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IDEATIONAL MEANINGS FIELD
The clause as representation Part 1: Experiential Meaning We are already in this area of functional grammar, which is field: the metafunction that is responsible for representing the world in terms of our experience, what is going on and, specifically, so far we have seen how this experience is represented in noun groups through pre- and postmodification. Today we are going to move a step further to see how this representation of experience can be expressed in clauses, so the experiential structure of clauses. Experiential [] → clauses This experiential structure of clauses has a specific name in functional grammar: system. Functional grammar is based on systems, the first system of functional grammar we are going to see is: transitivity, which is a system whose purpose is to describe and analyse the clause as representation (of our experience and of the world in clauses). To sum up: transitivity = representation of the world in clauses. [ Experiential meaning isn’t really a synonym of ideational, it is more of a part of its whole.] So ideational meanings (the meanings that correspond to representation, i.e. what’s going on, fiel) are the sum, the union of two kinds of meaning, which are respectively called ‘ experiential meaning ’ (the ones we have seen with noun groups, the ones we are seeing now and will see with clauses) and ‘ logical meanings ’. Ideational meanings = experiential (transitivity) + logical (dependency + logical-semantic relations among clauses *)
- this is going to be the topic of our next lesson, now we will stick to “transitivity” TRANSITIVITY (= ideational experiential meaning) Let’s start with a consideration of the word ‘transitivity’ or ‘transitive’, we have probably already met this term in our previous studies. ‘Transitive’ is a notion widely used in structural grammar (where the priority is structure), but it’s not the same for functional grammar (the priority here is meaning). What are the consequences of this different understanding of the notion of ‘transitive’? The key difference is that:
- for structural grammar → ‘transitive’ is a category of the verb, so in structural grammar you don’t really analyse the clause or the whole sentence, you only analyse the verb and you ask whether a verb is transitive or not. The answer to this question depends whether a verb supports a direct object or it takes a indirect complement after it So, ‘transitive’ in structural grammar means: the capacity of a verb to support one (if there’s more than one object, in structural grammar, the verb is called ditransitive [= a verb that can have two direct objects]) direct object. For structural grammar the issue is very simple: is there something between the verb and the complement? NO → then this is a transitive verb: YES → so it’s not transitive. In structural grammar, transitivity is only a matter of structure [it’s not unimportant, In Italian the transitivity of a verb is useful and important for the choice of the auxiliary that will be used in the proximal past, for example: I ate = ho mangiato - I went = sono andato , because the verb ‘to eat’ is transitive and ‘to go’ is intransitive.].
- for functional grammar → the issue is that transitivity is not just a category of the verb. Transitivity is a category of the whole clause and, as a consequence of this, in functional grammar you don't ask ‘ Is this clause transitive or intransitive? ’ (as you would do with verbs in structural grammar), but you ask ‘ what is the structure of the transitivity in this clause? ’ because all clauses have transitivity, each close in functional grammar has a transitive structure to be analysed in a certain way we will see now.
Let’s have a look at some examples from the translation of “The Little Prince”, chapter 21: The purpose is to see what the pink, orange and green verbs have in common:
- pink → it’s the same verb, the verb ‘to be’. We will see the verb ‘to be’ and the verb ‘to have’, these two verbs together form a special category in the experiential structure of the clause which is called relational because they share the common aim of describing the abstract relation, which can be a relational being (as in these two cases) or a relational having (having a quality or also having some kind of possession).
- orange → ‘said’ (to say) and ‘responded’ (to respond) have in common the meaning, from the point of view of meaning they can be regrouped in the same category to express the action that requires your voice to be done/ ability of speaking
- green → the verbs ‘to appear’ and ‘to turn around’ seem to have nothing in common because they are very far from each other in meaning. This is what typically happens to material clauses, which express practical actions. They have a wide range of verbs that express the material processes. Material processes, in clauses that represent practical actions, are the most frequent in English (but we suppose that this situation is not very much different from other languages) Continuation of Chapter 21 of “The Little Prince”: [to tamper with something = to modify something in a way that affects it] The action here is mainly represented by verbs, judging from the number of verbs in this passage. The action is mainly expressed by verbs, so here we come to what transitivity in functional grammar has in common with transitivity in structural grammar which is the centrality of the verb. It is the verb that takes the lion’s share of the meaning that is being made. The center of transitivity is the verb both in functional and structural grammar. However, the purpose of the analysis is different:
- in structural grammar the purpose is only to see if there’s a direct transition between the subject and the object;
- in functional grammar it is more complex because it is a matter of looking at the meaning of the verb to see what process it represents ↪the colour coding goes in this direction, to group together different verbs that perform the same kind of process. The processes in functional grammar are broken down in a system that is not hierarchical, but because it is a system (the system of transitivity) it follows a kind of network kind of structure and
So it’s not as if there was no form-function correlation, but in processes it doesn’t make sense to take a notebook and begin to record verbs, according to them being material, behavioural, verbal, mental, relational, for existential maybe, I’ll show you when we get there; even if you take the verb “to make”, out of context, it’s material, what else can “to make” be? It depends, in certain usages, you can have a situation that makes it more blurred, let’s take for example to make up: It can be a material process, just think about most women, in the morning routine, they use makeup to apply to their faces, so that is a material action, you take a substance (foundation, eyes shadow) and you put it on your face, that’s material. Is “to make” always material? No, when is it that “to make up” is not material? To invent something, make it up? Yes, but you invented but you also built it, to make up a story; to make up a story, what does it mean? It’s not “to invent”, in English to invent is like when you are an inventor and you invent “the electric lamp”; it’s similar to “deceiving” people, a fake story/ to come up with something. “To make a story”, depending on the context, can actually construe a “mental process” or a verbal process, depending on whether you are talking when you make up the story, so you use your voice to perform the process, or it’s just something that occurs in you mind, which in that case is a mental process. “To make out with someone” to flirt with someone… “To make up your mind”: to decide, it’s mental. That’s why it doesn’t make sense to find form-function correlation, it depends on the context. “To make up” in the sense of ending an argument, it depends, if you use your voice, it can be verbal, it can be material, the boundaries are not clear, they are not as clear-cut as to allow you to write down a taxonomy of verbs and say, “this verb corresponds to this process”, you have to look at the context all the time. There is no, or very little, form-function correlation and can’t say that “to think” is a mental process even if, “to think” is so clear that I can’t think of another usage, so in the case of “to think” there’s a form-function correlation, because this verb can only be mental, but it is incorrect to say: Verb x is process y The correct way of putting it in functional grammar is: Verb X construes process Y (in this context), because the main point is not drawing a taxonomy, the point is understanding how meaning is built. For some terminological reason functional grammar doesn’t say “build”, it builds a process, and this is the whole point of transitivity analysis. It’s time we go back to the “hub and spoke”: mental processes include verbs that represent the use of the five senses, the first that occurs to you when you think of mental activity is thinking, pondering, considering and so on… Sometimes we tend to, especially in non-grammatical context, so in real life context, think of feeling as something you do with your heart, as opposed to something that you do with head, this is the result of a “Cartesian View” of the philosophy, philosophy is very influential in western thought. Idea that you have “head that reasons, and the heart that errs”, it isn’t rational, we have this dichotomy: this view in western thought deriving from Descartes and so we have this division. In functional grammar you don’t have this, I don’t know if I have the opportunity to tell you that despite being invented by an Anglo-Saxon so Michael Holiday, a brit who spent most of his life in
Australia, functional grammar was originally developed for Chinese, so for a language that is not western and doesn’t have this kind of assumptions on your head and heart. Most functional grammar is theorized about English, but its origin is rooted in Chinese mandarin; so basically, there’s no head heart distinction, the world of your emotions is viewed under the same heading as your mental activity, so the world of consciousness also includes the world of emotions (feeling, loving, hating…). So, to streamline everything and try and see what we have under the label of mental processes we can summarize in this way: mental processes crucially include cognition because if you think of mental, something you do with your mind, you think, so cognitive activity. In functional grammar processes that express emotions are also mental: cognition, emotion, we’ve also seen perception, “to sense” means to perceive, so we have the use of the five senses, when we have a verb that represents the five senses it is mental, and finally desideration. These areas of meaning: cognitive, emotive, perceptive and wanting (desiderative), they are all considered mental, done with your “inner life”, things that occur in your personal life. Just to be more precise, you don’t have to learn these terms: cognitive, perceptive…the identification of mental processes on the other hand is required. I’ll just give you a couple examples, but you don’t have to learn them: cognition (think, ponder, reason, consider, understand, believe, believe has a slightly different phraseology from think/ penso e credo in Italian) where your mind is very clearly involved. With your heart you can: love, hate, suffer, rejoice, loathe, but BE CAREFUL, you cannot cry with your heart!!!!! You cry with your eyes, so let’s keep it aside, we’ll see this in a minute, it’s not properly mental. Perception (sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing): all actions related to the use of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell go under the heading of perception: to see. Be careful with “TO WATCH”, “to see” is clearly perceptive you can even see something involuntarily (for example while walking down the road and seeing an accident, there’s a big difference if you stop there and watch it, not very ethical, but watch even if you do it with your eyes is a mental process because you must do it intentionally and is not specifically related to your senses but to the intention of “staying there” and looking at something). Think about “watching a movie”, you cannot say “to see a movie”, it’s all a matter of intentionality behind to “watch” which makes it a material process and to see which prioritizes your capacity to use you sense of sight, if your sense of sight prevails, if the intentionality prevails, we have either a material or another kind of mental process. “To listen to” can be intentional, if it is intentional the same principle of watching and seeing holds, see how important it is not to rely on form-function correlation, because to listen to something could well be material if you were doing it on purpose. “To touch”, is it always mental? You can say “to feel a surface”, you can say it because it implies to feel the texture of a surface, for example if I touch the desk to feel the texture, and you purpose is to use your sense of touch to feel this texture, then it is mental, but if you touch something for some other reason, in other context,it could well be material, it ALWAYS DEPENDS ON THE CONTEXT. “To smell” is perceptive, but think of some idiomatic usages of the verb “to smell”: the idiomatic phrase “to smell a rat”, you are not concretely smelling an animal, what does it mean? It means “to find a traitor”, it means that you feel that something isn’t right: example situation, people calling you on the phone to sell you things, they are all scams, so sometimes when some marketing agencies call you, you can say “I can smell a rat”, something just isn’t right. This, of course, is not a perception because it is used figuratively, in an idiomatic expression, otherwise to smell flowers, to smell a perfume, all that is perceptive.
That’s why it doesn’t make sense to find form-function correlation, it depends on the context. “To make up” in the sense of ending an argument, it depends, if you use your voice, it can be verbal, it can be material, the boundaries are not clear, they are not as clear-cut as to allow you to write down a taxonomy of verbs and say, “this verb corresponds to this process”, you have to look at the context all the time. There is no, or very little, form-function correlation and can’t say that “to think” is a mental process even if, “to think” is so clear that I can’t think of another usage, so in the case of “to think” there’s a form-function correlation, because this verb can only be mental, but it is incorrect to say: Verb x is process y The correct way of putting it in functional grammar is: Verb X construes process Y (in this context), because the main point is not drawing a taxonomy, the point is understanding how meaning is built. For some terminological reason functional grammar doesn’t say “build”, it builds a process, and this is the whole point of transitivity analysis. It’s time we go back to the “hub and spoke”: mental processes include verbs that represent the use of the five senses, the first that occurs to you when you think of mental activity is thinking, pondering, considering and so on… Sometimes we tend to, especially in non-grammatical context, so in real life context, think of feeling as something you do with your heart, as opposed to something that you do with head, this is the result of a “Cartesian View” of the philosophy, philosophy is very influential in western thought. Idea that you have “head that reasons, and the heart that errs”, it isn’t rational, we have this dichotomy: this view in western thought deriving from Descartes and so we have this division. In functional grammar you don’t have this, I don’t know if I have the opportunity to tell you that despite being invented by an Anglo-Saxon so Michael Holiday, a brit who spent most of his life in Australia, functional grammar was originally developed for Chinese, so for a language that is not western and doesn’t have this kind of assumptions on your head and heart. Most functional grammar is theorized about English, but its origin is rooted in Chinese mandarin; so basically, there’s no head heart distinction, the world of your emotions is viewed under the same heading as your mental activity, so the world of consciousness also includes the world of emotions (feeling, loving, hating…). So, to streamline everything and try and see what we have under the label of mental processes we can summarize in this way: mental processes crucially include cognition because if you think of mental, something you do with your mind, you think, so cognitive activity. In functional grammar processes that express emotions are also mental: cognition, emotion, we’ve also seen perception, “to sense” means to perceive, so we have the use of the five senses, when we have a verb that represents the five senses it is mental, and finally desideration. These areas of meaning: cognitive, emotive, perceptive and wanting (desiderative), they are all considered mental, done with your “inner life”, things that occur in your personal life. Just to be more precise, you don’t have to learn these terms: cognitive, perceptive…the identification of mental processes on the other hand is required. I’ll just give you a couple examples, but you don’t have to learn them: cognition (think, ponder, reason, consider, understand, believe, believe has a slightly different phraseology from think/ penso e credo in Italian) where your mind is very clearly involved. With your heart you can: love, hate, suffer, rejoice, loathe, but BE CAREFUL, you cannot cry with your heart!!!!! You cry with your eyes, so let’s keep it aside, we’ll see this in a minute, it’s not properly mental.
Perception (sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing): all actions related to the use of sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell go under the heading of perception: to see. Be careful with “TO WATCH”, “to see” is clearly perceptive you can even see something involuntarily (for example while walking down the road and seeing an accident, there’s a big difference if you stop there and watch it, not very ethical, but watch even if you do it with your eyes is a mental process because you must do it intentionally and is not specifically related to your senses but to the intention of “staying there” and looking at something). Think about “watching a movie”, you cannot say “to see a movie”, it’s all a matter of intentionality behind to “watch” which makes it a material process and to see which prioritizes your capacity to use you sense of sight, if your sense of sight prevails, if the intentionality prevails, we have either a material or another kind of mental process. “To listen to” can be intentional, if it is intentional the same principle of watching and seeing holds, see how important it is not to rely on form-function correlation, because to listen to something could well be material if you were doing it on purpose. “To touch”, is it always mental? You can say “to feel a surface”, you can say it because it implies to feel the texture of a surface, for example if I touch the desk to feel the texture, and you purpose is to use your sense of touch to feel this texture, then it is mental, but if you touch something for some other reason, in other context,it could well be material, it ALWAYS DEPENDS ON THE CONTEXT. “To smell” is perceptive, but think of some idiomatic usages of the verb “to smell”: the idiomatic phrase “to smell a rat”, you are not concretely smelling an animal, what does it mean? It means “to find a traitor”, it means that you feel that something isn’t right: example situation, people calling you on the phone to sell you things, they are all scams, so sometimes when some marketing agencies call you, you can say “I can smell a rat”, something just isn’t right. This, of course, is not a perception because it is used figuratively, in an idiomatic expression, otherwise to smell flowers, to smell a perfume, all that is perceptive. Let’s see: to cry/ to laugh/ to smile, they all seem to be mental process, because we perform these actions when you have a certain feeling, this is very much part of our common human experiences, even if there are some cultural differences in the way you smile, when you smile, in how appropriate it is to cry in public, all humans do it. It’s in our behaviour as humans, for example, in the excerpt of the little prince: “the fox sighed”, the fox is humanised, it’s very clear that this means that the fox was expressing a feeling of disappointment, why isn’t it mental? Because we don't do it with our feelings, it’s a physiological activity, we do it with our body, our lungs. If you have a dog, sometimes they behave in a certain way and it looks as if they were sighing, they sneeze, but they do it in a different way from humans, behavioural processes are verbs that characterize human behaviour. For example: dozing, because you’re so tired that you can’t keep your eyes open (this is part of human experience) They aren’t very frequent actually, but it’s important to know how to distinguish them from mental process (you can even do it in a structural way, although as I said it’s never recommended to risen structurally when you do functional grammar, because the all point of functional grammar is always MEANING*). *but they typically have just one participant, so typically Behavioral Processes are like mental, don’t have what you would call a direct object. Behavioral Processes: actions that describe a common human behavior, have just one participant called Behaver à the one that has that behaver, and there are any other participants. Unless you have, what is known has an internal direct object (which in functional grammar takes the name of Range: to cry your eyes out)
