Verbal Group.

Transitivity & Ergativity

Verbal Group
▸ Just as a noun group can be regarded as an expanded
noun, a verb group can be regarded as an expanded
verb. For example:
▸ The janitor must have found the cartoons in the shed.
In sentence the word found is the head of verb group
must have found.
Verbal group
▸ The constituents which precede the head can be
regarded as premodifiers. However, the term which is
more commonly used for the verb group
premodifiers is auxiliary verbs or just auxiliaries.
▸ *Verb as a head of verb group represents the process.
▸ *The max. number of auxiliaries that can precede the
head is four, making a max. possible verb group size
of five costituents including the head. 3
Transitivity: processes and participants
▸ The term transitivity will probably be familiar as a
way of distinguishing between verbs according to
whether they have an Object or not.
▸ Here, however, it is being used in a much broader
sense. In particular, it refers to a system for
describing the whole clause, rather than just the verb
and its Object.
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Transitivity: processes and participants
▸ It does, though, share with the traditional use a focus
on the verbal group, since it is the type of process
that determines how the participants are labelled: the
‘doer’ of a physical process such as kicking is given a
different label from the ‘doer’ of a mental process
such as wishing.

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Material processes
▸ The most salient types of process, are those involving
physical actions: running, throwing, scratching,
cooking, sitting down, and so on. These are called
material processes. A traditional definition of a verb
is a ‘doing word’, and this describes such processes
reasonably well (but not other types).

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Material processes
▸ The ‘doer’ of this type of action is called the Actor:
any material process has an Actor, even though the
Actor may not actually be mentioned in the clause.
Material processes can be divided into those that
represent the action as involving only the Actor and
those that also affect or are ‘being done to’ another
participant. This second participant is called the
Goal, since the action is, in a sense, directed at this 7
Material processes
▸ Material processes construe doing; they answer the question
'What did X do?' or 'What happened?‘
▸ Potential participant roles are: ACTOR (or Doer of the
process), a GOAL (or Thing affected by the process), a RANGE
(or Thing unaffected by the process), a BENEFICIARY of the
process.

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Mental processes
▸ Mental processes encode the inner world of cognition,
perception, Inclination or liking/disliking (known as
affect). Potential participant roles are: SENSER (or
Doer of the process) which must be realised by a
human or at least conscious participant; and a
PHENOMENON, realised by a nominal group or
embedded clause summing up what is thought,
wanted, perceived or liked/disliked. 9
Mental processes
▸ Intuitively, mental processes form a viable semantic category:
there are clear differences between something that goes on in
the external world and something that goes on in the internal
world of the mind; and there are many verbs that refer to these
mental processes, of thinking, imagining, liking, wanting,
seeing, etc.

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Relational processes
▸ The main characteristic of relational processes is that
they relate a participant to its identity or description.
Thus, within relational processes there are two main
types: RELATIONAL ATTRIBUTIVE, which relate
a participant to its general characteristics or
description; and RELATIONAL IDENTIFYING,
which relate a participant to its identity, role or
meaning. 11
Relational Attributive
▸ Function: to construe relationships of description;
▸ Participants: Carrier = tiling described;
▸ Attribute = description;

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Relational Identifying
▸ Function: to construe relationships of identification
and equation;
▸ Participants: Identified = that which is to be
identified; Identifier = the new identity; Token =
form; Value = function or role;
▸ Token represents Value;
▸ Value is represented by Token.
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Relational Identifying

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Verbal processes
▸ Verbal processes construe saying. Potential participant roles
are: SAYER (Doer of the process), RECEIVER (addressee of
the speech), TARGET (the participant which is the object of the
talk), and VERBIAGE (which corresponds to Phenomenon in a
mental process and sums up what is said in on a nominal group
or embedded clause). A verbal process will most often project
what is said in a separate ranked clause.

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Behavioural processes
▸ Behavioural processes construe physiological or psychological
behaviour. The main participant, the BEHAVER, is generally a
conscious being and, if it is not, the clause is considered to be
personification. These processes are often the doing version of a
mental or even a verbal process.

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Existential processes
▸ The final process type is one that can almost be
defined in negative terms: essentially it expresses the
mere existence of an entity without predicating
anything else of it. These are existential processes, and
they are normally recognizable because the Subject is
‘there’:
▸ There was a ramp leading down.
▸ Maybe there’s some other darker pattern. 18
Existential processes
▸ There is only one participant in such clauses: the
Existent.
▸ The word ‘there’ is needed as Subject, but it has no
experiential meaning: in a sense, its function is to
avoid the need for, or the possibility of, a second
participant in the clause.

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Ergativity
▸ The transitivity approach to material processes
differentiates sharply between ‘doer’ (Actor) and ‘done
to’ (Goal). It is also possible to look at these processes
from another perspective, one that focuses on the fact
that the process may happen by itself or be caused to
happen. In Functional Grammar, this is called the
ergative perspective.
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Ergativity
▸ From this perspective, we are interested in whether
the process is encoded as happening by itself or as
being caused to happen: the process remains
recognizably the same (reflected in the fact that the
same verb is used in both cases), but the structure
varies to reflect the presence or absence of causation.

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Combined analysis of ergative/non-ergative verbs

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Thanks!

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