Misrepresenting A Verbal Quoting Complex As A Behavioural Clause

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 124-5):

One final borderline case is when a sound is ‘quoted’, usually with go realising the process. For example:

the tyres went ‘screech!’

the little engine went ‘wheeee!’

the car went ‘bang!’

It is not possible to have a Receiver in these clauses since the sound is simply a sound and not a piece of language being addressed to anyone. They are therefore moving towards the material end of a cline and are best treated as behavioural.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, these are clause complexes, not clauses; see [2].

[2] To be clear, in SFL Theory, each of these is a material happening realised metaphorically as a clause complex: a verbal clause projecting a quoted minor clause. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 510-1):

In fact, paratactic projection allows for a greater range: we can quote not only propositions and proposals but also minor speech functions such as greetings and exclamations…

In this case, the authors have misunderstood a material-verbal correspondence in a grammatical metaphor as the overlap of material and verbal features in a behavioural clause.

Again, proposing that behavioural processes can project unnecessarily complicates the theory without adding any explanatory power.