Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

A-Z 607
‘active’ actor, active the Council are selling the gazebo
‘passive’ goal active the gazebo won’t sell
‘active’ ‘passive’ actor goal, actor active passive the Council gazebo has won’t been sell sold by the Council
‘passive’ (goal) goal (actor) passive the gazebo has been sold
expressed are in parentheses (from Halliday, 1970, p. 152).
In addition to action clauses, English has two further types of clause corresponding to
two types of process recognized by English, namely mental processes and relations. The
roles inherent in mental process clauses, such as I like your hairstyle, are called
processer and phenomenon. Relational clauses are of two types, attributive, such as
Marguerite is a poet and Marguerite looks desperate, where Marguerite is being given
membership of a class, the class of poets and the class of desperate-looking people
respectively, and equative, such as Templecombe is the treasurer. Attributive clauses are
irreversible: we cannot say *A poet is Marguerite. The inherent role is attribute.
Equative clauses are reversible, and have the inherent role identifier.
The interpersonal function of language is manifest in the structure of the clause
through the system of mood, which defines the grammatical subject (as opposed to the
logical subject which is defined by the transitivity system). The options in the mood
system are declarative, interrogative and imperative, and the system is carried by the
finite element of the verb plus one nominal, which is the grammatical subject. The fact
that something is a grammatical subject contributes to the meaning of the clause through
the interpersonal function (ibid., p. 160):
The function of the ‘grammatical subject’ is thus a meaningful function in
the clause, since it defines the communication role adopted by the
speaker. It is present in clauses of all moods, but its significance can
perhaps be seen most clearly in the imperative, where the meaning is ‘I
request you to…’; here the speaker is requiring some action on the part of
the person addressed, but it is the latter who has the power to make this
meaning ‘come true’.
The textual function of language is manifest in the clause structure in the thematic
structure, that is, the organization of the clause as message (ibid., p. 161):
The English clause consists of a ‘theme’ and a ‘rheme’. The theme is
another component in the complex notion of subject, namely the
‘psychological subject’; it is as it were the peg on which the message is