Mental Clause Types With Act As Phenomenon

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 244):

Embedded clauses can function as the Phenomenon of a mental clause under certain conditions. Embedded clauses representing acts can occur as the Phenomenon of perception in perceptive clauses.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, unknown to the authors — and IFG (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 252) — embedded clauses representing acts can also occur as the Phenomenon of cognition in cognitive clauses:

She envisaged [[ants crawling up her leg]]

as the Phenomenon of desideration in desiderative clauses:

She wouldn't want [[ants crawling up her leg]]

and as the Phenomenon of emotion in emotive clauses:

She hated [[ants crawling up her leg]].

Problems With Transitivity Options And Examples

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 155):

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, consistent with their own views, but inconsistent with SFL Theory and reasoned argument, the authors here misrepresent an effective verbal clause they criticised IFG as an effective behavioural clause; see previous posts. Moreover, the authors have nowhere addressed the ergative roles of these clause types — e.g. "Behaver" as Agent — that they misconstrue as behavioural.

[2] To be clear, the example of an effective perceptive mental clause the kite caught her attention is metaphorical. A more congruent example would be she was assailed by the flashing lights and thumping dance music.

[3] To be clear, emotive mental clauses are labelled 'affective', and desiderative mental clauses are omitted altogether (as in IFG1&2, but not IFG3&4).

[4] To be clear, the examples of effective relational (identifying) clauses are only effective if they are encoding, and this is only if they have marked information focus, such that Token conflates with New. With unmarked information focus, Value conflates with New, and the clauses are all middle, not effective.

(a) effective identifying: encoding (marked information focus)

(b) middle identifying: decoding (unmarked information focus)

On the other hand, all assigned relational clauses, both identifying and attributive, are effective.

Omissions In The Major Options In Transitivity

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 153-4):

The major options in TRANSITIVITY as they are presented in IFG are summarised in the system network in Figure 4.7, with references to sections in IFG2 followed by references to IFG3 if different.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the problems with this network are largely minor, and are perhaps merely simplifications to accommodate the newcomer. For example, in terms of the system itself:

1. the network wiring cross-classifies middle vs effective with happening and doing and with 'like type' and 'please type', even though happening and 'like type' can only be middle, and doing and 'please type' can only be effective; 
2. the system of mental processes omits desiderative and labels emotive as affective, and 
3. the relational system omits the system of ASSIGNMENT, despite it being central to the discussion.

In terms of the participants listed according to ergative function:

1. the Range of material processes, Scope, is omitted;
2. the Medium and Range of behavioural processes, Behaver and Behaviour, are omitted;
3. the Agent of 'like type' mental processes, Inducer' is omitted;
4. the Target of verbal processes is omitted;
5. the Attributor and Assigner of relational clauses are omitted; and
6. the Token (Medium) and Value (Range) of decoding identifying clauses are omitted.

However, of these, the omissions of Scope, Behaver, Behaviour and Target are motivated, and so misleading, since the authors reinterpret material Scope and verbal Target as behavioural participants, and do not address the question of the ergative roles in the targeted verbal clauses that they reinterpret as behavioural.

Seriously Misleading Misrepresentations In Exercise 4: Causative Mental And Verbal Clauses

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 147-8):

Analyse the following clauses as verbal or mental, including Sayer, Receiver or Inducer, Senser roles as appropriate. For example: 

1. They tried to convince them that resistance was futile.

2. He’d have liked Data to take charge.

3. He satisfied them that victory was possible.

4. She failed to teach them that Tokens were Subject in the active.

5. She implored them to leave.

Blogger Comments:

[1] This exercise is seriously misleading because it misrepresents verbal clauses as causative mental clauses. (Consequently, there are no Inducer participants in the clauses to be analysed.) Cf. Halliday (1994: 145-6):

In SFL Theory, the difference between the two example clauses is that the first is an imperating verbal clause, whereas the second so-called "causative mental" clause is an indicating verbal clause. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 305):

The two example clauses are thus:

As can be seen, the imperating verbal clause projects a command, whereas the indicating verbal clause projects a statement realised in indicative mood.

In the exercise, the indicating verbal clauses that readers are misled to analyse as causative mental clauses are 1, 3 and 4:

[2] To be clear, of the remaining two clauses, 5 is the only example of an imperating verbal clause:

Clause 2, on the other hand, is neither an imperating verbal clause nor a "causative mental clause" (i.e. indicating verbal clause). Instead, it is only genuine mental clause, but not a causative, and with no Inducer. It is simply a desiderative mental clause projecting a proposal:

A Problem With Exercise 12 Discriminating Scope from Goal

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 141):

Pick out a Scope or a Goal in each of the following examples. See Section 3.4 (iv).

Blogger Comment:

To be clear, the clause demonstrating the Scope participant is metaphorical. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 237n) explain:

Such clauses are in fact mildly metaphorical variants of clauses where kick, punch, kiss, hug, etc. is a verb serving as the Process: he gave the dog a kick: he kicked the dog. This suggests that the nominalised verb is in fact a Scope rather than a Goal and that what might at first appear to be a Recipient is in fact construed as a Goal…

The authors' analysis is thus:

However, the problem here is the inconsistency between the Process (material) and the Scope: process (mental), due to the fact that the clause is a metaphorical variant of a mental clause:

which can be metaphorised as:

and resequenced, on the basis of 'give' transitivity, as:

Cf. He never gave a thought to the matter => He never gave the matter a thought

A Problem With Exercise 7: Practising Tests To Discriminate Behavioural From Mental Processes

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 139):

Could the process in question report what was thought? (If yes, mental.)

e.g. He heard the news: he heard that they’d left.                      yes

e.g. He meditated in his room: he meditated that they’d left.   no

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, this misrepresents an embedded fact that they'd left of a mental clause of perception ('hear') as a report projected by a mental clause of cognition ('thought'). Mental processes of perception do not project; see Halliday & Matthiesesen (1999: 138-9). The embedded fact clause serves as the Phenomenon of the ranking clause:

Problems With Exercise 3: Practising The Projection Test

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 131):

Find a clause related to the example, which reports or quotes, as in the models:

Blogger Comments:

There are three problems here.

[1] The exercise confusingly asks for a clause that reports or quotes (α), whereas what is actually required is a clause that is reported or quoted (β).

[2] The model in the exercise misleads by including a projected clause that is neither a report or a quote, but an embedded fact in a non-projecting clause of perception:

[3] The exercise potentially misleads by including a behavioural clause:

5. The king smiled to himself

despite the fact that behavioural processes cannot project. What is true is that such verbs are used to add a behavioural feature to a quoting verbal Process. Halliday (1994: 139):

Note, finally, that while ‘behavioural’ clauses do not ‘project’ indirect speech or thought, they often appear in fictional narrative introducing direct speech, as a means of attaching a behavioural feature to the verbal process of ‘saying’.

 That is, this exercise invites the reader to conclude, falsely, that behavioural processes project.

Predicated Theme As A Diagnostic Of Phrasal Verbs

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 126-7):

Often it will be obvious that the preposition must count as part of the process realisation. For example:

If in doubt, the best test is to check the ‘circumstance’ as the focus of theme predication.

??It was off the old bus they got.
?It was at the snail we were looking.
It wasn’t about the strike (that) they were worrying.
It was for a chat they called.

Where the prepositional phrase is feasible as a predicated Theme, as in the last two cases, it is likely to be functioning as a circumstance.

Blogger Comments:

[1] See the previous post.

[2] To be clear, The following predicated Theme is also feasible, perhaps more so:

It wasn't the the strike they were worrying about.

If this is the case, then worrying about can be reasonably construed as a phrasal verb serving as a mental Process, with the strike as Phenomenon.

Problems With Scope As A Behavioural Participant

 Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 125):

IFG3: 251 suggests that where the participant role re-expresses the process meaning as in he sang a song, she smiled her mysterious smile, the participant be termed the Behaviour to capture this fact. However, there are many behavioural clauses where this would not be an apposite term for the second participant. And since the Behaviour role is clearly very close to the role of Scope in such material clauses as they took a walk; they had a rest, it is simpler to extend the term Scope to all cases of a second participant in a behavioural clause. This would bring out the fact that such clauses treat mental and verbal processing too as material activity.

 

Blogger Comments:

[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. The only behavioural clauses where the second participant is not a behaviour, are those featuring the anomalous verb watch. As previously demonstrated, the authors' claim derives from confusing behavioural clauses with verbal and material clauses.

[2] To be clear, here the authors are simply adjusting the theory to accommodate their inability to understand it, and in doing so, creating unnecessary theoretical inconsistencies that risk reducing its explanatory power.

[3] To be clear, this is merely a pretext. Behavioural clauses already construe mental and near verbal processes along the lines of material processes. Adding a material participant to all ranged behavioural clauses is thus redundant (as well as theoretically inconsistent). 

Misrepresenting Verbal Processes As Mental

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 125):

Verbal or mental?

Note too that a small set of ‘verbal judgement’ verbs – see Section 3.7 (i) above – such as condone, criticise, excuse, applaud may also occur with an embedded fact clause: The press applauded the fact that no violence occurred; The press condoned the fact that some violence occurred. In these contexts, no Receiver is possible and such verbs are functioning as mental processes of emotion.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the crucial distinction between mental and verbal clauses is that mental clauses construe the Medium participant as a conscious thing, whereas a verbal clause construes it as a symbol source, conscious or otherwise. If these clauses were to be interpreted as 'mental: emotion', they would misconstrue non-conscious things, such as newspaper headlines, as experiencing emotions, as exemplified by:

Cf. genuine 'mental: emotion' clauses, which, unlike the above, are bi-directional:

Jim likes the fact that he was paid vs the fact that he was paid pleased Jim

Clearly, the purported impossibility of a Receiver is insufficient reason to classify such clauses as mental, and the clauses are verbal in every other respect:

Misrepresenting Verbal Clauses

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 118):

But on the one hand, a mental projection is an idea, whereas a verbal one is a locution, and on the other hand, while all verbal clauses can project, only certain mental ones can (namely, cognitive ones and certain affective ones).

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, 'certain affective' here means 'desiderative', and though all verbal clauses can quote, those that include a Target do not easily report (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 307).

Misrepresenting Mental Process Subtypes

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 100):

PROCESS TYPE is the resource for sorting out our experience of all kinds of events into a small number of types. These differ with respect to both the Process itself and the participants involved in it – the number and kind of participants. The system discriminates six different types of process in English. The three major ones are material, mental and relational, each with a small set of subtypes. In addition, there are three further process types, the behavioural, verbal and existential. These six kinds of clauses are illustrated in Table 4.2

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, Table 4.2 misnames mental processes of 'emotion' as mental processes of 'affection', and omits mental processes of desideration altogether, despite the fact that, from a semantic perspective, desideration is central, as Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 143-4) explain:

Emotion seems to be closer to quality-ascription than to a prototypical process; it arises from, but does not create, projections. In contrast, perception is essentially closer to behavioural processes. 

Cognition and desideration are different from both in that they can project (i.e., bring the content of consciousness into existence), can stand for modalities, and are not in general like either behaviour or ascription; they may be interpreted as the most central classes of sensing.

Mental Processes Of "Affection"

Martin, Matthiessen & Painter (2010: 68, 69):

As far as inclination and obligation is concerned, the subjectivity of a speaker's assessment can be made explicit through first person, present tense mental processes of affection (e.g. I want, I need, I'd like, I'd hate). …

 

Blogger Comments:

Importantly, these are mental processes of desideration, which can project proposals, not mental processes of emotion, which cannot. The term 'affection' obscures this important distinction, and aligns more with emotion than desideration.

The notion of mental processes of affection has an interesting history. Matthiessen (1995: 263) claims that Halliday (1985: 267) uses the term to include both desiderative and mental processes:

cf. for example, IFG p. 267 — note that the IFG type AFFECTIVE groups together DESIDERATIVE and EMOTIVE

but the wording of Halliday (1985: 267) provides no evidence for this interpretation:

In (b), however, the clause that Cæsar was dead, although it is a projection, it is not projected by Mark Antony regretted, which is a clause of affection not of cognition.

Since the clause in question is a clause of emotion, Halliday's (1985, 1994) term 'affection' simply stands for the later term 'emotion' — an interpretation which Matthiessen himself supports in his editions of IFG (2004, 2014), by substituting the term 'emotion' for 'affection'; e.g. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004: 476):

In (b), however, the clause that Caesar was dead, although it is a projection, is not projected by Mark Antony regretted, which is a clause of emotion not of cognition.