Saturday, 21 August 2021
Friday, 20 August 2021
Friday, 13 August 2021
A Nominal Group With Two Epithets
Tuesday, 10 August 2021
Tuesday, 3 August 2021
Mental Clause With Depictive Attribute?
Monday, 2 August 2021
Sunday, 1 August 2021
Identifying Clause With Depictive Attribute?
Labels:
Depictive Attribute,
Identifying,
Inside No 9,
Material,
Transitivity
Saturday, 31 July 2021
Friday, 30 July 2021
Verbal Clause With Depictive Attribute
Thursday, 22 July 2021
Subject As Unmarked Theme And Unmarked New
Wednesday, 21 July 2021
Existent As Marked Theme
Labels:
Existential,
Mervyn Peake,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Monday, 19 July 2021
Same Wording, Different Transitivity

Thursday, 8 July 2021
Wednesday, 7 July 2021
Material Clause With 2 Range Participants
Labels:
Depictive Attribute,
Material,
Scope,
Transitivity
Tuesday, 22 June 2021
Tuesday, 15 June 2021
Phonological Rule As Attributive Clause
Tuesday, 8 June 2021
Do Insects Have "Minds"?
Monday, 7 June 2021
Attributes Of Higher-Order Consciousness
Sunday, 6 June 2021
Friday, 4 June 2021
Verbal vs Mental Texts
Monday, 24 May 2021
Negative Polarity: Finite vs Adjunct; Mood vs Residue
Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 145):
you may not leave before the end (‘are not allowed to’): not is part of Finiteyou may not stay right to the end (‘are allowed not to’): not is part of Residue
Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 177):

Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 176n):
The principle is rather complex, but it works as follows: if the agnate finite clause is negative (as shown by the tag; e.g. she was never given a proper chance, was she?) then the negative Adjunct functions as Mood element. If the agnate finite clause is positive (e.g. she could not have known about it, couldn’t she?) then the negative Adjunct forms part of the Residue.
Monday, 17 May 2021
Uncovering Congruent Agency By Undoing Ellipsis And Unpacking Metaphor
A.
(1) Reinstating the elided Agent:
(2) Unpacking the metaphorical Agent:
B.
Here, despite the fact that adults are killing children in a refugee camp, no agency whatsoever is construed.
Halliday (2003 [1993]: 215):
… it is precisely in the "reporting" of pronouncements and speeches on the one hand, and of massacres, terrorist acts and nuclear disasters on the other, that linguistic analysis most clearly reveals the opposing ideologies that are being promoted in different organs. Construing events as news is a highly political act.
Labels:
Clause Complex,
Ellipsis,
Extension,
Grammatical Metaphor,
Hypotaxis,
Parataxis,
Projection,
Transitivity
Tuesday, 27 April 2021
Thursday, 15 April 2021
'Exist' As Material Process?

Tuesday, 13 April 2021
'Sing Out' As Attributive Process?
Labels:
Attributive,
Lexical Metaphor,
Mervyn Peake,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Sunday, 11 April 2021
Complement As Theme, Subject As Rheme
Wednesday, 31 March 2021
Music As Inducer Of Mental Processes
Sunday, 21 March 2021
Decoding Music By Reference To Mental Processes
Friday, 12 March 2021
Sunday, 7 March 2021
Dissociation Of Subject And Theme
Tuesday, 2 March 2021
'Came' As Identifying Process
The lexical choice of came stylistically adds the features of 'motion' and 'direction' to the relational Process.
Labels:
Grammatical Metaphor,
Identifying,
Mervyn Peake,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Sunday, 31 January 2021
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
Dissociation Of Subject And Theme
Labels:
JRR Tolkien,
Material,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
Locational 'There' Or Existential 'There'?
Cf On the wide flats beside the noisy river there were marshalled …
If in many companies is how they were marshalled, then Manner;
If in many companies is where they were marshalled, then Location.
Labels:
Existential,
JRR Tolkien,
Material,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Friday, 11 December 2020
Tagged Imperative Or Metaphorical Interrogative?
The first analysis treats this instance as a tagged imperative clause, whereas the second treats it as an interpersonal metaphor of mood: a command realised as polar interrogative clause. Cf
This raises the question as to whether the tagging of the imperative facilitated the genesis of the metaphorical variant.
Labels:
Behavioural,
Cause,
Grammatical Metaphor,
Imperative,
Interrogative,
Mood,
Mood Tag,
Theme,
Transitivity
Friday, 27 November 2020
'Find' As Attributive Process
Saturday, 24 October 2020
Matter Qualifier vs Cause Qualifier
Wednesday, 23 September 2020
'Strike' As Attributive Process
Cf
Howard Carter was made silent by what he had found
Howard Carter was silenced by what he had found
Thursday, 23 July 2020
Decoding People And Books By Reference To Consciousness
people
|
are
|
individuations of collective consciousness
|
Identified Token
|
Process: relational
|
Identifier Value
|
books
|
are
|
instances of individuations of collective consciousness
|
Identified Token
|
Process: relational
|
Identifier Value
|
Labels:
Identifying,
Individuation,
Instantiation,
Transitivity
Saturday, 20 June 2020
Fighting Racism With Nominal Groups
Classifier = racism
Qualifier = anti-racism
coloured
|
people
|
Classifier
|
Thing
|
Qualifier = anti-racism
people
|
of colour
|
Thing
|
Qualifier
|
But note that the anti-racist agnate presents colour as the unmarked focus of information. See Halliday (1985: 170).
Tuesday, 16 June 2020
Organism Competition
all organisms
|
compete
|
for resources
|
Behaver
|
Process: behavioural
|
Cause: purpose
|
This behavioural clause ascribes consciousness to all types of organisms — including bacteria, amœbæ, plants and sponges — and construes all organisms as consciously competing with each other. Moreover, it construes the result of organism behaviour — access to resources — as the conscious purpose of the behaviour of all types of organisms, without knowledge of their conscious states.
Sunday, 7 June 2020
Imperative Relational Clauses
Be
|
honest
|
Theme: unmarked
|
Rheme
|
Process: attributive
|
Attribute
|
Predicator
|
Complement
|
Residue
| |
Be
|
the most honest
|
Theme: unmarked
|
Rheme
|
Process: identifying
|
Value
|
Predicator
|
Complement
|
Residue
| |
Labels:
Attributive,
Identifying,
Imperative,
Mood,
Theme,
Transitivity
Sunday, 26 April 2020
Operative Material Clause With No Medium
the cancer patients
|
were smoking
|
outside the emergency room
|
Agent Actor
|
Process: material
|
Location
|
i.e. 'smoking cigarettes' (causing cigarettes to emit smoke)
cf
the cancer patients
|
were smoking
|
outside the emergency room
|
Medium Actor
|
Process: material
|
Location
|
i.e. 'on fire and emitting smoke'
Tuesday, 24 March 2020
Gene Competition
genes
|
compete
|
for selection
|
Behaver
|
Process: behavioural
|
Cause: purpose
|
Such a construal ascribes both consciousness (Behaver) and intention (Purpose) to functional segments of DNA molecules.
Labels:
Behavioural,
Cause,
Grammatical Metaphor,
Transitivity
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