Further Notes on Transitivity

The Relational Process

Of all the processes, the relational process is the one which may present you with the greatest difficulty. According to Halliday, there are three types of relational processes:

(1) intensive	'x is a'
(2) circumstantial	'x is at a'
(3) possessive	'x has a'

(i) attributive	'a is an attribute of x'
(ii) identifying	'a is the identity of x'

We can note from the above that:

• In the attributive mode, an attribute is ascribed to an entity, whereas in the identifying mode, an entity is used to identify another.
• According to Halliday, clauses in the attributive mode cannot be passivised, whereas those in the identifying mode can be: to him, passivization occurs when the participants of a clause in the identifying mode is reversed, as illustrated in the above table. The reversability of the participants is an important grammatical factor which distinguishes them from clauses of the attributive mode.1

• the intensive type establishes a relationship of sameness between two entities;
• the circumstantial type defines the entity in terms of location, time, manner etc.; whilst
• the possessive type (as its name implies) indicates that one entity owns another.

Table 9.2: Attributive Clauses

attribute of:
quality (intensive)	John	is / looks	great
circumstance (circumstantial)	Prof Halliday the celebrations	was last	in the lecture theatre all day
possession (possessive)	the computer Ahmad	is / belongs has	Ahmad's / to Ahmad a computer
	Carrier	Process	Attribute

Table 9.3: Identifying Clauses

identification by:
token-value (intensive)	Ah Chong David Garrick	is played	the teacher Hamlet
circumstance (circumstantial)	yesterday his gold	was takes up	the twentieth the entire box
possession (possessive)	the piano Peter	is owns	Peter's2 the piano
	Identified	Process	Identifier

Notes

1 The verb 'to be' may present a problem with regard to passivization. But according to Halliday, passivization of a clause with this verb follows from the reversal of the positions of token and value, which are terms which he applies to all relational process clauses (see table 5(7); 5(6) from last lecture's notes: token being the more specific, whilst value is the more general of the two entities). Passivization however, as I have stated above, can work only in the identifying mode, as token and value in the attributive mode cannot be reversed. Try to see how passivization works in relation to the verb 'is' in Halliday's table of relational process clauses in the identifying mode in his figure 5-10 (second edition) or figure 5-18 (third edition). One must add here however, that Halliday's view that the verb 'to be' can be passivised is not shared by all linguists; many of them, of course, do not work with the same premises: for example, the notions of token and value (or similar notions) are not found in many other linguistic descriptions of the verb to be and other related verbs. Back to the earlier position in the text.

2. Notice that the clause 'the piano is Peter's', which is retained here from Halliday's original can also be analysed as an attributive relational process clause (cf. figures 5-9 and 5-10 in Halliday's first edition). Back to the earlier position in the text.

Circumstantial Adjuncts

Closely associated with transitivity are the circumstantial adjuncts, which together with the processes, and transitivity itself, have to do with the ideational metafunction of language. (You will also realise later, that the circumstantial adjuncts are important in theme-rheme analysis, as they, unlike the other adjuncts, carry topical weight, and a circumstantial adjunct is regarded as the topical theme itself if it is fronted). The following table, which is found only in the second edition of Halliday's Introduction [Table 5(9)], is quite useful in telling us about the types of circumstantial adjuncts available; the third edition has a more elaborate table [Table 5(28)]: you are advised to take a look at it. See pp. 137-44; 149-61; 259-80 of Halliday's Introduction for a further elaboration on the nature of these adjuncts.
 

Table 9.4: Types of circumstantial element

	Type	Specific categories (subtypes)
1	Extent	distant, duration
2	Location	place, time
3	Manner	means, quality, comparison
4	Cause	reason, purpose, behalf
5	Contingency	condition, concession, default
6	Accompaniment	comitation, addition
7	Role	guise, product
8	Matter
9	Angle

An extract from Mrs Gaskell's Mary Barton.

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Last revised: 25 December 2010
© Ismail S. Talib 1996-2009.