Abstracts - Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

SALVIO MARTÍN MENÉNDEZ, UNIVERSIDAD DE BUENOS AIRES, UNIVERSIDADNACIONAL DE MAR DEL PLATA, CONICETPROCESSES CLASSIFICATION: GRADUALITY, FEATURES AND AGENTIVITYI propose to discuss in this paper the traditional process classification proposed byHalliday in his grammar (Halliday y Mathiessen 2004) in order to reformulate it.Spanish is going to be the language we are going to give examples of. Threecharacteristics are taken to accomplish the reformulation proposed. The first one isthat all processes must be located within what we call the principle of graduality.This principle is basic in relation to the semantic nature of the process and isdescribed from two poles [+concrete], [-concrete]. The second one is that allprocesses must have assigned at least two features. These features, that arehierarchically organized, are taken from the three main classes of process describedin Halliday and Mathiessen 2004, as [+/-material][+/-mental][ +/-relation]. The thirdone is that all processes obey a principle of agentivity. It is defined by if the one thatcauses the semantic content of the verb is the same one that carries it out. Ourproposal will be tested in three different discursive series (Menéndez 1997) thatshow variability of registers (Halliday 1978) and genres (Bajtin 1944, Martin andRose 2003). Our conclusions aim to demonstrate that verb classification depends ona complementary hierarchal combination of grammatical features that are registerand generic motivated.ReferencesBajtín, M. 1944. Estética de la creación verbal. México, Siglo XXI, 2008.Halliday, M y Ch. Mathiessen. 2004. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London, Arnold.Martin, J. y D. Rose. 2003. Working with Discourse. London, Continuum.Menéndez, S. M. 1997. Hacia una teoría del contexto discursivo. Tesis doctoral. Facultad deFilosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. Inédita.PAPER SESSION 7F - ROOM 6 - THURSDAY, 28 JULYISFC38 Book of Abstracts Page 173 Lisbon, July 2011