Dr. Len Unsworth
In this session we will examine the ways in which both real and imaginary worlds are constructed through the grammatical resources of the language. In particular we will look at how the grammatical system of "transitivity" constructs the reality of the material and mental worlds we experience through language. To illustrate this we will use extracts from Katherine Paterson's well known novel for children and young adolescents, "Bridge to Terabithia", and also segments from a variety of primary school science books. By understanding how the grammar makes meanings we can add a very productive and critical dimension to our interpretation of such texts and we can develop much more explicit ways of negotiating these critical interpretations with the students we teach.
Language bridges from the cultural meanings of social context (with its contextual variables of Field, Tenor and Mode, reflecting the institutional activities, the social hierarchies and role relationships, and the related use of language within these) to sound or writing. It does this by moving from higher orders of abstraction to lower ones. These orders of abstraction are organized into three levels or strata - semantics, lexicogrammar and phonology (or graphology). The stratal role of semantics is that of an interface between social context and lexicogrammar: ideational meanings realize Field, interpersonal meanings realize Tenor, and textual meanings realize Mode.
Lexicogrammar is a resource for wording meanings, i.e. realizing them as configurations of lexical and grammatical items. The level of lexicogrammar also operates in terms of three metafunctions. Textual meanings, construing Mode are realized largely by the grammatical systems of Theme and Information focus. Interpersonal meanings, construing Tenor, are realized by the grammatical systems of Mood and modality. Ideational meanings (experiential and logical) are realized lexicogrammatically by the system of transitivity. This system interprets and represents our experience of phenomena in the world and in our consciousness by modelling experiential meanings in terms of participants, processes and circumstances (Resources for chaining clauses into clause complexes, and for serializing time by means of tense, address logical meanings). The grammatical system of transitivity, indicated by the thick horizontal line shading in the diagram, will be the focus of our work here.
The clause represents experience as a configuration of a process, participants involved in it, and circumstances associated with it as exemplified below:
Processes/verbs
As well as analysing experience into its component parts and combining these into configurations, the experiential metafunction also classifies the world into domains of experience such as consciousness, happening and doing, and being and having. In the grammar of transitivity, the system Process Type is concerned with the particular domain of experience of processes. The following examples illustrate the classification of process types noted in Matthiessen (1992:168).
The NSW English K-6 syllabus refers to these processes as : "thinking", "saying", "action" and "relating" verbs (see syllabus document pages 74-75)
We will distinguish two further sub-categories of process types discussed by Halliday (1985; 1994) - "behavioural" processes and "existential" processes. The domain of experience of behavioural processes is that of physiological or psychological behaviour and grammatically they are intermediate between material and mental or verbal processes.
behavioural :-
Look at the prong of the tuning fork.
Listen to the sound it makes.
Existential processes assert directly the existence of something. The most common form is "There is....". The other obvious realization is the verb "exist".
existential:-
On the moon or in space there is not air (or any other substance) to carry the sound.
A whole city in miniature exists in a pond.
The Process is the "nucleus" of the clause. The selection of the Process determines the types of Participants. Each Process type has its own particular set of Participants. Circumstances, however are independent of Process type and hence the same Circumstances can occur with different Process types. However some types of Circumstance occur more frequently with a specific process type than others (e.g. Circumstances of matter occur more frequently with Verbal Processes - They talked about their families).
Circumstances
The NSW English K-6 syllabus refers to cirumstances as "adverbial phrases" and "adverbs" , which tell us "how, when, where, why with whom " the process takes place (see syllabus document pages 74-75)
A more detailed list of types of circumstances (with examples of adverbial phrases andm adverbs) is provided in the table below:
Process/verb types
The major Process types are shown again in the diagram below. We will initially discuss those in the shaded section of the diagram and then consider Relational and Existential Processes in the subsequent session.
Material processes (called action verbs in English K-6)
In this case the Range is the name of the actual Process. There is no such thing as football without the playing of it. This is the same as "take a bath", "do a dance" etc.
The Range can also be the domain over which the Process takes place:
Leslie ran the full length of the cow paddock.
Here "the full length of the cow paddock" is the Range:Entity.
Mental processes (called "thinking" verbs in English K-6)
Verbal Processes (called "saying" verbs in English K-6)
Verbal Processes may be used to project or report a locution:
Note that the Verbiage is a speech act - story, joke, poem, lie etc.
Behavioural processes
Behavioural processes are not distinguished in English K-6. They are "in between" Material and Mental/Verbal Processes. They are Mental/Verbal Processes as physical activity. Behavioural Processes require a human participant (or a participant endowed with consciousness), but unlike Mental Processes, they realize ongoing activity with the present continuous rather than the simple present tense:
I'm watching the cricket on T.V.
NOT
I watch the cricket on TV. (indicates habitual rather than ongoing)
Behavioural Processes also cannot report ideas and facts. *I watched that they came late.
The following selection from Matthiessen (1992) indicates relationships among categories of Behavioural and Mental/Verbal Processes:
Summary of Process (Verb) types
The shaded section of the diagram below summarises the process types we have dealt with so far:
Practical use of Transitivity in critiquing factual texts
1. Look at the first clause in each of the following explanations of how coal is formed taken from information books for primary school children:
(a) Coal was formed from the remains of plants that grew millions of years ago.
Taylor, B. (1990) Science Starters: Energy and Power. London: Franklin Watts
(b) Coal has formed over millions of years from the remains of ancient forests growing on
swamps.
Pettigrew, M. (1986) Simply Science: Planet Earth. London: Franklin Watts
Note that in the first text "Coal" is the Goal - and the unstated Actor is something like "sedimentation, heat and pressure". But in the second text "Coal" is the Actor and there is no Goal. So in this second text there is no suggestion that some agentive force brought about coal formation - no unstated Actor - coal just formed!
2. Consider the following clauses from explanations of how sound travels in information books for primary school children:
(a) The sounds squash or press together a package of air.
Taylor, B. (1991) Science Starters: Sound and Music. London:Franklin Watts.
(b) Sound waves disturb the molecules
as they travel through the air.
Carter, C., Nitert, R. and Ritchie.I (1990) Sound. Melbourne: Macmillan.
In both clauses "sound" has the participant role of Actor and "air" is Goal. But this is nonsense. "The sounds" or "Sound waves" can't do anything to the air because the sound waves are in fact the patterns of compressed and rarefied air molecules.
3. Finally consider the following extract from Dinosaurs in the Collins Eyewitness Series.
The body of diplodocus was designed to bear and move enormous weight, and the backbone, between the shoulders and hips, was the powerhouse of the whole animal. The backbones (vertebrae) had to be strong enough to support the enormous weight of the neck, tail and belly. However, they were hollowed out for lightness.
When you analyse the following clauses, what ideological position about the origin of the dinosaurs is implicit in the text?
Relational Processes (called "relating" verbs in English K-6)
(Where possible in the first part of the session clauses are taken from excerpts from Katherine Paterson's Bridge to Terabithia, In the review section examples are taken from a variety of school science books.)
In English K-6 "relating" verbs are analysed as follows :
|
Kim |
is |
generous |
|
Person or thing |
relating verb |
description |
We will extend this account a little to show that relating verbs both describe or classify and define participants (persons or things). In fact there are two sub types of relating verbs - one for describing or classifying and one for defining. Within these two sub-types we have a further "sub-sub type" called Relational Possessive Processes (like "has" and "owns" and "belongs to"). The first type of Relational Process (relating verb) is known more technically as Relational Attributive Processes. We'll look at the describing or classifying role of Relational Attribute Processes first.
The technical names for the participant roles in Relational Attributive Processes are fairly straightforward so we will re-analyse the example from English K-6 above including functional technical terms:
|
Kim |
is |
generous |
|
Person or thing |
relating verb |
description |
|
Carrier |
Process:relational:attributive |
Attribute |
The following examples are from "Bridge to Terabithia":
Some verbs other than be which may function as an attributive process:
become Jess and Leslie became inseparable.
turn He turned pale.
grow in Terabithia you grew strong.
turn out the day turned out badly
start out They started out enemies.
end up He ended up very confident.
keep She kept quiet.
stay The dog stayed still.
seem Leslie seemed invincible.
appear Jess appeared stunned.
look Jess looked tired.
sound the voice sounded awful
The Relational: Attributive: Possessive clauses are analysed as follows:
Relational:Identifying are the second sub type of "relating verbs". These processes define or uniquely identify a participant.
..he (Jess) had been that crazy little kid [[that draws all the time]].
For the rest of the day and until after lunch on the next he (Jess) had been the fastest kid in the third, fourth and fifth grades.
Since these processes set up a relationship of "identity" or "equivalence", they are reversible.
that crazy little kid that draws all the time had been him (Jess).
For the rest of the day and until after lunch on the next the fastest kid in the third, fourth and fifth grades had been him (Jess).
Notice that the ATTRIBUTIVE type is not reversible:
*.. and only a fourth grader was he.
*Lord, tired was he.
The participant roles involved with Relational: Identifying Processes are a little more complex to distinguish and we will not pursue them in this Unit of Study, but we will indicate these roles in some of the examples so that you will recognize them when you are reading the references, however it is not necessary for you to use the technical terms in your analyses.
Since a Relational: Identifying Process functions to define a participant uniquely, then there is a sense in which both participant roles are the same or equivalent.
|
Angela |
is |
the chief coach |
|
Angela |
is |
the chief coach |
|
Token |
Process:Relational:Identifying |
Value |
|
Angela |
is |
the chief coach |
|
Participant |
Process:Relational:Identifying |
Participant |
Some verbs other than the verb "to be" which may function as an identifying process:
equal His time equalled the county record.
stand for The clenched fist stands for black power.
symbolize The white dove symbolizes peace.
indicate The three stripes indicates sergeant rank.
refer to The humidity index refers to the amount of water vapour in the air.
call This is called osmosis.
mean Red means stop.
play Gary Sweet plays "Mickey".
Existential processes
These indicate the existence of something. The most common form is "There + is.."
We can usefully review our discussion of Relational Processes by looking briefly at their role in school science books.
The generic structures that occur most commonly in science texts are report, explanation and procedure. Explanations are frequently embedded in reports and sometimes a report is embedded in an explanation. Here we will look briefly at reports and explanations.
The report gives an account of phenomena as they are. Scientific reports take common sense as a starting point and change this perspective on reality into one based on specialized knowledge. In so doing scientific reports build "uncommonsense" taxonomical relationships. This entails the construction of new categories which are realized by technical terms. These technical terms both accumulate and change the nature of the meanings they translate into specialized knowledge. The technical terms are defined by identifying them with phenomena and distinguishing them from the terms which realize other categories. We will first look at taxonomies and then at definitions.
Taxonomies
There are two types of taxonomies. A classification taxonomy arranges items into superordinate classes. A decomposition taxonomy relates the parts of something to the whole. Taxonomic relations in reports are often signalled by what Shea (1988) has called cue sentences. In classification taxonomies, these can indicate the superordinate item, the number of subclasses and the criteria for establishing subclasses, although not all cue sentences contain all three pieces of information. Sometimes these cue sentences are realized by existential clauses and sometimes by material clauses as well as relational attributive clauses. The following are examples of existential and material clauses respectively:
There are many species of whales.
There are two kinds of water wheel.
Protozoa are grouped into four classes according to how they move about.
Grammaticalizing taxonomic relations: Relational attributive clauses
1. Classification
Relational: Attributive Processes are frequently used to describe:
Black widow spiders are dangerous.
Emus are aggressive.
In a sense these are classifying but we can distinguish them as more descriptive when compared with the following clauses, which are classifying - although they are all Relational:attributive clauses:
The kiwi is nocturnal.
Tapeworms are parasitic.
Notice that you can't say "very nocturnal" or "very parasitic" whereas you can say "very dangerous" and "very aggressive".
Also notice that in the case of all relational attributive clauses they are not reversible. You can't say "Parasitic are tapeworms."; "Dangerous are black widow spiders."
2. Decomposition
These taxonomies are usually constructed by Relational:possessive clauses.
Spiders have two main body parts.
In these clauses the Carrier is called the Possessor and the Attribute is called the Possessed.
We will briefly look at the following Report on whales to see the frequent use of Relational: intensive: attributive and Relational: possessive: attributive clauses to taxonomize and describe.
Whales
Whales live, feed and often play in groups in many different oceans. Whales travel far. They re always moving, looking for food. They have large, flat tail-like flukes. Their flukes help them move through the water. Whales are mammals. All mammals are warm-blooded. They have hair or fur and lungs. Their young are born and drink milk from their mother's body. A whale has smooth skin and a few bristles of hair around its mouth. Whales breathe through blowholes in the top of their heads. Blowholes are tightly shut when whales are underwater. There are two main groups of whales. One group has teeth and the other does not. Baleen whales have no teeth. Sheets of horn-like baleen hang from the roofs of their mouths. A baleen whale has two blowholes in the top of its head. The largest toothed whale is smaller than the largest baleen whales.
Definitions: Relational Identifying Processes and embedded clauses
We can see the use of Relational:identifying clauses to define in the following excerpt from the explanation of bird flight.
In the following transitivity analysis the Relational:Identifying clauses are shaded. Notice that there are fewer relational clauses in this Explanation genre than in the earlier example of the Report genre dealing with whales. Notice also that the Relational: identifying clauses tend to come at the end of component stages of the explanation text, summing up the explanation sequence realized by mainly material processes in the previous clauses.
