Misrepresenting The Embodiment Of The Experiential Metafunction In The Verbal Group

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 172):

2.2.1 The three metafunctional contributions to the verbal group

Like a clause, a verbal group embodies all three metafunctions:

(i) experiential: a verbal group construes a process – an action, an activity, a happening, and so on. The verbal group provides the resources for construing a process as unfolding in time. Let’s consider a natural text example:

A: So when is this thing scheduled to produce results, Frank?

B: Oh, it’s been producing results for a long time.

Here the verbal group construes the process of unfolding in a series of three temporal relations. (1) It sets up a present time in relation to the now of speaking (has rather than had or will have), (2) it sets up a past time in relation to that present time (has been rather than is or is going to), and (3) it sets up a present time (the time of producing) in relation to that past time (been producing rather than had produced or been going to produce).

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, like a clause, a verbal group embodies all three metafunctions in the systems and structures of the verbal group. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 410) identify the systems as follows:

That is, the verbal group embodies the metafunctions in the systems of FINITENESS, ASPECT, DEICTICITY, VALUE, OUTER VALUE, TENSE, SECONDARY TENSE, POLARITY, VOICE, CONTRAST and ELLIPSIS, and in the structures that these systems specify. More specifically, as Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 411) explain:

The systems of the verbal group derive from different metafunctions:

(i) Textual: VOICE, CONTRAST, and ELLIPSIS;
(ii) Interpersonal: POLARITY, FINITENESS, and MODALITY;
(iii) Experiential: ASPECT and EVENT TYPE;
(iv) Logical: SECONDARY TENSE.

[2] To be clear, this is not how a verbal group embodies the experiential metafunction. Rather, this is semantics of a Process, an element at the level of semantics, as realised by the verbal group. See Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 213-7, 466-9). The confusion here is thus stratal.