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MODULE13
1. Why is the clause the most significant grammatical unit?
This grammatical means of encoding patterns of experience, a fundamental property of
language, enables us to conceptualise and describe our experience (actions, events, people
and things of the external world; thoughts, feelings and perceptions of our internal world). This
is done through transitivity, which encompasses the verb and the semantic configuration of
situation types. It enables us to organise the wealth of our experience, both semantically
and syntactically, into a manageable number of representational patterns or schemas.
Processes can mainly be: dynamic and stative / material, mental and relational.
-Stative situations and processes are conceived of as durative over time, and as existing rather
than happening, so it doesn’t make sense to ask ‘What happened?’ in such cases.
Generally, dynamic processes easily occur in the progressive (Pete is going away) and the imperative
(Go away, Pete!), whereas most stative processes don’t usually accept the progressive or the imperative
(*Pete is seeming kind. *Hear a noise!).
-Material processes are processes of ‘doing’ (e.g. kick, run, eat, give) or ‘happening’ (e.g. fall,
melt, collapse, slip).
-Mental processes are processes of ‘experiencing’ or ‘sensing’ (e.g. see, hear, feel, know, like,
want, regret).
-Relational processes are processes of ‘being’ (e.g. be, seem) or ‘becoming’ (e.g.
become, turn), in which a participant’s circumstances are characterised, identified, or situated.
There are also three subsidiary processes: behavioural, verbal and existential. The presence or
absence of volition and energy are important factors in distinguishing between processes.
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The Attributes ascribed to entities either identify or characterise the entity, or state its
location in space or time. They are realised syntactically by the intensive Complements
(Complement of the Subject and Complement of the Object).
The circumstantial roles associated with the process. Include the well-known
circumstances of time, place, manner and condition, as well as a few others. They are typically
optional in the semantic structure, just as their adjunctive counterparts are in the syntactic
structure. Circumstances can, however, be inherent to the situation: for instance, location is
obligatory with certain senses of ‘be’, as in the ice-cream’s over there, and with ‘put’ in its
sense of ‘placing’ as in let’s put it in the freezer
There is no one-to-one correlation between semantic structures and syntactic structures; rather, the
semantic categories cut across the syntactic ones, although with some correlation. Semantic structures
and syntactic structures do not, therefore, always coincide; rather, they overlap. In both cases, however,
it is the process, expressed by the verb determines the choice of participants in the semantic structure
and of syntactic elements in the syntactic structure.
One obvious problem in the identification of participants and processes is the vastness and variety of the
physical world, and the difficulty involved in reducing this variety to a few prototypical semantic roles and
processes. All we can attempt to do is to specify the paradigm cases, and indicate where more detailed
specification would be necessary in order to account semantically for the varied shades of our
experience.
The material process represented by the verb fall for instance, has only one participant, whereas kick
typically requires two: one participant is the Agent who carries out the action, and must be ‘animate’ and
typically ‘human’; the other is the participant affected by the action of kicking, and is not required to be
human, or even animate.
In the example Ted kicked the ball both the inherent participants are actualised as Ted and the
ball. If we say Ted kicked hard, however, only one participant, the Agent, is actualised. The
second participant, the one affected by the action, is unactualised but understood. Give, for
instance, is typically a three-participant process as in Mary gave the Red Cross a donation.
Only two participants are actualised, however, in Mary gave a donation and only one in Mary
gave generously.
Processes such as meet and kiss can be understood as having implicit reciprocity in, for instance, your
sister and I have never met (each other).Some processes have typically no participants (for example,
statements about the weather, time and distance such as it’s snowing, it’s half past eleven, it’s a long
walk to the beach). In these the pronoun it is merely a surface form required to realise the obligatory
Subject element. It has no corresponding semantic function.
MODULE14
1. The roles of agent and affected involuntary and involuntary processes, which
syntactic functions do they conflate with?
The first main category of processes are material processes (‘doing’, ‘happening’, ‘causing’
and ‘transferring’).
The action of ‘doing’ is carried out by a voluntary and controlling human participant: the Agent.
A non-controlling inanimate agent is called Force, for instance an earthquake. This Agent can
be a subject operating on itself (Answers the question: “What did X do?)
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In processes of doing, the action either extends no further than the Agent itself, as in she
resigned, or it extends to another participant, the Affected (the ball in Pelé kicked the ball).
A special type of ‘doing’ is the process of transfer, in which an Agent transfers an Affected
participant to a Recipient or is intended for a Beneficiary (give someone a present or make
someone a cake, respectively).
Affected Subject in a passive clause – Bill was hit by Ted. In the passive, the Affected conflates
with the Subject of the clause.
In involuntary processes of happening, the Affected undergoes the happening (the roof fell in,
the old man collapsed). Does not answer to ‘what did X do’ or the wh-cleft test but to the
question ‘what happened to X?’
The order of elements in the semantic structures is iconic, that is, the linguistic ordering of the
event reflects our conceptualization of it.
The notion of agency is a complex one, which includes such features as animacy, intention,
motivation, responsibility and the use of one’s own energy to initiate or control a process. In
central instances, all these features will be present. In non-central instances, one or more of
these features may be absent. If we say, for example, that the horse splashed us with mud as it
passed we do not imply that the horse did so deliberately. We do not attribute intentionality or
responsibility or motivation to the horse in this situation. We might call it an ‘unwitting Agent’.
MODULE15
1. What is an ergative pair? What conditions must it fulfil?
When the Affected object of a transitive-causative clause is the same as the Affected subject of
the corresponding intransitive clause, we have an ‘ergative pair’. As in ‘He opened the door’
(transitive)/‘The door opened’ (intransitive), ‘She rang the bell’ (transitive) /‘The bell rang’
(intransitive). In the second clause, the situation does not include an Agent who initiates it and
we encode the process as happening of its own accord. The structure has to be anti-causative.
The key participant is called the Medium (bell/door).
The test for recognizing an ergative pair is that the causative-transitive, two participant structure must
always allow for the corresponding one-participant, anti-causative structure. Compare the previous
examples (e.g. he opened the door/the door opened) with ‘Pele kicked the ball’ & *The ball kicked.
Within this alternation – described here as an ‘ergative pair’ – there is a set of basically
intransitive volitional activities (walk, jump and march) in which the second participant is
involved either willingly or unwillingly. The control exerted by the Agent predominates in the
causative-transitive:
He walked the dogs in the park. The dogs walked.
He jumped the horse over the fence The horse jumped over the fence.
The sergeant marched the soldiers. The soldiers marched.
It is also possible to have an additional agent and an additional causative verb in the transitive
clauses of ergative pairs; for example, The child got his sister to ring the bell, Mary made Peter
boil the water.
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2. What is an analytical causative with a resulting attribute? What syntactic
realization does this have?
One final type of causative we will consider is the analytical type, based on combinations with
verbs such as make and turn. In these an Agent brings about a change of state in the Affected
participant. The resulting state is expressed by an Attribute (Complement of the Object in a
syntactic analysis).
Agent Process Affected Resulting Attribute
They are making the road wider and safer.
This machine will make your tasks simple.
The heat has turned the milk sour.
They express a general property or propensity of the entity to undergo (or not undergo) the
process in question. Compare glass breaks easily with the glass broke, which refers to a specific
event.
MODULE16
1. Which are the participants in a process of transfer?
There are three participants in the processes of transfer: Agent, Affected and Recipient or
Beneficiary.
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MODULE 17
1. What participants are there in a mental process of perception, cognition, affection
and desideration?
The Experiencer, the one who perceives, knows, likes, etc. The Phenomenom perceived,
known, liked or wanted.
MODULE 18
Attributive pattern: the Attribute characterizes the entity in the following ways:
As an instantiation of a class of entities (a mountain, a musician)
A subclass (that of high mountains or quality (popular with climbers, alarming)
By a location (in the Alps, on the third floor)
A type of possession (yours)
There is an intensive relationship between the Carrier and its Attribute. That is to say, the Carrier
is in some way the Attribute. The Attribute is not a participant in the situation, and when realized
by a nominal group the NG is non-referential.
It can’t become the Subject in a clause. Attributive clauses are non-reversible in the sense that
they don’t allow a Subject–Complement switch. They allow thematic fronting as in and a fine
musician he was too, but a fine musician is still the Attribute, and he the Subject.
The process itself, when encoded by be, carries little meaning apart from that of tense (past time
as in was; present as in is, are). Its function is to link the Carrier to the Attribute.
Identifying pattern: The participant roles in an identifying relationship are known as Identified
and Identifier. Identification means that one participant, the Identified, is identified in terms of the
other (the Identifier), in a relation of symbolic correlates. The Identifier is the one that fills the wh-
element in a wh-question corresponding to the identifying clause:
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Identifying processes are reversible. The previous illustrations can be turned around, with the
Identified/ Identifying roles now represented by the opposite constituent:
Alternatively, in answer to the same question Which is the highest mountain in Europe? We could
say ‘Mont Blanc (Identifier) is the highest mountain in Europe (Identified)’. In spoken discourse it
is the Identifier that typically receives the tonic prominence that is associated with new
information, whether this is placed at the end (the usual position) or at the beginning of the
clause.
In each sequence, then, one half is typically something or someone whose existence is already
known (the Identified), whereas the Identifier presents information as unknown or new to the
listener.
Token/Identified Value/Identifier
My father-in-law is (= fulfils the role of) the club’s Secretary
Negotiation is (= represents) the key to resolving the dispute
3. What difference is there between a current attribute and a resulting attribute? And
between a circumstantial relational process and a possessive relational one?
The Attribute that exists at the same time as the process described by the verb is called current
Attribute: We kept quiet; He remained captain for three year, or a transition. With dynamic
verbs of transition, become, get turn, the Attribute exists as a result of the process and is called
the resulting Attribute: We fell silent; He became captain
Circumstantial relational processes are processes of being in which the circumstantial element
is essential to the situation, not peripheral to it. The circumstance is encoded as Attribute in the
following examples and stands in an intensive relationship with the Carrier:
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Examples such as Tomorrow is Monday; Yesterday was July 1st are reversible and can be
considered as identifying circumstantial processes.
The category of possession covers a wide number of subtypes, of which the most prototypical
are perhaps part-whole (as in your left foot), ownership (as in our house) and kinship relations
(such as Jane’s sister). Other less central types include un-owned possession (as in the dog’s
basket), a mental quality (her sense of humour), a physical quality (his strength), occupancy (his
office) and an association with another person (my friends and colleagues). All these types and
others are grammaticalized at the level of the clause in possessive relational processes. A
relatively small number of verbs occur, principally
be, have, own and possess. The two participants involved are the Possessor and the
Possessed. The notion of possession is expressed either by the Attribute, as in That computer
is mine, or by the process itself, as in I have a new computer.
(A) Possession as Attribute: In this, the verb is be and the Attribute/Possessor is encoded by a
possessive pronoun (mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs) or by an ’s phrase such as John’s in
The green Peugeot is John’s. The sequence is similar with belong, although it is then the verb
that conveys the notion of possession:
(B) Possession as process: English has several verbs to express possession. With be, have,
own, possess and the more colloquial have got, the Carrier is the Possessor and the Attribute is
the Possessed.
Also included in the category of ‘possessing’ are the notions of not possessing (lack, need), of
being worthy to possess (deserve), and the abstract relations of inclusion, exclusion and
containment.
MODULE 19
1. What are verbal, behavioural and existential processes and their main structures?
Verbal processes are processes of ‘saying’ or ‘communicating’ and are encoded by such verbs
as say, tell, repeat, ask, answer and report. They have one participant which is typically human,
but not necessarily so (the Sayer) and a second essential participant, which is what is said or
asked or reported (the Said).
A Recipient is required with tell and may be present as an oblique form (e.g. to me) with other
verbal processes. The Sayer can be anything which puts out a communicative signal (that clock,
Jill, our correspondent). What is said is realised by a nominal group or a nominal what-clause
(what she knew).
As these examples show, verbal processes are intermediate between material and mental
processes. From one point of view, communicating is a form of ‘doing’, and in fact the Sayer is
usually agentive or made to appear agentive, as in the case of the clock. Like material
processes, verbal processes readily admit the imperative (Say it again!) and the progressive
(What is he saying?). On the other hand, the action of communicating is close to cognitive
processes such as thinking. Verbs of saying, telling and others can be followed by a clause that
represents either the exact words said (direct report) or a reported version of the meaning
(indirect report). Besides the Sayer and the Said, a further participant, the Target, encodes the
person or thing at which the message is directed, as in: Everyone is acclaiming the new musical
as the event of the year.
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rudely, in which the adjunct of manner implies volition. Acting excepted, most volitional adjuncts
could not be used with die, collapse and grow, which are typically lacking in agency and volition.
Existential processes are processes of existing or happening. The basic structure consists of
unstressed there + be + a NG (There’s a man at the door; there was a loud bang). There is not a
participant as it has no semantic content, although it fulfils both a syntactic function as Subject
and a textual function as ‘presentative’ element. The single participant is the Existent, which
may refer to a countable entity (There’s a good film on at the Scala), an uncountable entity
(There’s roast lamb for lunch) or an event (There was an explosion).
MODULE 20
1. Major types of circumstantial elements.
They are place and time, manner, contingency, accompaniment, modality, degree, role, matter
and evidence.
Rather than a circumstance, Range is a participant: the nominal concept that is implied by the
process as its scope or range: song in sing a song, games in play games, race in run a race.
Some, such as song, are derived from a related verb; others such as game are not.
Perhaps the most common type of Range element today are the deverbal nominals which
complement lexically ‘light’ verbs such as have and give:
Have an argument, a chat, a drink, a fight, a rest, a quarrel, a smoke, a taste, an experience
Give a push, a kick, a nudge, a smile, a laugh, a kiss; a presentation, a lecture
Take a sip, a bath, a nap, a photograph, a shower, a walk
Do a dance, a handstand, a left/ right turn, a sketch, a translation, some work, some cleaning, some
painting
MOCK TEST 4
What two major patterns of “being” (as a relational process) are there in English?:*
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What happens in a causative process?:*
that-clause
wh-clause
to-infinitive clause
Prepositional object
Indirect object
contingency
degree
matter
mood
Which of the following is NOT a way to consider a clause in Systemic Functional Grammar?*
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Which participants take part in a process of transfer?:*
doing
happening
causing
making
a predicate
a finite operator
a process
an action
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What is the name for the whole clause in which a subordinate clause is embedded?*
Matrix clause
Main clause
Compound clause
Superordinate clause
doer
thinker
experiencer
phenomenon
still
yet
ever
any
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What type of clause is “Can you?”:*
an indirect question.
a verbless clause.
an abbreviated clause.
TEMA 5 TEST
A pure intransitive verb:*
IO + DO
DO + PO
PO + Cloc
When the subject of the main clause does not coincide with the subject of the that-clause.
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When is there `recursive embedding’?*
When there is a series of embedded clauses, each within the previous one.
Which of the following sentences does NOT contain a nominal relative clause?*
hope
write
become
monovalent
bivalent
trivalent
Agent
Affected
Force
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What is the role of ‘The sun’ in ‘The sun warmed the swimming pool’?*
Agent
Affected
Force
What is the name of the type of participant present in only one of the following sentences: “I
slammed the door // The door slammed”?*
Process
Affected
Initiating Agent
They express a general propensity of the entity to undergo the corresponding process
Affectivity
Happening
Desideration
What is the difference between “Seville is the prettiest city in Spain” and “The pretty city in Spain
is Seville”?*
None.
The Identifier is the first element and the Identified, the second.
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What is the difference between mental processes like “see” and “hear” and others like “watch” and
“listen”?*
contingency
choice
matter
What type of meaning is described by the circumstantial element “Despite the current climate” in
“Despite the current climate, we’ll go there for our holidays this year”?*
Concession
Behalf
Matter
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