'Describe' Serving As Verbal (Not Behavioural) Process

they	described	the new project	(to the board)
Sayer	Process: verbal	Verbiage	(Receiver)

Blogger Comments:

Viewed 'from above' (semantics), this clause construes a verbal process, but viewed 'from roundabout' (lexicogrammar), it construes a material process, as shown by the unmarked present tense (they are describing… not they describe…), so there is a slight incongruence between the meaning and the wording.

In Deploying Functional Grammar (Martin et al. 2010: 126), this is erroneously analysed as a behavioural clause with a verbal Range:

they	described	the new project	(to the board)
Behaver	Process: behavioural	Verbiage	(Receiver)

In this analysis, the interstratal incongruence (saying as material) has been misinterpreted as an intrastratal intersection of material and verbal, and from this, as a behavioural clause — even though such an analysis requires the inclusion of verbal participants (Verbiage and Receiver).

However, this clause is not behavioural, not least because the Range of a genuine behavioural clause is a Behaviour — which the new project clearly is not.

This analysis

1. mixes a behavioural participant with verbal participants in a configuration that is deemed to be behavioural;
2. construes a behaviour as ranging over Verbiage;
3. complicates the theory unnecessarily — making it internally inconsistent — and results in a loss, not gain, in explanatory power.