TRANSITIVITY

Material Processes

Mental Processes

Circumstances Processes Behavioural Processes

Verbal Processes

Range
 CIRCUMSTANCES
Circumstances answer such questions as when, where, why, how, how many
and as what. They realise meanings about:

1. TIME
2. PLACE
3. MANNER
4. CAUSE
 CIRCUMSTANCES
Time (temporal) tells when and is probed by when? how often?
how long?
e.g. He goes to church every Sunday.
Place (spatial) tells where and is probed by where? how far? e.g.
He goes to church every Sunday.
Manner : tells how
o Means: Tells by what means and is probed by what with?
E.G. He goes by taxi.
o Quality: Tells how and is probed by how?
E.G. He loved her madly, deeply, truly!
o Comparison: Tells like what and is probed by what like?
E.G. He was jumping around like a monkey on a roof.
 CIRCUMSTANCES
• Cause: tells why
o Reason: Tells what causes the process and is probed
by why? Or how?
E.G. The sheep died of thirst.
o Purpose: Tells the purpose and is probed by what for?
E.G. He went to the shop for cigarettes.
o Behalf: Tells for whose sake and is probed by for
whom?
E.G. He went to the shop for his mother.
 PROCESSES
Processes are central to TRANSITIVITY. Participants and circumstances are
incumbent upon the doings, happenings, feelings and beings. This suggests that there
are different kinds of goings on,which necessarily involve different kinds of
participants in varying circumstances.
There are indeed seven different Process types identified by Halliday:
• Material doing bodily, physically, materially
• Behavioural behaving physiologically and psychologically
• Mental sensing emotionally, intellectually, sensorily
• Verbal saying lingually, signally
• Relational being equal to, or some attribute of
• Existential existing there exists
• Meteorological weathering
 Material Processes
• Material processes are processes of doing in the physical world.
• Material processes have two inherent participants involved in:
- Actor: the one who does the action
- Goal: The one who is affected by the action
Example:
 Material Processes
There are two varieties of Material Processes:
1. Creative
In the creative type, the Goal is brought about by the Process.
Example:
 Material Processes
2. Dispositive
In the dispositive type, we have doings and happenings.
Example:
 Mental Processes

• Mental process is a process which occurs in the internal world of the mind.
• Mental Processes: processes of perceptive, cognition (thinking), reactive (feeling).
• The participant roles in mental processes involve two participants: Senser and Phenomenon
- Senser: the one who does the mental action
- Phenomenon: The thing that is perceived, thought, appreciated
Example:
• We can have clauses with Senser and Phenomenon:
 Behavioral Processes

• Behavioral processes refer to physiological and psychological activities such as breathing,

coughing, dreaming, and crying, etc.
• Generally only one participant — the Behaver (often a human) is involved in these processes.
• However, they may also have two participants and the second participant is called range.
Example:
 Behavioral Processes

• We can have the enacted behaviour mentioned:

• Range specifies the range or scope of the Process, defining its

coordinates or domain.
• In Behaviour Processes, Range names the behaviour enacted.
 Verbal pocesses
Verbal processes are processes of saying, or more accurately, of symbolically signalling.
Very often these are realised by two distinct clauses: the projecting clause encodes a
signal source (sayer) and a signalling (verbal process) and the other (projected clauses)
realises what was said. As with mental processes which project, the projected and
projecting clauses are each analysed in their own right.
She said I don’t like brussel sprouts
Sayer Verbal Senser Mental:Affect Phenomenon

She explained that she didn’t like brussel sprouts

Sayer Verbal Senser Mental:Affect Phenomenon

The alarmed clock screamed ‘get up’

Sayer Verbal Material
There are three other Participants that may be incumbent upon Verbal Processes:

• Receiver: the one to whom the verbalisation is addressed

• Target: one acled upon verbally (insulted, complimented, etc)

• Range/Verbiage: a name of verbalisation it self

John told Jenny a rude joke
Sayer Verbal Receiver Verbiage

Keating slurred Howard

Sayer Verbal Target
Examples of Verbal Processes are listed below. Some are used only for reporting: He denied (that)
he had had anything to do with it and others for both reporting: He said that he had had nothing to do
with it and quoting: He said, ‘I had nothing to do with it’.
Reporting Quoting (and Reporting)
insinuate, imply, remind, say, tell, remark,
observe,
hypothesize, deny, continue, point out, report,
make out, claim announce, shout, cry, ask,
pretend, maintain demand, inquire, query,
interrupt, replay, explain,
protest, warn, insist
There is one further Participant role that needs to be discussed. This is Beneficiary.

The Beneficiary is the one to whom or for whom the Process is said to take place.

In Material Processes the Beneficiary is either the Recipient or the Client. Recipient is the one to whom goods
are given. The Client is the one for whom services are provided.
1. I sold the car to John
Actor Material Goal Recipient

I sold (to) John the car

Actor Material Recipient Goal
prepositional phrase with to or for is a Beneficiary or not, see if it could occur naturally
without the preposition, as in the second example in each of the above pairs.

In Verbal Processes the Beneficiary is Receiver, a Participant role we’ve already met.
The Receiver is the one who is being addressed. The Receiver is also sometimes called
the addressee.
You promised the doctor you ‘d quit smoking

Sayer Verbal Receiver Actor Material

Range
Range is the element that specifies the scope or domain of the Process.
The Range in Material Processes typically occurs in the middle clauses, those with Actor only, no Goal.
She dropped a curtsy
Actor Material Range

She Dropped an egg

Actor Material Goal

Another distinction is that Material Processes with Goal can ‘take’ resultative attributes, while
Material Processes with Range cannot
Kelly shot Fuller dead
Actor Material Goal Resultative Attribute

She dropped a curtsy dead

Actor Material Range
Also in Material Processes with Goals, the Goal can be changed into an appropriate pronoun and still make sense
in context:
Kelly shot Fuller dead. Kelly shot him dead.

This doesn’t work with Material Processes with Range:

He dropped a curtsy. He dropped it.

The ‘doing’ type Processes, their meanings and key Participants are summarised below.
Process Type Category Meaning Participants

Material doing, happening Actor, Goal

Behavioural behaving Behaver, Range

Mental sensing Senser, Phenomenon
Verbal saying, signalling Sayer, Target, Receiver