AQUIESCENCIA

An additional function for relational processes is identifying, as in (29). The key roles here are Identified and Identifier.

(29) Quint is his name.

Here the participants are respectively Quint (Identifier) and his name (Identified). It is clear from the context that these are the functions. The speaker could have reversed the sequence without changing the functions.

(29a) His name is Quint.

Example (29a) would be the more usual (‘unmarked’) order: Identified, Identifier respectively.

Since Quint can scarcely be anything but a personal name in English, the structure is fairly unambiguous with regard to the participant functions.

However, with a hypothetical, decontextualized sentence such as Carpenter is his name, we could have either a parallel structure to the real one about Quint or a reversed structure with Carpenter as the Identified and his name as Identifier (as in Carpenter is his name not his profession). However, in spo-ken English the intonation, as well as the context, offers clues to which par-ticipant function is intended and so the ambiguity is usually removed.

6.6 Verbal process

Speaking is certainly a kind of action, and to some extent it would not be unreasonable to treat it as material process. On the other hand, it has some features of mental process, especially if we believe that verbalization of thoughts is a kind of inner speech. A case can be made for postulating a new category of process: verbal process (labelled as Process: verbal.) Consider (30).

(30) I said: ‘If there isn’t, I’ll have to take him down to the City Hall.’

In this example, we have the person who produces the utterance, to whom we give the self-explanatory title of Sayer; the verbal process itself, realized here as said; and the representation of the words actually spoken, which in this context we label Quoted. The function Quoted is realized as direct speech.

The wording is identical to that initially uttered by the Sayer, or at least, it is presented as though it were identical.

Somewhat different from this is the verbal process where the words of the Sayer are transposed in line with the perspective of the speaker or writer who is reporting the speech. This involves reported (i.e. indirect) speech, as in (31).

(31) I said I wanted to be dropped off somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Great Western Hotel.

Here I is Sayer and I wanted to be dropped off somewhere in the neighbour-hood of the Great Western Hotel is Reported. (The reported element itself contains one clause or more and so it could in turn be analyzed in terms of process and participant, but we will not go into that here. Strictly speaking, since Quoted and Reported are separate clauses from the clause containing Sayer and Process, they are not participants in that clause.)

There are various ordering possibilities with this type of process, particu-larly with the direct speech form. The most neutral (‘unmarked’) ordering is

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Sayer–Process–Quoted, but we can have Sayer following Quoted, as in (32), or even interrupting Quoted, as in (33).

(32) ‘That’s nice,’ the grey-moustached sleuth on my left said.

(33) ‘I don’t think I meant to kill him,’ he repeated, ‘though I took the gun with me.’

In some texts, we find the sequence Quoted–Process–Sayer as in (34).

(34) ‘Must be another march,’ grumbled the taxi-driver.

In modern English, with the sequence Quoted–Process–Sayer, Sayer must be a full nominal group with a noun as Head (often a proper noun) and not a pro-noun. Only in more old-fashioned or whimsical texts will you find Sayer real-ized as a pronoun in this sequence, as in (35), from an eighteenth-century novel, Tom Jones.

(35) ‘And a good riddance, too,’ answered he.

In addition to the Sayer and the Quoted or Reported, there is a third partici-pant in some of these examples: the person to whom the verbalization is addressed. In material process terms, this would be the Beneficiary, but since we have set up a separate system for verbal process, we call this participant the Receiver. An example of this is her in (36).

(36) I asked her if she had heard him.

The typical verb for verbal processes is say, but there are many others.

Probably the most important are ask and tell, for, although say can be used with all types of Quoted (statements, questions, orders), we need to distin-guish among these when the speech is Reported. Thus, with (37), the author might easily have substituted said for asked.

(37) ‘Where did the shots come from?’ the chief asked.

However, in reported questions (indirect speech) such as (36), we cannot use the reporting verb say. Direct speech equivalents of (36) include (36a) and (36b).

(36a) ‘Did you hear him?’ I asked (her).

(36b) ‘Did you hear him?’ I said (to her).

Example (36c) is not a valid option, however.

(36c) *I said to her if she had heard him.

In fact, there is an additional area of meaning open to the writer/speaker who produces a verbal process clause, particularly one involving Quoted; this is in the choice of the lexical verb selected to encode the verbal process. In con-tradistinction to the neutral say, a large number of verbs can be exploited, each carrying some extra element of meaning.

Verbal process 123

Sometimes this meaning can relate to the speech act realized. Just as we can have ask to indicate a question or tell to indicate a command, so we can use such verbs as urge, explain, remind, challenge, beg, promise, grumble, agree, report to convey other subtleties of what speech act theorists call illo-cutionary force. All these verbs are exploited in Quoting structures in the source novel.

Incidentally, as well as expressing a question (eliciting information), with Reported (but not normally with Quoted), ask can also serve to realize a request for goods or activity. In such cases the Reported often takes the infini-tive form; see (38) (italics added).

(38) I went to the phone and asked the girl to send the house copper up.

In Text 6A, we find (39).

(39) ‘See you later,’ the gambler whispered.

This typifies another kind of meaning that can be conveyed by the choice of lexical verb, a meaning connected with the nature of the actual delivery of the speech: such things as the tone, quality or volume of voice. Other examples in the same text fragment are sneer and mutter in (40) and (41).

(40) ‘Fifty of us to stand off that crummy force!’ he sneered.

(41) [. . .] muttering nervously: ‘Hurry it up, boys [. . .]’

From many other examples in the same novel, we might mention: lisped, growled, snarled, barked, bawled, babbled on, gasped. Sometimes this aspect of the meaning overlaps with the illocutionary force already mentioned. For example, whereas whisper (in this text, at least) comments only on the voice quality, the choice of the word sneer tells us something of the Sayer’s inten-tion as well as of the manner of his delivery. The choice of babble, on the other hand, does not indicate illocutionary force, but rather, as well as com-menting on the manner of delivery, conveys something of the narrator’s judgement on the quality of what was being projected.

Another way of adding such extra information is by an Adjunct, as in the example muttering nervously, where the writer conveys more than a plain use of saying could achieve not only by choosing a non-neutral verb, muttering, but also by adding a circumstantial Adjunct nervously. Adjuncts usually (not always) conflate with the function Circumstance, which is discussed below.

Finally, in this section on verbal process, we will mention two other poten-tial participants: Verbiage and Target. The term Verbiage is used in this con-text to label items like the truth in (42):

(42) I told her the truth.

Here the expression the truth represents what the Sayer said but instead of representing it as a quotation of the actual words used (Quoted) or a report of

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the proposition expressed in those words (Reported), it rather refers to what is said by classifying it in terms of its character as an expression. In fact, just as Sayer is a specialized form of Actor, so Verbiage in verbal process is similar to Scope in material process and Phenomenon in mental process. Hence, it is a further example of the broader category of Range. This similarity can be readily seen in such expressions as ask a question, state your case, talk my language, speak English, tell (someone) the facts.

Verbiage can also be a clause that is not a projection of speech or thought, as in (43) (italics added).

(43) He told me what I wanted to know.

Target is a fairly peripheral participant and does not occur with direct or indi-rect speech, except incidentally. It is the person or thing which is ‘targeted by the process’ (IFG Chapter 5), as with party leadership in (44).

(44) Former party officials criticized party leadership.

Lexical verbs which accept a Target include: describe, explain, praise, flatter, blame, condemn, castigate.

6.7 Other processes

Halliday classes the processes Material, Mental and Relational as major processes and the others as minor. In addition to verbal process, already dis-cussed, the minor processes include existential process and behavioural process.

Existential process (Process: existential) has only one participant, the Existent. This type of process has two main forms of grammatical realization:

(i) with a copular verb and an empty there as Subject: (45) and (46).

(45) There were ten of us in the party.

(46) There were fifty of you.

(ii) with a copular verb, the Existent as Subject and usually a circumstantial Adjunct: (45a).

(45a) Ten of us were in the party.

The latter looks very similar to a relational process, and indeed the same wording in a different context could be relational. For example, in describing a group of twenty people, half of whom were members of the Socialist Party, one might say Ten of us were in the party where Ten of us would function as Carrier and in the party as Attribute (compare Ten of us were party members;

or Ten of us were Socialists).

When we have only the Existent without any explicit circumstance, the semantically empty Subject there is almost obligatory. This is not a Other process 125

participant since it is simply a sort of place-holder or syntactic marker. An exception is the unusual type of structure typified by the second clause in the well-known proposition of the French philosopher, Descartes (mentioned earlier): I think; therefore I am. Similarly, Ghosts do not exist is a negative existential process: Ghosts (Existent) do not exist (Process: existential). As with most other grammatical phenomena, negation does not affect the participant function label.

As far as clear definition and discrete classification is concerned, the bot-tom of the barrel is behavioural process (Process: behavioural). This is the grey area between material and mental processes. As with existential process only one participant is normally required, but this one is labelled Behaver.

Example (47) could be a candidate for the label Process: behavioural, but it could equally be argued that it is a material process.

(47) [. . .] the car slid away.

A more straightforward example of behavioural process (though not a finite clause) is (48).

(48) [. . .] its police department licence plate vanishing around a corner.

Rarely, a further participant occurs, namely Behaviour as with salty tears in (49).

(49) I could cry salty tears.

Other examples are a sigh in breathe a sigh, blood in sweat blood, and sweet dreams in dream sweet dreams. Like Scope in material process and Verbiage in verbal process, Behaviour is a subcategory of Range. A number of process-es that we analyzed as material earlier in this chapter border on behavioural and might well be analyzed as such. For example: sing a song, hum a tune, rest/take a rest, swim/have a swim. On this analysis, a song, a tune, a rest, a swim would realize the function Behaviour.

6.8 Grammatical metaphor