CLAUSE AS REPRESENTATION
5.1 Modelling experience of change
5.1.3 Process, participants and circumstances
distinctive grammatical properties. Even in the short extract from the interview, we can begin to see the properties characteristic of each process type. Thus ‘relational’ clauses are characterized by a few favourite verbs — in particular,beandhave. ‘Mental’ clauses must be construed with one conscious participant (I,the Ibos), while ‘material’ clauses have a more varied central participant that may or may not be a conscious being (Nigeria, the British,this,you). Both ‘verbal’ and ‘mental’ clauses are characterized by their ability to introduce what is said or thought as a report — a property distinguishing them from all the other process types. ‘Existential’ clauses are unique in that the Subject is not a participant but rather the item there, which represents only ‘existence’, not the participant that exists; this participant comes after the Process. In Section 5.2 to Section 5.5, we shall introduce the process types and their grammar more systematically. In the meantime, we shall explore the experiential elements that make up the transitivity structure of a clause.
than it’s winding). The difference in status between participants and circumstances can be seen very clearly from the text in Table 5(46). While every clause has at least one participant, only certain clauses are augmented circumstantially. In text in general, the average number of circumstances per clause is roughly 0.45 (see Matthiessen, 1999). How can we explain the difference in status between participants and circumstances in the configuration of process + participants + circumstances? One way of looking at the situation is this. The process is the most central element in the configuration. Participants are close to the centre; they are directly involved in the process, bringing about its occurrence or being affected by it in some way. The nature of participants will thus vary according to the type of process set out in Figure 5-2, and we can say that the configuration of process + participants constitutes the experiential centre of the clause. Circumstantial elements augment this centre in some way — temporally, spatially, causally and so on; but their status in the configuration is more peripheral and unlike participants they are not directly involved in the process. This model of the clause is represented diagrammatically in Figure 5-4. (We shall make certain adjustments to this model in Section 5.8, p. 303.)
This tripartite interpretation of figures, shown in Figure 5-4, is what lies behind the grammatical distinction of word classes into verbs, nouns and the rest, a pattern that in some
circumstance participants adverbial group;
prepositional phrase
nominal group
process
verbal group can . . . tell
you us
about the political and cultural makeup of Nigeria
Fig. 5-4 Central and peripheral elements in the experiential structure of the clause
form is probably universal among human languages. We can express this as in Table 5(2).
An example is given in Figure 5-5.
Table 5(2)Typical experiential functions of group and phrase classes type of element typically realized by
(i) process verbal group
(ii) participant nominal group
(iii) circumstance adverbial group or prepositional phrase
Here the process is realized by a discontinuous verbal group,can. . .tell. The source of the discontinuity is interpersonal, not experiential. Interpersonally, the clause is ‘yes/no interrogative’ in mood, and as we have seen in Chapter 4, such clauses are realized by the sequence Finite ^ Subject, with the Predicator coming after the Subject. Thus in the example, we get Finite: can ^ Subject:you ^ Predicator:tell. In the agnate ‘declarative’
clause, the verbal group is not discontinuous:you can tell us about the political and cultural makeup of Nigeria. As far as the experiential structure of the clause is concerned, it makes no difference whether the verbal group is continuous or discontinuous.
The units that realize the process, participant, and circumstance elements of the clause make distinct contributions to the modelling of a quantum of change. The elements that make up the ‘centre’ of the clause — the process and the participants involved in it — construe complementary facets of the change. These two facets are transience and permanence. Transience is the experience of unfolding through time; it is construed by a verbal group serving as the process. Permanence is the experience of lasting through time and being located in (concrete or abstract) space; it is construed by nominal groups serving as participants. Thus participants are relatively stable through time, and an instance of a participant can take part in many processes, as happens for example in narrative:
Text 5-2
During the first part of the nineteenth century, there wasa lighthouse keeper who was in charge of the lighthouse. His namewasFelipe. Hewasa brave young man, very dedicated to his work. Helivedvery happily in the lighthouse with his wife, Catalina, and his little daughter Teresa. Helovedthem both very much.
Here we have one instance of a participant that is first introduced into the narrative in one process of existence (there was . . .) and then maintained as a participant in other processes:
a lighthouse keeper . . . — (his name) — he—he—he. In contrast, processes are ephemeral;
M o d e l l i n g e x p e r i e n c e o f c h a n g e
Fig. 5-5 Clause as process, participants and circumstances
Can you tell us about the political and cultural makeup of Nigeria
pro- participant -cess participant circumstance
verbal . . . nominal gp . . . group nominal gp prepositional phrase
every instance is a unique occurrence — every was in the passage above refers to a unique occurrence of a process of being. This contrast between participants and processes explains why there are names of individual participants — ‘proper names’, as well as names of classes of participants — ‘common nouns’, but only names of classes of processes: all lexical verbs are ‘common’ verbs. The contrast is also reflected in the organization of nominal groups and verbal groups in two ways (see Table 5(3)): while nominal groups have evolved the system of DETERMINATION for locating referents in a referential space, verbal groups have evolved the system of TENSE for locating a unique occurrence of a process in time (see Chapter 6).
Table 5(3)Deictic systems of verbal group and nominal group
type of element location in system terms
processverbal group referential time TENSE past (did do) present (does do) future (will do)
participant nominal group referential space DETERMINATION specific (the/this/that thing; it) non-specific (a/some/any/every thing)
Change is thus construed as involving both transience and permanence, and the phenomena of experience are construed either as transient processes or as permanent participants. The border between these two is indeterminate; the lexicogrammar of every language will allow considerable discretion in how phenomena are treated in discourse, and lexicogrammars of different languages draw the borderline in different places. For example, in English,rainand other forms of precipitation may be construed either as process, as in it’s started to rain again, or as participant, as in the rain’s started again. This is an area of considerable fluidity; but most phenomena are treated either as process or as participant, and have to be reconstrued metaphorically to change their status in the grammar; for example, purchases of durables depend on prior stock, where the process of purchasing is objectified as a participant and is represented in the grammar as a nominal group with traces of clausal structure (see Chapter 10, Section 10.5, p. 636).
The concepts of process, participant and circumstance are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of our experience of the world are construed as linguistic structures. When we come to interpret the grammar of the clause, however, we do not use these concepts as they stand because they are too general to explain very much. We shall need to recognize participant and circumstance functions which are more specific than these and which, in the case of participant functions, differ according to the type of process being represented. Nevertheless, they all derive from, and can be related to, these three general categories. In the following sections we shall explore the different types of process that are built into the grammar of English, and the particular kinds of participant role that are systematically associated with each. In Section 5.6, p. 259, we shall present the different types of circumstance that enter into the clause.