Among the three metafunctions of language in Halliday (1994)’s SFL, ideational metafuction reflects people’s experience of outer and inner world. People are capable of describing outside events and representing inside feelings with language. The meaning of ideational metafunction can be analyzed by the transitivity system.
Transitivity system is regarded as the pattern of experience. Halliday & Matthiessen (2004) maintained that the structure of the transitivity system is composed of three components: process, participant and circumstance. The “process” is expressed by a verbal group in a clause, referring to what is happening. The “participant” is encoded via nominal groups in a clause, signifying people and things included in the process.
The “circumstance” is usually presented by adverbial groups or prepositional groups, identifying the accompanying facts related to the process including time, space, etc (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013).
Figure 2. Six Process Types of Transitivity System (Halliday & Matthiessen, 2013, p.216)
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Halliday (2004) noted that “our most powerful impression of experience is that it consists of a flow of events, or ‘goings-on’. This flow of events is chunked into quanta of change by the grammar of the clause”. Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) suggested that “the quantum of change is modeled as a figure – a figure of happening, doing, sensing, saying, being or having”. The transitivity system is regarded by Halliday (1994) as a system developing the world of inner and outer experience into different types of processes. Material, Mental and Relational processes are the main types in transitivity system. The other three subsidiary ones involve Verbal, Existential and Behavioral processes. These six process types construe the Transitivity system (see Figure 2). The definitions and detailed examples of each process are presented below.
Material Process
Material process deals with clauses of “doing and happening” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004), which interprets the tangible and concrete events. Material clauses are entangled with the “Actor” who performs the action and brings about the changes on other participant called “Goal”. For example, in the sentence The lion caught the tourist, the lion is “Actor” and the tourist is “Goal”.
Mental Process
Mental process are process of sensing which concerned with “our experience of the world of our consciousness” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004). “Sensor” is the participant which represents the conscious beings that can sense – feel, think, want and perceive. “Phenomenon” is the other participant which is felt, perceived, wanted or thought. Mental process is subcategorized into Perception (sense, see, notice, etc.),
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Cognition (think, believe, suppose, etc.), Desideration (wish, want, desire, etc.) and Emotion (rejoice, fancy, love, etc.). For instance, in the sentence Mary liked the gift, Mary is “Sensor” and the gift is “Phenomenon”.
Relational Process
Relational process refers to clauses of “being or having” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004), which makes an association between two different entities and “serves to characterize and to identify”. There are three main types of relational process, including “Intensive”, “Possessive” and “Circumstantial”. Each of these comes in two distinct modes of being – “Attributive” and “Identifying”. Reversibility is one of important differences between the two modes. The “Identifying” one is reversible, which means “x” and “a” can be exchanged: Sarah is the leader/the leader is Sarah.
On the other hand, the “Attributive” one is not reversible: there is no form wise is Sarah which is agnate to Sarah is wise. In the “Attributive” mode, an entity has some class ascribed or attributed to it. The class is labeled as “Attribute”, and the entity to which it is ascribed is “Carrier”. In the “Identifying” mode, entity has an identity allotted to it. “Value” is the one used to identify another and “serves as identity”, while “Token” represents “what is being defined”
Verbal Process
Verbal process refers to “the process of saying” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004), which are utilized to convey “messages through language” (Thompson, 2004). Four elements involved in such process, including Sayer, Verbiage, Receiver, and Target.
“Sayer” is the vital participant who produces the utterances, like my watch in My watch says it’s half past ten. “Verbiage” refers to “what is said”; e.g. what in What
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did you say? “Receiver” is the one to whom the saying is directed and is accompanied by the prepositions to and of; e.g. your parents in did you repeat that to your parents?
“Target” is the participant “that is targeted by the process of saying”, which may be a person, an object or an abstraction; e.g. Krishan Kant in He accused Krishan Kant of conspiring with Bansi Lal.
Behavioral Process
Behavioral process depicts “physiological and psychological behaviors” and possesses the characteristics of Material and Mental processes (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004). The participant who behaves is called “Behaver”, which is
“typically a conscious being”. The most symbolic pattern is a clause comprises
“Behaver” and “Process”; e.g. No one’s listening, He’s always grumbling. Common variant is that the process precedes a participant labeled as “Phenomenon”; e.g. she sang a song.
Existential Process
Existential process presents “the existence of a phenomenon” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004), which shares the features of Relational and Material process. The word there serves to signify the feature of existence and plays the role of subject in the clause (Eggins, 2004). The “Existent” refers to “the entity or event that is being said to exist” (Halliday and Matthiensen, 2004); e.g. a storm in there was a storm.
The existential clause sometimes involves a circumstantial element (time or place), as on the wall in there was a picture on the wall.
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