In a ‘macrophenomenal mental’ clause, the Phenomenon is realised by a non-finite clause denoting an act; … An act is a configuration of a process, participants involved in that process and possibly attendant circumstances … Macrophenomenal Phenomena are typically restricted to one subtype of ‘mental’ clause — clauses of perception: the act is seen, heard, tasted or perceived in some other way; but it is not normally thought, felt emotionally, or desired.
… the concept of ‘thing’ is extended in ‘mental’ clauses to include macrophenomenal clauses where the Phenomenon is an act and metaphenomenal clauses where the Phenomenon is a fact.
In a ‘material’ clause, every participant is a thing; that is, it is a phenomenon of our experience, including of course our inner experience or imagination — some entity (person, creature, institution, object, substance or abstraction). Any of these ‘things’ may also, of course, be the object of consciousness in a ‘mental’ clause;
… the set of things that can take on this rôle in the clause is not only not restricted to any particular semantic or grammatical category, it is actually wider that the set of possible participants in a ‘material’ clause. It may be not only a thing but also an act or a fact.
… that which is felt, thought, wanted or perceived …
While the Senser is construed as being endowed with consciousness in ‘mental’ clauses, there is no trace of this pattern in ‘material’ clauses. In ‘material’ clauses, no participant is required to be human, and the distinction between conscious and non-conscious beings simply plays no part. The Actor of a ‘material’ clause is thus much less constrained than the Senser of a ‘mental’ clause.
‘Conscious being’ typically means a person or persons; but as the following examples illustrate, a human collective (the British public, the whole house, the world) can also be construed as conscious:
I think the British public doesn’t dislike force provided that it’s short, sharp and rewarding.Surely you don’t want the whole house to know of this occurrence?The judging must come from one’s own experience, one’s own conscience, and understanding. What the world thought didn’t matter.It can even be a product of human consciousness:
The film imagines that the FBI imported a free-lance black operative to terrorise the town’s mayor into revealing the murderers’ names.
There is one type of ‘mental’ clause of perception where the Senser is a period of time and the Process is either see or find, as in Summer finds campers and hikers descending on the mountains in throngs; Ten minutes later saw us speeding through London. These are metaphorical constructions where a circumstance of Time has been construed as if it were a Senser.
In languages with case marking, the Senser — or certain types of Senser — may be in the dative case, as in Hindi and Telugu, setting it formally apart from the Actor. In some languages, the Senser is realised by a nominal group denoting a certain body part, as in Akan (cf English it breaks my heart, it blows my mind).
Which particular creatures we choose to endow with consciousness when we talk about them may vary according to who we are, what we are doing or how we are feeling at the time; different registers show different preferences. Pets, domestic animals and other higher animals are often treated as conscious; the owner says of the cat she doesn’t like milk, whereas someone who is not a cat lover, or who has been annoyed by that particular specimen, is more likely to refer to the animal as it. But any entity, animate or not, can be treated as conscious; and since mental process clauses have this property, that only something that is being credited with consciousness can function in them as the one who feels, thinks, wants or perceives, one only has to put something into that role in order to turn it into a conscious being.
In a clause of ‘mental’ process, there is always one participant who is human; this is the Senser, introduced above: the one that ‘senses’ – feels, thinks, wants or perceives, for example, Mary in Mary liked the gift. More accurately, we should say human-like; the significant feature of the Senser is that of being ‘endowed with consciousness’. Expressed in grammatical terms, the participant that is engaged in the mental process is one that is referred to pronominally as he or she, not as it.
The category of ‘mental process clauses’ turns out to be grammatically distinct from that of material process clauses on the basis of a number of properties; these are set out in Table 5-7 …
Obviously clauses construing doing and clauses construing sensing are different in meaning, but that is not enough to make them constitute distinct grammatical categories. There are indefinitely many ways of drawing lines on purely semantic grounds, for example, by invoking contextual considerations ‘from above’, as we do when we describe the semantic strategies specific to a particular situation type; but the question we are concerned with here is which of these have systematic repercussions in the grammar.
It might be argued … that since grammatical and semantic categories are not in one-to-one correspondence, then if we use grammatical terms that are semantic in import (as nearly all grammatical terms are) we cannot expect them to be appropriate for all instances. The reasoning is quite valid; grammatical labels are very rarely appropriate for all instances of a category — they are chosen to reflect its central or ‘core’ signification ( … ‘prototype’ …). These core areas are the central region for each process type … and the non-core areas lie on the borders between the different process types, shading into one another as the colours of a colour spectrum.
There is one further type of ‘mental’ clause: I can feel something on my foot. This is a clause of perception, the can feel as the Process, I as the Senser and something on my foot as the Phenomenon being perceived. Such clauses are similar to emotive and cognitive ‘mental’ clauses in that the Senser is construed as a conscious being. But they also have properties that set them apart from the other subtypes of ‘mental’ clause. For example, while Pat could have said I feel something on my foot with the Process in the simple present, she has used a modulation of readiness instead – can feel. This is quite common with ‘mental’ clauses of perception, as with Can you see those pelicans flying across the lagoon alongside Do you see .... This example also illustrates another feature specific to clauses of perception: what is construed as the phenomenon being perceived can be a thing (such as cockroach); but it can also be an act, realised by a non-finite clause, as in I can feel [[something crawling up my foot]].
… the relationship between the ‘mental’ clause and the ‘idea’ clause is one of projection: the ‘mental’ clause projects another clause or set of clauses, giving them the status of ideas or the content of consciousness.
They are able to set up another clause or set of clauses as the content of thinking — as the ideas created by cognition.
They do not serve as Complements in the ‘mental’ clause since we do not find ‘receptive’ variants with them as Subject …
The verbs serving as [emotive mental] Process are lexically gradable; they form points on a scale … expressing degrees of affection. … This property of lexical and grammatical gradability is typical of ‘mental’ clauses construing emotions.
In contrast to the Subject, the Complement is realised by a nominal group that can denote entities of any kind …
… the Subject is a nominal group denoting a conscious being …
When the clause refers to present time, the tense of the verbal group serving as [mental] Process is the simple present rather than the present–in–present that is characteristic of ‘material’ clauses.
This process of sensing may be construed either as flowing from a person’s consciousness [‘like’ type] or as impinging on it [‘please’ type]; but it is not construed as a material act.
While ‘material’ clauses are concerned with our experience of the material world, ‘mental’ clauses are concerned with our experience of the world of our own consciousness. They are clauses of sensing: a ‘mental’ clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events taking place in our own consciousness.
It is important to recognise … that the functions assumed by the participants in any clause are determined by the type of process that is involved.
Material clauses do not necessarily represent concrete, physical events; they may represent abstract doings and happenings … But as the process becomes more abstract, so the distinction between Actor and Goal becomes harder to draw. … Even with concrete processes, however, we have to recognise that there are some where the Actor is involuntary, and thus in some respects like a Goal … With more abstract processes, we often find ‘operative’ and ‘receptive’ forms side by side with little difference between them … There is still some difference: if the ‘receptive’ form is used, we can probe for an explicit Actor — we can ask who by?, whereas with the ‘operative’ form we cannot. And this is what justifies us in still giving a different functional status to the participant in the two cases.
There are also, in fact, certain circumstances that are construed as inherent in a process. This happens with ‘enhancing’ clauses construing movement of a participant through space: here a circumstance of Place represents the destination of that movement and may be inherent in the process. For example:
Did these books and articles put groceries on the table?They carved its image into stone || and placed it on their temples and palaces.
Scope, Recipient and Client are clearly treated by the grammar as participants; for example, they are all candidates for subjecthood in a ‘receptive’ clause. However, at the same time, they are clearly located some distance towards circumstances on the cline between participants and circumstances, which is reflected in the fact that that, under certain conditions, they may be marked by a preposition [minor Process].
In a ‘material’ clause, the Attribute is always an optional added specification. In contrast, it is an inherent part of the configuration of a ‘relational’ clause and cannot be left out.
There is also a non-resultative variant of the Attribute. This is the depictive Attribute serving to specify the state in which the Actor or Goal is when it takes part in the process …
[The Attribute] enters into ‘material’ clauses in a restricted way. In certain clauses with an ‘elaborating’ outcome, the Attribute may be used to construe the resultant qualitative state of the Actor or Goal after the process has been completed … Such Attributes are called resultative Attributes. They are only marginal participants. While they are unlike cicumstances in that they are not marked by prepositions, they are also unlike true participants in that they cannot serve as Subject. There is in fact a closely related circumstance — the resultative Rôle or ‘product’ …
… the Scope cannot be probed by do to or do with, whereas the Goal can. Since nothing is being ‘done to’ it, a Scope element can never have a resultative Attribute added within the clause, as a (transformative) Goal can … Similarly, a Scope element can never be configured with a circumstance of Rôle of the ‘product’ type. The Scope cannot be a personal pronoun, and it cannot normally be modified by a possessive [so don’t cross my path!]. Moreover, although generalised Scope–receptive clauses … are quite common, Scope–receptive clauses with specific Actors are rare. Thus while a Goal readily becomes Subject … it is unusual to make a Scope element ‘modally responsible’ in this way …
Semantically the Scope element is not in any very obvious sense a participant in the process — it is not directly involved in the process by bringing it about, being affected by it or benefiting from it; but grammatically it is treated as a participant. So it can become Subject of the clause …
Jespersen (1942: 117) called verbs in such [Process + Scope] constructions ‘light verbs’, and this term is often used in the contemporary literature on English and also on other languages (e.g. Butt, 2003) – another term being ‘vector verb’. The Scope element in examples such as the candidate dances three dances, Waltz, Foxtrot and Quickstep, with an Amateur or Professional partner was traditionally recognised as a ‘cognate object’. Poutsma (1926) had noticed constructions with (in our terms) Process + Scope, characterising the verb realising the Process as having ‘vague meaning’ and calling the Scope an ‘effective object’; he analysed such configurations as ‘intransitive’.
… this structure enables us to specify further the number or kind of processes that take place. … The main reason for its prevalence is the greater potential that is open to nouns, in contrast to verbs, for being modified in different ways …
The Scope may be not an entity at all but rather another name for the process; … Consider I play tennis, where tennis is Scope. The game of tennis is clearly not an entity; there is no such thing as tennis other than the act of playing it.
The Scope may construe an entity which exists independently of the process but which indicates the domain over which the process takes place. An example is You will be crossing some lonely mountains, so make sure you have enough petrol. … some lonely mountains specifies the range of the tourist’s crossing.
… the Scope is restricted to ‘intransitive’ clauses (with the minor exception of clauses with give). This means that a material clause consisting of ‘nominal group + verbal group + nominal group’ can be either [transitive] Actor + Process + Goal or [intransitive] Actor + Process + Scope.
In contrast the Scope of a ‘material’ clause is not in any way affected by the performance of the process. Rather it either (i) construes the domain over which the process takes place … or (ii) construes the process itself, either in general or specific terms … There is not, in fact, a sharp line between these two; they really lie along a single continuum.
Like the Goal, both Recipient and Client are affected by the process; but while the Goal is the participant that is impacted by the process, the Recipient/Client is the one that benefits from it.
Most typically the Recipient/Client is realised by a nominal group denoting a human being; especially a personal pronoun, and most commonly of all a speech rôle (me, you, us), e.g. me in Mae West’s famous line Peel me a grape! But this is not necessarily so; the Recipient is a plant in did you give the philodendron some water?, and an abstract entity privilege in we... have today been given the rare privilege to be host to the nations of the world on our own soil. Nor, of course, is the ‘benefit’ necessarily beneficial: Claudius is Recipient in Locusta gave Claudius a dose of poison.
With a Client, the ‘service’ may likewise be construed as the Goal, especially a Goal of the ‘created’ as distinct from the ‘transformed’ type, one that is brought into being by the process – the ‘creative’ type of ‘transitive material’ clause; e.g. a picture, this house in he painted John a picture, built Mary a house. But it is really the process that constitutes the service; hence a Client may also appear in an ‘intransitive’ clause – one that has no Goal, but has either Process + Scope, e.g. played Mary a tune, or else Process only, as in play for me. These last cannot appear without for (play me); in order to show that they are Client it is necessary to add a Scope element in final position (play for me – play a tune for me – play me a tune).
Note that the transfer of possession can alternatively be modelled in the grammar as depriving somebody of something rather than as giving something to somebody; in this model, the original owner is construed either circumstantially as a locative source, as in take/steal/borrow money from a friend, or participantally as the Goal, with the goods being transferred construed circumstantially as Matter, as in rob/deprive him of [‘in respect of’] his money. …
These two models for construing the experience of transfer of possession are thus grammatically distinct in English. The ‘giving’ model constitutes a distinct type in the grammar of transitivity – the configuration of Actor + Process + Goal + Recipient. In contrast, the ‘depriving’ model is not a distinct one; it is based on a more general pattern of participant + circumstance:(i) [possession as participant] Actor + Process + Goal + Place (e.g. they took his most cherished belongings from him) or
(ii) [original owner as participant] Actor + Process + Goal + Matter (e.g. they robbed him of his most cherished belongings).
To account for the relationship between these two lexicogrammatical models in English, we have to move up to the level of semantics.
Recipients and Clients occur in systemically different environments. Recipients occur only in ‘transitive transformative’ clauses of the ‘extending’ type; and within that category, they occur with those clauses that denote a transfer of the Actor’s possession of goods – transfer to the Recipient. Here the Goal represents the ‘goods’ being transferred.
And there are clauses with give which, though superficially like transfer of possession, differ from these in that they do not exhibit the contrast between + preposition and – preposition. These are clauses with a nominalised verb as one participant, as in give somebody a kick/punch/kiss/hug. Thus while we can say, he gave the dog a kick, we are much less likely say he gave a kick to the dog. Such clauses are in fact mildly metaphorical variants of clauses where kick, punch, kiss, hug, etc. is a verb serving as the Process: he gave the dog a kick: he kicked the dog. This suggests that the nominalised verb is in fact a Scope rather than a Goal and that what might at first appear to be a Recipient is in fact construed as a Goal (and can thus be probed with do to/with): [Actor:] he [Process:] gave [Goal:] the dog [Scope:] a kick (cf. what he did to the dog was give it a kick but not what he did with the kick was give the dog it) …
He
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gave
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the dog
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a stick
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Actor
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Process: material
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Recipient
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Goal
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He
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gave
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the dog
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a kick
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Actor
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Process: material
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Goal
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Scope
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He
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kicked
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the dog
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Actor
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Process: material
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Goal
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Recipients and Clients occur in systemically different environments … Recipients occur only in ‘transitive transformative’ clauses of the ‘extending’ type; and within that category, they occur with those clauses that denote a transfer of the possession of goods. Here the Goal represents the ‘goods’ being transferred…
They are thus the material version of possessive relational clauses. Fawcett (1988) treats them as relational rather than as material. But in our interpretation, they are simply part of a general pattern of agnation between material clauses on the one hand and relational and existential ones on the other: creative material clauses are related to existential clauses and transformative material clauses to relational clauses (more specifically, elaborating transformation — intensive relation, extending transformation — possessive relation, and enhancing transformation — circumstantial relation).
Clients tend to be more restricted than Recipients; in I’m doing all this for Mary, for Mary is not a Client but a type of circumstance of Cause (Behalf).
The two functions of Recipient and Client resemble one another in that both construe a benefactive rôle; they represent a participant that is benefiting from the performance of the process. The Recipient is the one that goods are given to; the Client is one that services are done for. Either may appear with or without a preposition, depending on its position in the clause … the preposition is to with Recipient, for with Client.
Of these four participant roles, Scope is the most general across different types of ‘material’ clause … but they are all more restricted than Actor and Goal.
The Actor is an inherent participant in both intransitive and transitive material clauses; the Goal is inherent only in transitive clauses. In addition to these two roles, there are a number of other participant roles that may be involved in the process of a ‘material’ clause; these are: Scope, Recipient, Client and (more marginally) Attribute.
The outcome of the transformation is an (1) elaboration, (2) extension or (3) enhancement of the Actor (‘intransitive’) or Goal (‘transitive’) …
The ‘transformative’ type of ‘material’ clause covers a much wider range than the ‘creative’ type. As always, it is difficult to find an appropriate term for the grammatical category. We have to understand it in the context of the relevant systemic contrast. Thus ‘transformative’ means that the Actor (‘intransitive’) or Goal (‘transitive’) exists prior to the onset of the unfolding of the process, and is changed in some way or other through the unfolding of the process.
Neither happen to or do to/with can be used [as probes] with creative clauses …
The Actor of an ‘intransitive’ ‘transformative’ clause can be probed by happen to …
The Goal of a ‘transitive’ ‘transformative’ clause exists before the process begins to unfold and is transformed in the course of the unfolding. It can be probed by means of do to, do with …
In a ‘transformative’ clause, the outcome is the change of some aspect of the Actor (‘intransitive’) or the Goal (‘transitive’). … In the limiting case, the outcome of the final phase is to maintain the conditions of the initial phase …
Unlike ‘creative’ clauses, ‘transformative’ ones can often have a separate element representing the outcome … an Attribute specifying the resultant state of the Goal. Even where the sense of outcome is inherent in the process, the outcome may be indicated by the ‘particle’ of a phrasal verb, as in shut down …
‘Intransitive’ ‘creative’ clauses have the sense of ‘come into existence’ and shade into clauses of the ‘existential’ process type. One difference is the unmarked present tense: it is present–in–present for material clauses … but the simple present in existential ones. Another difference is the potential for a construction with there as Subject in existential clauses, but not in creative material ones.
However, processes of destruction seem to be treated by the grammar as ‘transformative’ rather than as ‘creative’ …
In hypotactic verbal group complexes, the phase (starting, continuing; trying, succeeding; and so on) is an expansion of the process itself; but [where] the phase is construed as a process in its own right … such examples … shade into metaphorical variants of clauses with phased verbal group complexes;
In the category of ‘creative’ clauses, we can perhaps also include phases of creation, as in Then I started my first novel, where started can be interpreted as ‘began to write’, and I’d better try some more non-fiction, where try can be interpreted as ‘try to write’.
In a ‘creative’ clause, the outcome is the coming into existence of the Actor (‘intransitive’) or the Goal (‘transitive’). The outcome is thus this participant itself, and there is no separate element in the clause representing the outcome.
… 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.
The nature of the outcome affecting the Actor of an ‘intransitive’ clause and the Goal of a ‘transitive’ one [i.e. the Medium] turns out to be the general criterion for recognising more delicate subtypes of material clauses. The most general contrast is between
(i) ‘creative’ clauses, where the Actor or Goal is construed as being brought into existence as the process unfolds, and
(ii) ‘transformative’ ones, where a pre-existing Actor or Goal is construed as being transformed as the process unfolds.
The quantum of change represented by a material clause is construed as unfolding through distinct phases, typically over a fairly short interval of time — with at least an initial phase of unfolding and a separate final phase … The final phase of unfolding is the outcome of the process: it represents a change of some feature of one of the participants in the material clause.
The clauses are the same experientially; they both represent a configuration of Actor + Process + Goal. But they differ in how these rôles are mapped onto the interpersonal functions in the modal structure of the clause. In the ‘operative’ variant, the Actor is mapped on to the Subject, so it is given modal responsibility and in the ‘unmarked’ case (in a ‘declarative’ clause) it is also the Theme; and the Goal is mapped on to the Complement, so in the ‘unmarked’ case it falls within the Rheme. However, in the ‘receptive’ variant, it is the Goal that is mapped onto the Subject, so it is assigned modal responsibiity and it is also the Theme in the ‘unmarked’ case; and the Actor has the status of an Adjunct within the Rheme of the clause and, as an Adjunct, it may be left out …
It is helpful to make a terminological distinction between the voice contrast of the clause — operative/receptive, and the voice contrast of the verbal group — passive/active.
… if there is a Goal of the process, as well as an Actor, the representation may come in either of two forms: either operative (active) … or receptive (passive) … The contrast between ‘operative’ and ‘receptive’ is a contrast in voice open to ‘transitive’ clauses.
… the model we use is one of ranked constituency, where the clause and the verb constitute different ranking domains. One of the reasons for preferring the ranked constituency model is precisely the need to differentiate the clause as the domain of transitivity and the verb, or rather verbal group, as the domain of tense and other purely verbal systems.
… in English and in many other languages — perhaps all, these concepts relate more appropriately to the clause than the verb. Transitivity is a system of the clause, affecting not only the verb serving as Process, but also participants and circumstances.
… another term that has been used for this function is Patient, meaning one that ‘suffers’ or ‘undergoes’ the process. … the relevant concept is more like that of ‘one to which the process is extended’. The concept of extension is in fact the one that is embodied in the classical terminology of ‘transitive’ [‘going through’] and ‘intransitive’ [‘not going through’], from which the term ‘transitivity’ is derived.
Note that ‘Goal’ refers to the goal of impact — the participant construed as being impacted by the Actor’s performance of the process (this term is also used by Dik, 1978: 37, in his framework of ‘Functional Grammar’: ‘the entity to which the Action is applied by the Agent’). This sense of the goal of impact is distinct from (though obviously ultimately related to) the sense of destination — the destination of a process of motion, as in the goal of a journey.
[The Actor] brings about the unfolding of the process through time, leading to an outcome that is different from the initial phase of the unfolding. This outcome may be confined to the Actor itself, in which case there is only one participant inherent in the process. Such a ‘material’ clause represents a happening and, using traditional terminology, we can call it intransitive. Alternatively, the unfolding of the process may extend to another participant, the Goal, impacting it in some way: the outcome is registered on the Goal in the first instance, rather than on the Actor. Such a ‘material’ clause represents a doing and we can call it transitive.
Processes of all types unfold through time; but the way the process unfolds may vary from one process type to another. In particular, processes of the ‘material’ type tend to differ from all other types (with the partial exception of ‘behavioural’ processes …), and this is seen in how present time is reported. The unmarked tense selection is the present–in–present (e.g. is doing) rather than the simple present (e.g. does) …
The present–in–present serves to narrow down the present from the extended now of habits and ‘general truths’ that is characteristic of the simple present with ‘material’ clauses …
The narrowing–down effect of the present–in–present is not brought out by the names most commonly used for this tense — the ‘present progressive’, or the ‘present continuous’.
… Actor and Subject are distinct in a ‘passive’ — or ‘receptive’ — clause … Here the Actor is not interpersonally ‘charged’ with the rôle of Subject, but is rather given the lower status of Adjunct and can thus be left out … We therefore have to be careful to distinguish the experiential notion of ‘the one doing the deed’ (or ‘the one bringing about the change’) from the interpersonal notion of ‘the one held modally responsible’ (or ‘the one given the status of the nub of the argument’).
The ‘Actor’ of a ‘material’ clause (Halliday, 1967/8) is distinct from the ‘Agent’ of an ‘effective’ clause … the two represent different generalisations about the experiential organisation of the clause. There is considerable variation in the use of the terms ‘agent’ and ‘actor’ in linguistics. For example, Dik (1978: 37) uses ‘agent’ (paired with ‘goal’) in a sense that is close to our ‘actor’, whereas Foley & van Valin (1984: 29ff) use ‘actor’ (paired with ‘undergoer’) in a sense that is closer to our ‘agent’.
… ‘material’ clauses are clauses of doing–&–happening: a ‘material’ clause construes a quantum of change in the flow of events as taking place through some input of energy. … the source of the energy bringing about the change is typically a participant — the Actor … the ‘logical Subject’ of older terminology. The Actor is the one who does the deed — that is, the one that brings about the change.
The concepts of process, participant and circumstance are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of our experience of the world are construed as linguistic structures.
Change is thus construed as involving both transience and permanence, and the phenomena of experience are construed either as transient processes or as permanent participants. The border between these two is indeterminate; the lexicogrammar of every language will allow considerable discretion in how phenomena are treated in discourse, and lexicogrammars of different languages draw the borderline in different places. … This is an area of considerable fluidity; but most phenomena are treated as either as process or participant, and have to be reconstrued metaphorically to change their status in the grammar …
The contrast [between participants and processes] is also reflected in in the organisation of nominal groups and verbal groups in two ways: while nominal groups have evolved the system of determination for locating referents in a referential space, verbal groups have evolved the system of tense for locating a unique occurrence of a process in time.
The units that realise the process, participant, and circumstance elements of the clause make distinct contributions to the modelling of a quantum of change. The elements that make up the ‘centre’ of the clause – the process and the participants involved in it – construe complementary facets of the change. These two facets are transience and permanence. Transience means that a phenomenon is construed as unfolding through time by a verbal group serving as the process. Permanence means that a phenomenon is construed as continuous through time, being located in (concrete or abstract) space, by nominal groups serving as participants. Thus participants are construed as being relatively stable through time, and an instance of a participant can take part in many processes … In contrast, processes are ephemeral; every instance is a unique occurrence …
This contrast between participants and processes explains why there are names of individual participants — ‘proper names’, as well as names of classes of participants — ‘common nouns’, but only names of classes of processes: all lexical verbs are ‘common’ verbs.
