal system of imperative modality (modulation) in the form of inclination, as in he won’t be ordered around (‘refuses to be’). It is independent of ideational agency; inclination is oriented towards the Subject, i.e. the modally responsible element of the clause, rather than (say) the Actor or Agent (as our passive example illustrates).

Intentionality: Ideational Vs Interpersonal

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 478):

To the extent that intentionality enters into the semantic system of a language, it could in principle be construed ideationally as some aspect of the overall system of figures or be enacted interpersonally as a modality of inclination. If it is construed ideationally, it could in principle be a global property of a figure as a whole or a local property of the process or a participant.

Transitivity Profile & Temporal Profile

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 468-9):

The two perspectives are not unrelated of course. As we shall see the specification of an element of transitivity structure may determine the temporal profile: the created Goal that constitutes the completion of the performance of the process (as in Mr. Blandings built a house), a Range that constitutes its finite scope (They sang two Hungarian folk songs), a destination that gives its spatio-temporal endpoint (He walked to the store), a resultative Attribute that constitutes the (qualitative) endstate (He was shot dead), and so on. But the mere presence of such an element is not sufficient to determine the temporal profile; it is also influenced by the ‘boundedness’ of the elements: are they in infinite supply or not — a definite number of units, or an indefinite number?  In general, then, the temporal profile is determined by other factors such as the presence, and the boundedness in quantity, of participants and circumstances.

Two Perspectives On A Process: Transitivity Profile Vs Temporal Profile

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 468):

… the two perspectives represent two different kinds of profile. One is the configuration of process, participants and circumstances — the transitivity profile; the other is the occurrence or unfolding of an event through time — the temporal profile.

‘Temporal Instantiation’ Perspective On Processes: States vs Non-States

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 468):

The distinction most commonly drawn here is based on change. Is there change over time or not; i.e. is there a change in the course of the occurrence of the process? The most common dichotymy is state vs non-state (with terminological oppositions such as stative/dynamic)… . States and non-states have different temporal profiles. States are homogeneous; any time we check a process whose occurrence is a state, it will be the same. Non-states, or changes, are not homogeneous; during the course of the occurrence of a process something will have changed, for example the spatial location of a participant (as with processes of movement) or parts of a participant, or some other attribute of a participant (e.g. possession or location in a ‘quality space’ such as colour or temperature).

‘Temporal Instantiation’ Perspective On Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 468): 

In the temporal instantiation perspective, the issue is the occurrence of the process as an event located in time: how does it unfold through time, and what is its temporal profile? Here the relevant variables are such as the following:

1. Is the process homogeneous during its occurrence or does it decompose into a sequence of distinct phases (stages); is it a mini-tableau or a mini-drama?
2. Is the period of occurrence a relatively short interval, or is it an extended interval?
3. Is the whole period of occurrence in view or only a phase of it (e.g. beginning or end)?
4. Does the process tend to occur once or repeatedly? 

These questions lead to typologies that include terms like stative, dynamic, perfective, imperfective, punctiliar, iterative, and so on.

‘Participant Organising’ Perspective On Processes: General Typological Considerations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 467-8):

In the typology presented here as part of the ideation base, there are two very general considerations: 

1. process type: what kind of reality does the figure or process configuration pertain to (the material world, the world of consciousness, the world of symbolisation, the world of abstract relations)? 

2. agency: is the occurrence of the process (in conjunction with the medium) caused by an entity that is external to it (an agent)?

‘Participant Organising’ Perspective On Processes: Nature Of The Participants

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 467):

In the participant-organising perspective, it is the nature of the participants involved in the process that determines the different process types. Relevant variables include the following:

1. Is some participant created, brought into existence, by the process?
2. Is some participant restricted to conscious being?
3. Can some participant be a metathing as well as a thing?
4. Is the process directed towards some participant?
5. Does the process benefit some participant?
6. Does the process occur spontaneously or does it need an input of energy?
7. Does the process affect some participant materially or does it impinge on its consciousness?
8. Is the process symmetric?
9. Is the process reflexive?

Two Perspectives On A Process

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 466): 

… a process is both an organiser of participants and an event that is instantiable in time. These two perspectives lead to different criteria for establishing process typologies. … The two perspectives are associated with different grammatical units, the clause (for the participant organising perspective) and the verbal group (for the temporal instantiation).

Syndromes Of Features

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 466):

… we have to keep in mind that we are dealing with a semantic system and not with a collection of unrelated items. … For example, if we recognise figures of saying … this goes together with certain other features: with the distinction between phenomena and metaphenomena, and between ideas and sayings, with the organisation of projections as sequences rather than figures, with the identification of symbol sources as a kind of participant, and with the recognition of circumstances of matter. In other words, we have to consider syndromes of features that occupy a region of semantic space.

The Method Of Traditional Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 466):

A characteristic of work on grammatical semantics, where this has been based on linguistics or on natural language philosophy, is to move in at the lower ranks of the grammar rather than the higher ones, and to start with classes rather than with functions. This is a continuation of the method of traditional grammar, which (because it originated with the study of observable features of language) was word-oriented and leant heavily on word classes in its descriptive statements. We find this tendency in discussions of word classes and their semantic values — the issue of the proper interpretation of adjectives, the exploration of various verb types, and so on.

Two Versions Of The Intensive Relation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 461):

… ascriptive intensive relations … represent a relation of inclusion … Identity and inclusion are two versions of the intensive relation: identity is the limiting case of inclusion and inclusion is partial identity.

Non-Ranged Ascriptive Processes

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 460):

… although ascriptive relational processes are typically ranged, with the quality ascribed to the Carrier as the Attribute/Range, we find ascriptive non-ranged processes as well. For example … The problem matters … In a sense, the Attribute is incorporated into the Process ‘matter’ in the same way as the Means is incorporated into a verb such as hammer. This class of ascriptive processes includes matter, count … suffice and figure, and also an evaluative set, such as stink, suck, drip, reek. … these processes are clearly not material, as is shown by the unmarked tense selection …

The Two Transforming Transitivity Interpretations

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 455):

Both transforming interpretations can be seen as attempts to find a canonical logical form, either Subject – Copula – Predicate or Subject – Predicate, rather than have to operate with different forms. These two logical structurings correspond to relational and material models respectively:

material			relational
Subject	Predicate		Subject	Copula	Predicate
Actor	Process		Carrier	Process	Attribute

Three Different Transitivity Interpretations: Consequences For Word Class Assignments

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 453-4):

According to the first approach, verbs are really adjectives (their true shape is revealed in the adjectival participle), while the second approach assumes that adjectives are really verbs; they just happen to be superficially defective (in English) in that they cannot be inflected. The third approach aligns adjectives with ‘substantives’, but it still allows for two possibilities. They can be either treated as independent classes or they can be grouped together as nouns.

Three Different Transitivity Interpretations: iii. Material And Relational

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 453):

The third position accepts both the material process model and the relational process model without trying to interpret one in terms of the other. According to this model, Socrates is white is not primarily like Socrates ran but is more directly related to Socrates was a philosopher and, by an additional step, to Socrates was the teacher of Plato. In this model, nuclear processes are verbs and participants are nominals (substantival or adjectival).

Three Different Transitivity Interpretations: ii. Relational As Material

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 453):

The second position is the reverse of the first in terms of the distribution of the nuclear process and participants. A relational process is interpreted on the model of a material one; the attribute (participant) is interpreted as if it was a nuclear process. Thus, to continue with the same artificial examples, Socrates is white is analysed as ‘Socrates whited’. The copula is not interpreted as representing a process but is thought to be only a “bearer” of tense, person and number.

Three Different Transitivity Interpretations: i. Material As Relational

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 452-3):

According to the first position, a material nuclear process is interpreted as if it was a participant in a relational process. This gives a logical analysis of the form “Subject ‘be’ Predicate”: Socrates ran is analysed as “Subject: ‘Socrates’ ‘be’ Predicate: ‘running’”. In terms of grammatical classes, a verb is a copula plus an adjective.

The Attributive Relation

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 450):

More generally, the Medium is related as a member of a set, which is defined either by a quality or by a class.  The relation is a composite of the participants (the Carrier and the Attribute) and the nuclear relation.  The nuclear relation is not necessarily a state; it can be either a being or a becoming, both of which are located in time, as are processes in general.  But its participants are static things; the Carrier is an individual or class, and the Attribute is a lasting quality or a wider class.  The Attribute of the relation of becoming applies to the Carrier in the final state of the becoming: it is a resultative Attribute.

Process Type & Temporal Sequence

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 450):

Material processes lend themselves naturally to sequential ordering in time; this is much less a feature of other process types.

Traditional vs Functional Grammar

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 448):

The problem of classifying qualities is often approached grammatically as a question of word classification: are adjectives funny verbs, funny nouns, or a completely distinct word class? All three questions have been asked, and all three answered in the affirmative. The questions themselves reflect one of the biases of traditional grammar: it is based on words. Our approach is a functional one, which does not start with word classes taken out of context; … Semantically, the relevant question is how a figure is organised in English. This allows us to look at qualities ‘from above’, keeping their semantic environment in view.

Evolving Registers

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 448):

… new registers were always evolving, some of them as part of the ongoing reconstruction of experience in the form of systematic knowledge and experimental science.

Reasons For Rejecting The Belief Of Language As Distortion

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 447):

In rejecting both these views of language as distortion, we are not propounding an alternative version according to which language is a perfect match. What is wrong with all such conceptions is that they misconstrue the nature of a semiotic system — the fundamental relation of realisation to which we are always having to return. A semiotic system is not some kind of outer garment which may either reveal or conceal what is beneath. Rather, it is a transformation of experience into meanings, and each stratum within the system is construed by, and construes, all the rest. A “language”, in this sense, may be artificially constructed or engineered, like a scientific theory or a logic; but all such semiotics are ultimately related to natural language, and natural language is still an accomplice in their overall construction of reality.

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 465):

… if you treat language as distortion, you end up distorting language.

Stratal Slippage

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 447n):

In terms of our model of a stratified metalanguage, we can see that taking the categories of predicate logic (or any other logical systems) to be linguistic ones constitutes a stratal slippage: categories from the level of representation in the metalanguage are imported into the theoretical account of the object language.

The Outcome Of The Belief That Lexicogrammar (Syntax) Distorts Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 446):

Such analyses were often supported by universalist arguments such as “negation is a verb in certain languages, so it is reasonable to claim that it really is a verb in all”. … they tend to make deep structure, the ‘real’ structure, look like predicate logic. Surface structure came out looking like a (transformationally) twisted version of logical structures. But predicate logic had been derived from one particular area of the grammar, a simplified version of the experiential aspect of the clause; it could be used as an idealised model of certain types of figure, for the purpose of explicit rule-based reasoning, but it was not intended to be a tool for analysing the entire semantic structure of a natural language. This view has largely been abandoned and the notion of a semantically irresponsible surface structure is no longer generally held.

The Belief That Lexicogrammar (Syntax) Distorts Semantics

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 446):

The view that syntax distorts semantics implies that the relation of grammar to meaning is indirect and arbitrary. This view became tenable in modern linguistics, where meaning was either excluded from its scope altogether, as among structural linguists in the U.S., or, with Chomsky, kept at a distance by the metaphor of deep and surface structure in the syntax, only the former being semantically responsible. This paved the way for a number of analyses on the model of ‘surface x is really deep y’.  We find suggestions such as the following: adjectives are really verbs (e.g. Chafe, 1970), nouns are really verbs (cf. bach 1968), pronouns are really articles (Postal, 1966), negation is really a [higher] verb, tense is really a [higher] verb (cf. Huddleston, 1969), auxiliaries are really full verbs, verbal group complexes are really reductions of embedded clauses, moods are really separate clauses of saying, and so on.

The Belief That Language Distorts (Thinking About) Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 446):

The same view of language as distortion is frequently to be met with when language is contained within a model of communication, where a common motif is that language is a vehicle for lying, or at least for concealing the truth. One might surmise that, if language is defined in communicational terms, as a means of transmitting information — especially if this is combined with a semantics based on considerations of truth — then this is how it is likely to appear.

The Belief That Language Is A “Clothing” For “Naked Ideas"

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 445-6):

The same attitude continues to prevail in ways people talk about language in our own time. It dominated much of the early work on machine translation in the 1950s and 1960s; the task of the analysis was seen to be that of stripping the underlying ideas of their linguistic disguise (Firth, 1956, referred scathingly to current formulations according to which language was a “clothing” for “naked ideas”). When the “interlingua” model was proposed, many of those working in the field regarded it not as a construction of meaning that would be a compromise among different linguistic systems but as a language-free representation of concepts and conceptual structures (cf. Schank’s conceptual dependency), very much in the 17th century tradition.

Blogger Comment:

It was Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) who said:

Language is the dress of thought, 

though he also said:

Words are but the signs of ideas.

The Belief That Language Distorts (Thinking About) Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 445):

This belief in the distorting effect of language was propounded by the early European humanists, who held that mediæval scholars had focussed too strongly on language, whereas the real task of the scientist was to see through the verbal disguise and penetrate the reality underneath (for example, Francis Bacon’s well-known warnings against the seductive power of natural language). Natural languages were considered to be inadequate vehicles for the new scientific knowledge; hence it was necessary to construct artificial languages to record, transmit and extend it. These artificial languages would, it was thought, be more in harmony with the objective world of experience.

The Belief That There Is A Mismatch Between Language And Thought

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

The view that language distorts the picture of reality, and that there is a mismatch between language and thought, is reflected [in] the opposition of “deep” and “surface” as these figured in a prominent approach to text generation. In this model, “deep generation” is concerned with thinking what to say (the thoughts “behind” the words) and “surface generation” with how to say it.

The Belief That Language Deceives: Extra-Linguistic Vs Intra-Linguistic

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

There are two somewhat distinct versions of this belief. The first is the notion that language distorts reality — or, as a variant of this, that language distorts our thinking (which includes our thinking about reality). This is extra-linguistic deception: language is deceiving us by the way it represents something else. The second is the notion that syntax distorts semantics. This is intra-linguistic deception: language is deceiving us by the way one part of it represents another part.

The Belief That Language Distorts Our Awareness Of Reality

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

Attempts to create an ontology without reference to language in general, or without reference to lexicogrammar in particular, seem to derive from the belief, familiar in the history of Western thinking, that language comes between us and a ‘real’ or scientific understanding of the world, that it somehow distorts our awareness of reality.

Scientific And Metaphysical Models

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

It might be objected that this view leaves no room for scientific or metaphysical models — for example, that we do not allow for the possibility that science has advanced our understanding of the world.  This objection would be misplaced: such models are construed in the ideation base as domain models within the overall meaning potential.

The Central Integrative Rôle Of Language

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 444):

Here let us just reiterate our view that all of our experience is construed as meaning. Language is the primary semiotic system for transforming experience into meaning; and it is the only semiotic system whose meaning base can serve to transform meanings construed in other systems (including perceptual ones) and thus integrate our experience from all its various sources.

The Frame Of Reference For Participant & Circumstance Rôles

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 443):

Our own approach is also language–based: participant rôles and circumstance rôles in the figures are based on intra-semantic considerations (e.g. the transphenomenal types of projection and expansion) and on inter-stratal considerations from below, from lexicogrammar.

Contextual Considerations In Modelling Meaning

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 442):

Although it has not been part of the central argument about particular distinctions in the meaning base, we have also referred to the relationship between semantics and context. Just as the meaning base has to be accountable lexicogrammatically, it also has to be accountable contextually. In our discussion, we emphasised register or functional variation as one of the keys to the relationship between semantics and context.

Blogger Note:

Don't repeat the sloppy mistake that incautious readers have made.  This does not equate context with register.  Registers are the varieties of linguistic content (semantics and lexicogrammar) that realise varieties of context (situation types).