Monday 26 January 2015

Degree Of Involvement: Circumstance And Subject

Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 173):
The difference in degree of involvement is also reflected in the extent to which an element is available for a critical rôle in the interpersonal metafunction. Prototypically, participants can be assigned the status of Subject, being made to carry the burden of the argument, whereas circumstances cannot. This distinction is however being obscured in Modern English, where although the prepositional phrase as a whole cannot function as Subject, the nominal group inside a preposition phrase often can; e.g. the grass shouldn’t be walked on.

Blogger Caveat:


behind the fridge
is
their favourite place
Subject
Finite
Complement
Token
Process
Value