CHAPTER 5: “Transitivity and verb processes”
A verb is transitive when the action indicates the subject or object that performs
(agisce) or undergoes (subisce) the action. Chapter 5 talks about the linguistic and
visual semiotic resources for representing what people do. This is the study of
transitivity, or verb processes. The words and images can shape the way that we see
agents, events, goals and setting. The representation of transitivity gives us
informations about the concept to understand if the sentence is active or passive. This
can promote discourses and ideologies that are not explicitated. This model
represents themes about language and power.
Transitivity is composed by two verbs: ones (quelli) that take the object: “Mary opened
the door” and verbs that don't take the object: “John slept”.
Transitivity plays a central role in "meaning making" in language; this means that the
choice of linguistic forms has significance, some of this can be ideological.
Three aspects:
•Participants are composed by “doers” (esecutori) and “done-tos” (riceventi).
Participants can be people, things or abstract concepts.
•Processes are represented by verbs and verbal groups.
•Circumstance these are adverbial groups or prepositional phrases that explain
where, when and how something has happened (si è verificato).
Example. Three soldier attacked a civilian yesterday
The actor element is the “three soldier” that do the process of attacking.
The goal is the “civilian” who has been attacked.
The circumstance is “yesterday” that puts the process in a temporal context.
Halliday distinguishes six process types: material, mental, behavioral, verbal,
relational and existential.
MATERIAL PROCESSES
Material processes describe processes of doing. Usually, these are concrete actions
that have a material result or consequence (“the police arrested the thief”: ladro), but
they can also represent abstract processes (“princes have fallen”: I prinicipi sono
caduti).
There are two participants:
•ACTOR: who does the action.
•GOAL: are the participants at whom the process is directed (direct object)
Some material processes have only the actor, as in “He walked away ”. However
material processes can also have processes that have no clear goal, as in “He
arrived”.
We also find material processes where the actor is “lost”, this happens in the passive
sentences and where the responsibility is obscured.
E.g. the civilians were killed during a bombing raid
Civilians GOAL
Killed ACTION
Bombing raid CIRCUMSTANCE
E.g. The Muslim community was attacked
Material process can also have beneficiaries, as in “he built the house for a customer”
the house is the GOAL and the customer is the BENEFICIARY.
Material process can be linked to “range”, as in “I am conducting research”; here the
verb is connected by the process but is not a goal.
