Misrepresenting Targeted Verbal Clauses As Behavioural

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 106, 108, 108n):

One sub-type of verbal clause (sometimes regarded as behavioural, see below Table 4.9) requires an extra participant, the Target, the entity construed as the target of the verbal action, as in she praised/insulted/blamed/criticised her father, where her father is in this role. …

¹⁰ IFG3: 255 treats the verbal subcategory of behaviourals as a special class of verbal process. (It is only members of this class that may involve a Target participant.) Unlike other verbal clauses, they cannot project another clause, and a projection has to be added by means of a verb like say, as in Then the monk praised Yang Shan saying: ‘I have come over to China in order to worship Manjucri, and met unexpectedly with Minor Shakya’ (although there are natural examples such as ‘Nelson played magnificent football’, Meek praised.). The closest to a representation of the content of praising, blaming, etc. in English is an enhancing clause of reason, as in She praised him for having acted so quickly; in Japanese, such clauses can in fact project (see Teruya, 2007). However, like verbal clauses, they can be construed with a Receiver, as in She praised him to her boss for having acted so quickly.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, the question of whether targeted verbal processes (slander, insult, praise, flatter) are better reclassified as 'near verbal' behavioural processes (chatter, gossip, talk, speak) is a topological issue: a matter of degrees of relatedness. However, there are several criteria that can be used to clearly distinguish 'near verbal' behavioural processes from targeted verbal processes:

Firstly, the first participant of a 'near verbal' behavioural clause is construed as conscious (they chattered all day), whereas the first participant of a targeted verbal clause need only be a symbol source (the news story flattered him).

Secondly, the voice of a 'near verbal' behavioural clause is middle (they chattered all day), whereas the voice of a targeted verbal clause is effective, and so can be either operative (the news story flattered him) or receptive (he was flattered by the news story).

Thirdly, the unmarked present tense of a 'near verbal' behavioural clause is present-in-present (they are chattering in the garden), whereas the unmarked present tense of a targeted verbal clause is the simple present (that story flatters him).

Moreover, verbs that serve in targeted verbal clauses can also serve in assigning relational clauses, whereas verbs that serve in behavioural clauses cannot. That is, there is verbal assignment, but no behavioural assignment:

This demonstrates very clearly that reclassifying these verbal processes as behavioural is entirely unwarranted.

[2] This overstates the case. Although targeting verbal processes don't easily project (Halliday 1994: 141), even reporting cannot be entirely ruled out, as demonstrated by: