A cheerful smile came on his face” or “ He was putting on a cheerful smile”

The main functional framework to describe collected behavioral clauses is the ideational metafunction within the system of Transitivity developed by Halliday 1994 and Halliday & Matthies

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

Except where reference is made in the text of the dissertation, this dissertation contains no material published elsewhere or extracted in whole or in part from a dissertation by which I have qualified for or been awarded another degree or diploma No other person's work has been used without due acknowledgements in the dissertation

This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma in any other tertiary institution

Da Nang, December 2018

ABSTRACT

This study focuses on a functional analysis of behavioral clauses and interpreting linguistic features of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses Qualitative and contrastive methods were adopted in this study because they best suited the requirements to the description of behavioral clauses and the comparisons

of them in English and Vietnamese Wordsmith 5.0 and Navigation pane were exploited to select 678 English Vietnamese behavioral clauses and 602 Vietnamese behavioral clauses from novels and short stories The main functional framework to describe collected behavioral clauses is the ideational metafunction within the system of Transitivity developed by Halliday (1994) and Halliday & Matthiessen (2000, 2004, 2014) The discussion is devoted to the interpretation of four subtypes

of behavioral domains namely semiotic, social, biological and physical behavior together with the associated patterns and core elements of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses at lexicogrammar and ideational metafunction level Furthermore, an attempt has been made to offer a contrastive analysis of them and explore the communication effects of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses and ideational metaphors in given contexts The contrastive analysis reveals that both English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses have some similar features of domains, lexicogrammar and ideational metafunction However, major distinctions between English – a synthetic language and Vietnamese – an analytic language bring about some differences in realization of these behavioral domains and behavioral clauses The in-depth analysis of behavioral clauses shows that phrasal verbs result in some ambiguous cases to identify and label Range while Vietnamese behavioral clauses do not include firmly bonded phrasal verbs to make meaning Finally, this study also discusses the notions and the three kinds of semantic shifts

of ideational metaphor in English and Vietnamese as well as compares these shifts

in the two languages Finally, the contributions of the study also reflect the ongoing

discussion on the clause analysis between English and Vietnamese

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ABSTRACT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

ABBREVIATION viii

LIST OF TABLES ix

LIST OF FIGURES xi

CHAPTER ONE 1

INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 RATIONALE 1

1.2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY 2

1.2.1 Aims and objectives of the study 2

1.2.2 Scope of the study 3

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 4

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 4

1.5 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY 4

CHAPTER TWO 7

LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 7

2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 12

2.2.1 Functional Grammar 12

2.2.2 Ideational metafunction 15

2.2.3 Types of processes and their associated participants 19

2.2.3.1 Material processes 19

2.2.3.2 Mental processes 21

2.2.3.3 Verbal processes 22

2.2.3.4 Relational processes 23

2.2.3.5 Existential processes 24

2.2.3.6 Behavioral processes 25

2.2.4 The notions of clauses 32

2.2.5 Clause type in this study 33

2.2.6 Probes of behavioral processes in this study 36

2.2.7 Ideational metaphor 37

2.3 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS 41

CHAPTER THREE 43

RESEARCH METHODS 43

3.1 METHODOLOGY 43

3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN 44

3.2.1 Data collection 44

3.2.1.1 Sampling procedure 44

3.2.1.2 Sampling techniques 47

3.2.2 Data analysis 54

3.3 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS 56

CHAPTER FOUR 57

BEHAVIORAL PROCESSES AND THEIR CONGFIGURATION PATTERNS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 57

4.1 BEHAVIORAL PROCESSES AND CONFIGURATION PATTERNS IN ENGLISH 57

4.1.1 Semiotic behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in English 57

4.1.2 Social behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in English 60 4.1.3 Biological behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in English 62

4.1.4 Physical behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in English 64

4.2 BEHAVIORAL DOMAINS AND CONFIGURATION PATTERNS IN VIETNAMESE 65

4.2.1 Semiotic behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in

Vietnamese 66

4.2.2 Social behavioral processes and their associated configuration patterns in Vietnamese 68

4.2.3 Biological behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in Vietnamese 70

4.2.4 Physical behavioral processes and their configuration patterns in Vietnamese 72

4.3 SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN TERMS OF DOMAINS AND CONFIGURATION PATTERNS OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES 74

4.3.1 Similarities 74

4.3.2 Differences 75

4.4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS 79

CHAPTER FIVE 80

FUNCTIONAL REALIZATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 80

5.1 FUNCTIONAL REALIZATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN ENGLISH 80

5.1.1 Participant-Behaver in English 80

5.1.2 Range in English 83

5.1.2.1 Range – Behavior in English 83

5.1.2.2 Range – Phenomenon in English 85

5.1.2.3 Range – Target or Verbiage in English 87

5.1.3 Circumstance in English 89

5.1.3.1 Lexicogrammar of Circumstance in English 89

5.1.3.2 Ideational metafunction of Circumstance in English 90

5.2 FUNCTIONAL REALIZATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN VIETNAMESE 94

5.2.1 Behaver in Vietnamese 94

5.2.2 Range in Vietnamese 97

5.2.2.1 Range – Behavior in Vietnamese 97

5.2.2.2 Range – Phenomenon in Vietnamese 100

5.2.2.3 Range – Target or Verbiage in Vietnamese 101

5.2.3 Circumstance in Vietnamese 103

5.2.3.1 Lexicogrammar of Circumstance in Vietnamese 104

5.2.3.2 Ideational metafunction of circumstance in Vietnamese 105

5.3 SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN TERMS OF THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES 109

5.3.1 Behavers in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 109

5.3.2 Range in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 111

5.3.2.1 Behavior in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 111

5.3.2.2 Phenomenon in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 113

5.3.2.3 Verbiage or Target in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 118

5.3.4 Circumstance in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 121

5.4 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS 125

CHAPTER SIX 127

IDEATIONAL METAPHOR OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE 127

6.1 TYPES OF IDEATIONAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES 127

6.1.1 A shift of behavior process to Thing - Range 127

6.1.2 A shift of behavior process to Thing - Behavior 133

6.1.3 A shift of behavioral process to Circumstance – Manner 136

6.2 INTERPRETATION OF SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN TERMS

OF TYPES OF IDEATIONAL METAPHOR IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES 137

6.3 SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS 139

CHAPTER SEVEN 140

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 140

7.1 CONCLUSIONS 140

7.2 FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE 144

7.2.1 Teaching and translating behavioral clauses and ideational metaphor 144

7.2.2 Implications for interpreting Vietnamese clauses 148

7.3 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH 150

PUBLICATION LISTS 152

REFERENCES 153 APPENDIX A ENGLISH BEHAVIORAL PROCESSES

APPENDIX B VIETNAMESE BEHAVIORAL PROCESSES

APPENDIX C ENGLISH BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES

APPENDIX D VIETNAMESE BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1 Metafunctions 18

Table 2.2 Six subtypes of participants of material and their characteristics 20

Table 2.3 Two subtypes of participants of mental and their characteristics 21

Table 2.4 Three subtypes of Participants of verbal process and their characteristics 23

Table 2.5 Four subtypes of participants of relational and their characteristics 24

Table 2.6 Four subtypes of behavioral processes by Martin et al (1997) 26

Table 2.7 Four subtypes of behavioral processes by Matthiessen et al (2010) 27

Table 2.8 Examples of verbs serving as processes in behavioral clauses 28

Table 2.9 Kinds of processes and their associated participants 31

Table 2.10 The significant differences among the four processes 37

Table 3.1 A list of fourteen English novels and short stories 45

Table 3.2 A list of twenty three Vietnamese novels and short stories 46

Table 3.3 A raw list of English behavioral processes 48

Table 3.4 A raw list of Vietnamese behavioral processes 49

Table 4.1 Examples of English Semiotic behavioral processes 60

Table 4.2 Examples of English Social behavioral processes 62

Table 4.3 Examples of English Biological behavioral processes 64

Table 4.4 Examples of English physical behavioral processes 65

Table 4.5 Examples of Vietnamese Semiotic behavioral processes 68

Table 4.6 Examples of Vietnamese Social behavioral processes 70

Table 4.7 Examples of Vietnamese Biological behavioral processes 72

Table 4.8 Examples of Vietnamese Physical behavioral processes in Vietnamese 73 Table 4.9 A contrastive analysis of the patterns English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 74

Table 5.1 A list of some Vietnamese behavioral process nominalizations 99

Table 5.2 Contrasting examples of accompanying manner – quality of process “cry” and “smile” in Vietnamese 107

Table 5.3 English and Vietnamese Behaver 111

Table 5.4 English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses with one participant 121

Table 5.5 English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses with two participants 121

Table 5.6 Differences in terms of circumstantial transitivity in English and Vietnamese 125

Table 5.7 The similarities and differences of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses at lexicogrammar and semantic level 126

Table 6.1 English Process + Range constructions 127

Table 6.2 Rank of semantic shifts of ideational metaphor of type 1 129

Table 6.3 Vietnamese Process + Range constructions 132

Table 6.4 Rank of semantic shifts of ideational metaphor of type 2 134

Table 6.5 Rank of semantic shifts of ideational metaphor of type 3 136

Table 6.6 Similarities and differences in terms of the major types and shifts of ideational metaphor in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses 138

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Language as tri-stratal system (Halliday & Matthiessen 2000: 5) 14

Figure 2.2 Central and peripheral elements in the experiential structure of the clause 17

Figure 2.3 The three worlds and their processes in grammar of experiment 19

Figure 2.4 Subtypes of behavioral clauses 30

Figure 2.5 Behavioral clauses with core and peripheral regions (Phan Văn Hòa and Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh 2015: 350) 31

Figure 2.6 The location of the clause in terms of stratification, meta-function and rank (Halliday and Matthiessen 2014:55) 32

Figure 2.7 The rank of clause and clause complex (Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm 2012:28) 36

Figure 2.8 Congruent mode of realization and metaphorical mode involving ‘downgrading’ (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 647) 40

Figure 2.9 Grammatical metaphor interpreted as realization choice (Ravelli1985:104) 41

Figure 3.1 A list of the concordance of the search-word “smile” 51

Figure 3.2 A list of the concordance of the search-word “smiled” 52

Figure 3.3 A list of the concordance of the search-word “smiling” 52

Figure 3.4 Matches of “cườ i” in Chí phèo Word doc 53

Figure 3.5 Matches of “Khóc” in Tắt đèn Word doc 54

Figure 5.1 The classification of participants (Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh et al 2016: 73) 81

Figure 5.2 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunctions of Behaver in English behavioral clauses (Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh et al 2017a: 22) 83

Figure 5.3 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunction of Range in English behavioral clauses (Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh et al 2017a: 29) 88

Figure 5.4 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunction of Circumstance in English behavioral clauses 93

Figure 5.5 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunctions of Behaver in

Vietnamese behavioral clauses 97Figure 5.6 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunctions of Range-Target/

Verbiage in Vietnamese behavioral clauses (Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh et al 2017a: 29) 103Figure 5.7 The lexico-grammar and ideational metafunctions of Circumstance in

Vietnamese behavioral clauses 108 Figure 6.1 Congruent realization of the ideational domains of discourse semantics

(Devrim 2013: 37) 133Figure 6.2 Metaphorical realization of behavioral clauses with a shift from

behavioral Process to Behavior 135 Figure 7.1 Dissertation’s step-by-step process 140

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE

Clause analysis has been at the center of attention throughout most of the history of linguistics and tremendous efforts have been made to grasp and analyze the human languages To achieve this goal, linguists have to be able to segment languages into small units to interpret them and clauses are the best choice since clause is the biggest segment to make meaning in terms of rank In addition, human beings construct a large number of clauses creatively based on the patterns of their language use to communicate in their daily life Despite a lot of longstanding interest and efforts to shed light on clause interpretation, there is no consensus among linguists on clause interpretation because researchers work on clause analysis in a variety of approaches with different frameworks and outcomes In recent years there has been a dramatic revival of interest in Vietnamese clause analyses based on functional grammar raised by Halliday (1994) and Halliday &

Matthiessen (2000, 2014), particularly in terms of Transitivity system (clause as

representation) Considerable numbers of things and phenomena occur all the time around us and human beings witness and construe a quantum of change as one

process configuration, realized in one clause; for example: He was smiling

cheerfully That is, our experience is turned into meaning, and into wording With

the account of ideational metafunction, “He was smiling cheerfully” consists of

three elements: a Participant (Behaver: he), a Process (Behavioral process: was smiling) and a Circumstance (Manner: cheerfully)

Behaver Process: Behavioral Cir: Manner

It may seem that there is not only a single wording for the meaning English

might give us the options of construing this as “ A cheerful smile came on his face”

or “ He was putting on a cheerful smile” It can be seen that there is always a

choice in how to construe language as well as the alternative wordings of construing

semantic domains of behavior and others In particular, it is possible and pertinent

to get sense of the choice of wording of behavioral domains in English and Vietnamese Last but not least, human behaviors are probably the most common experience of human life in the real world so it is essential to study how human behaviors are realized in language According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) behaviors are manifested by (typically human) physiological and psychological behavior processes Very few researchers have attempted to interpret behavioral processes and to investigate their subtypes in English and Vietnamese from the perspective of Functional Grammar The above reasons drove me to conduct a functional study of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese

1.2 AIMS, OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY

1.2.1 Aims and objectives of the study

The aim of this study is to compare the manifestations of behavioral domains

in English and Vietnamese as well as analyze English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses based on the account of functional grammar elaborated by Halliday (1994)

and Halliday & Matthiessen (2000, 2014) The theoretical framework which the

study adopts is functional analysis Therefore, the collected English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses are interpreted (i) semantically, according to ideational meaning, (ii) structurally that is, according to rank

This study is primarily concerned with the analysis of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses in terms of ideational metafunction and lexicogrammar and then makes a contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses That is to say this study demonstrates what core and peripheral regions of behavioral domains are and how the rank scales (from clause to group) could be mapped onto the functional units and the realizations of behavioral domains

To achieve the aim, first attempts have been made to explore the prototypical and peripheral semantic domains of behavioral processes and configuration patterns

to realize each domain in English and Vietnamese These patterns enable us to talk

about linguistic choices in making meanings In addition, it is worth talking about social and functional communication in given contexts Furthermore, the similarities and differences in the nature of semantic domains of behavioral processes as well as their associated configuration patterns are discussed Secondly, English behavioral clauses are interpreted in terms of ideational metafunction and lexicogrammar It is suggestive that this enables us to shed the light on the semantic configuration and lexico-grammar resources in English Then attention has been paid to ideational metafunction and lexicogrammar of Vietnamese behavioral clauses Furthermore, a contrastive analysis of the features and status between participants and circumstances in the configuration of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese

is made Finally, the study examines ideational metaphor with congruent and incongruent wording of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses

1.2.2 Scope of the study

This study works at the clause level Clauses, therefore, are the central concept in this study and are in need of exploration and discussion Unfortunately, the definition and classification of clauses are fairly debatable and abstract It is essential that we identify the notions of clause in which the term “clause” is employed in this study As stated above, the study is based on functional analysis so the notions of clause is seen in the light of functional grammar According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014: 74) “The clause, as we said, is the mainspring of grammatical energy; it is the unit where meanings of different kinds, experiential, interpersonal and textual, are integrated into a single syntagm” Clause, therefore, is examined at the intersection of three dimensions namely stratification, meta-function and rank The issues relating to notions of clauses are discussed in section 2.2.4

Finally, this study is mainly devoted to experiential metafunction of clauses and the interpersonal and textual metafunction are not explored in this study since our attention is directed toward the in-depth functional analysis of clauses from the structure of the clause as representation A clause has meaning as a representation

of some process in ongoing human experience

1.3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The research questions for this study were:

1 What are the semantic domains and their configuration patterns of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses?

2 What are functional realizations of English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses?

3 What kinds of ideational metaphor are available in English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses?

4 What are the similarities and differences in semantic domains, functional realizations and types of ideational metaphor between English and Vietnamese?

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

As mentioned above, there have been few attempts to describe Vietnamese clauses from functional perspective as well as to make a comparative analysis of them English and Vietnamese This study makes an effective use of Halliday’s functional grammar to analyze linguistic features of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese, focusing on Transitivity Comparison is also made between functional grammar and traditional structural approaches while analyzing the data, which yields some crucial findings The study demonstrates functional realization

of behavioral clauses and reveals some similarities and differences in terms of these respects and makes some suggestions for applications of functional grammar to the interpretation of Vietnamese clauses In addition, this study is expected to make a contribution to the Vietnamese grammar and linguistic theories relating to clause analysis as well as offer practical assistance to those who want to make similar attempts in applying Functional Grammar to language studies and teaching This means the dissertation has both theoretical and practical significance in linguistics

1.5 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

This study concentrates primarily on the experiential interpretation of

English and Vietnamese clauses from functional framework elaborated by Halliday and Matthiessen (2000, 2014) and consists of seven chapters

CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the rationale of the study, defines the aims and scope and the organization of the study The research questions are also included in this chapter as a guide to the following sections of the dissertation

BACKGROUND

In this chapter, reviews of the previous research related to the concept of Transitivity system as well as ideational metafunction are made In addition, the chapter discusses the theoretical background of ideational metafunction and its processes The notions and types of clauses as well as ideational metaphor are mentioned

CHAPTER THREE RESEARCH METHODS

Qualitative approach and contrastive analysis were adopted in this study This chapter is involved in the discussion of the methodology, research design, data collection and data analysis The specific steps are taken as the following: building

up the criteria to recognize English and Vietnamese behavioral clauses, collecting and listing the collected data by using software package Wordsmith 5.0 and Navigation pane in Word documents and PDF Word, reading, identifying and interpreting the data

CHAPTER FOUR BEHAVIORAL PROCESSES AND THEIR

CONGFIGURATION PATTERNS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

This chapter discusses prototypical and peripheral behavioral domains and their associated configuration patterns of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese from functional framework Then a contrastive analysis of these domains and patterns of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese is presented

to find out some similarities and differences with respect to these

CHAPTER FIVE FUNCTIONAL REALIZATIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

This chapter deals with various realizations of behavioral domains and behavioral clauses are examined along the rank scale or lexicogrammar and ideational in English and Vietnamese This chapter also looks at the similarities and differences between the two languages

CHAPTER SIX IDEATIONAL METAPHOR OF BEHAVIORAL CLAUSES IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE

Functional analysis and discussion of ideational metaphor are offered This chapter primarily describes types of ideational metaphor, rank and semantic shifts in English and Vietnamese and then presents a contrastive analysis of these types and shifts between the two languages

CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION

Finally, this chapter summarizes what has been studied and draws some conclusions on the study as well as gives implications for practical solutions and the limitations of the study

CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 LITERATURE REVIEW

The late 20th century saw theorists from various approaches focusing on texts Within the scope of this study, attention has been paid to functional perspective of text analysis developed on the foundation of work by Halliday (1994) Halliday’s FG has been constructed and derived from Hjelmslev’s and Firth’s accounts Halliday (1994) followed Hjelmslev (1961) and Firth (1948) in distinguishing theoretical from descriptive categories in linguistics The author argued that “theoretical categories, and their inter-relations, construe an abstract model of language they are interlocking and mutually defining” Halliday (1994) described language as a semiotic system " not in the sense of a system of signs, but

a systemic resource for meaning" This work is considered as a skeleton for his functional grammar theory Halliday (1994) presented a detailed functional grammar of modern English and showed how simultaneous strands of meanings (the ideational, interpersonal and textual metafunctions) are realized in clause structures Halliday and Matthiessen (2000) gave an in-depth explanation to how human beings construe their experience of the world The construction of experience is usually thought of as knowledge, represented in the form of conceptual taxonomies, schemata, scripts and others The focus of the book is both theoretical and descriptive The authors considered it important that theory and description should develop in parallel, with constant interchange between the two The major descriptive component is an account of the most general features of the ideational semantics of English, which is then exemplified in two familiar text types (recipes and weather forecasts) There is also a brief reference to the semantics of Chinese and a comparison in terms of sequences, figures and elements between English and Chinese Their comparison between these two languages inspired us to conduct a comparative study of behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese in the light of functional grammar It is evident that his theory should be widely applied to

interpret and analyze more languages to thrive in linguistics

Functional grammar has been applied in such fields as language education (e.g Christie 2002; Christie & Martin 1997; Unsworth 2000), text analysis (e.g Eggins 1994; Butler 2003; Downing and Locke 2006), language description and topology (Mwinlaaru & Xuan 2009) and contrastive analysis and comparative linguistics So far, studies have contrasted English with languages such as Chinese (Li 2007), Spanish (Arú s 2004), Danish (Anderson 2004), Dutch (Degand 1996), French (Caffarel 2006), German (Steiner & Elke 2004), Indonesian (Indah 1985), Japanese (Teruya 2007) and Vietnamese (Thái Minh Đức 1998 and Hoàng Văn Vân 2012)

Halliday & Matthiessen (2004, 2014) later introduced the concept and numerous features of behavioral processes in the framework of Transitivity system Halliday & Matthiessen (2014:2014) argued that behavioral processes are processes

of physiological and psychological behavior with the participant who is “behaving”,

labeled Behaver, is typically a conscious being In addition, Halliday &

Matthiessen (2014) pointed out that “the boundaries of behavioral processes are indeterminate” and suggested a grammatical probe to determine behavioral processes That is the usual unmarked present tense for behavioral processes is present in present However, Halliday & Matthiessen (2014) covered a wide range

of terms and concepts in functional grammar so it is impossible to cover all matters

of functional grammar in this single work and they left some unsolved and deemphasized problems of this field such as the borderlines among processes and some puzzles in interpreting and labeling them especially behavioral clauses as well

as how to apply his theory in teaching and learning English and other languages

It must be remembered that functional grammar is a linguistic theory and “a theory is a means of action” (Halliday 1994:xxix) That is, theory must have some purposes, and serve some practical application Eggin (1994), Bloor and Bloor

(1995), Martin et al (1997), Matthiessen et al (2010), Fontaine (2012) and

Thompson (2013) adopted Halliday’s functional grammar to analyze English

grammar Eggin (1997) applied Halliday’s transitivity system to interpret and label English clause constituents for their content roles Eggin (1997) stated that “in analyzing transitivity structure in a clause, we are concerned with describing three aspects of the clause: the selection of processes, the selection of Participants and the selection of Circumstances." In the remainder of her work, Eggin concentrated on six different types of processes and their associated configurations of participant roles In particular, Eggin (1997) argued that behavioral processes are semantically

a mix of the material and mental, but grammatically they also fall midway between material and mental processes Nevertheless, Eggin (1997) failed to show the borderlines of behavioral processes and classify their subtypes Martin et al (1997) illustrated the differences between related pair of behavioral processes and mental processes of perception For example: “look at” versus “see”, “listen” versus “hear” and “sniff” versus “smell’ Matthiessen et al (2010) gave a brief description of subtypes of behavioral processes but did not pay much attention to an in-depth analysis of behavioral clauses in context

Although the study of Vietnamese grammar from functional approach began much later as compared with structural approach, functional approach has attracted

a lot of intention of scholars and linguists Nguyễn Thị Tú Trinh et al (2017) point out that Dik’s functional grammar and Halliday’ systemic functional grammar are two major contemporary functional linguistic theories to clause description In Vietnam, Dik’s functional grammar is advocated by Cao Xuân Hạo In 1991, Cao

Xuân Hạo published a grammar book entitled Tiếng Việt: Sơ thảo Ngữ pháp Chức

năng (An Outline of Vietnamese Functional Grammar) This book, according to

several Vietnamese grammarians, makes a turning point in the study of Vietnamese grammar, shifting the analysis of the clause from traditional approach to what is

referred to as functional approach by Dik (1989)’s Functional Grammar and states

that Dik’s grammar is functional because the conceptual framework on which it is based is a functional one rather than a formal one From this point of view, grammar becomes a study of how meanings are built up through the wording in Vietnamese

However, Cao Xuân Hạo just reviews Dik’s account of the functions of language instead of employing it to analyze and interpret Vietnamese grammar While Thái Minh Đức (1998) attempted to analyze the Vietnamese clause in terms of all three lines of meanings developed by Halliday and Hoàng Văn Vân (2002, 2012) adopted Halliday’s functional grammar’s framework to describe the experiential grammar of Vietnamese

Thái Minh Đức (1998) attempted to analyze the Vietnamese clause in terms

of all three lines of meanings as developed by Halliday (1994) However, due to the space constraints of his study, the author paid attention to employing functional framework to interpret Vietnamese clause instead of making a contrastive analysis

of English and Vietnamese with respect to functional analysis Hoàng Văn Vân (2012) adopts Halliday’s functional grammar’s framework to describe the experiential grammar of the Vietnamese clause He recognized six process types in Vietnamese: material, behavioral, mental, verbal, relational, and existential And in his description of behavioral clauses in Vietnamese, Hoàng Văn Vân (Ibid.) noted some difficulties (indeterminacy) that need to be resolved He suggests classifying

ambiguous behavioral clauses in Vietnamese into Para-material (clauses that lie on the borderline between material and Behavioral processes), Para-verbal (clauses that lie on the borderline between behavioral and verbal processes), and Para-

mental (clauses that lie on the borderline between behavioral and mental processes)

Although Hoàng Văn Vân did not go into detail to show how the troubles should be shot, his description has thrown some light on how to solve the problem of ambiguity, providing some basis for making a comparison between behavioral clauses in English and Vietnamese using systemic functional grammar as the theoretical framework Phan Văn Hòa and Phan Thị Thủy Tiên (2010) made their attempts to build a possible model for experiential analysis in written text and interpret clause structures in English and Vietnamese news collected from electronic newspapers In addition, their study covered all six process types and paid less attention to behavioral process Therefore, the authors failed to resolve

some indeterminate cases when labeling the processes and categorizing the behavioral clauses With the hope of improving these weak points, this study is carried out to explore a deep insight into analyzing behavioral domains and their functional realization of behavioral clauses as well as some puzzles in analyzing and labeling them The selected data are from the 19th to 21st century short stories and novels and not from newspapers in Phan Văn Hòa and Phan Thị Thủy Tiên (2010)

As mentioned earlier, Halliday (1994) expounded the theory of metafunction (ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction and textual metafunction) Recent years have seen very important publications of ideational metafunction studies O’Donnell et al (2009) conducted an online survey asking practitioners to select the process type of 32 clauses, most of the instances offering some difficulty

They explored three kinds of clines, namely verbal cline,

Behavioral-mental cline, Behavioral-material cline There is a gradual shift of coding from

behavioral to the other category For instance, in relation to the near-mental: I was thinking all day > I was thinking about the weather > I was thinking that I should

go In addition, they point out the confusion stemming from the choices of conceptual or syntactic criteria The cause of different choices among coders is the path they follow in analyzing behavioral clauses Some coders used conceptual criteria while the others relied on syntactic criteria Gwilliams and Fontaine (2015) devoted their effort to find out some indeterminacy in process type classification They conducted a survey on experienced FG users for their classification of 20 clauses They find out that there was inconsistency of analysis and the main area of disagreement between analysts was the selection of material vs verbal processes Nevertheless, they did not offer a comprehensible framework to identify and classify these difficult cases In addition, there are numerous excellent systemic

linguistics websites to be found at http: www/ wagsoft/ com/ systemics/ The

website provides the latest information about systemic discussion groups, recent publications and functional linguistics journals

2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This section discusses the concept of FG raised by Halliday (1994), Halliday

& Matthiessen (2000, 2004, 2014) and then successively narrows down the focus; that is, transitivity system and behavioral processes After presenting overviews of

FG, the discussion continues with three metafunctions and transitivity system Finally, notions and types of clauses, probes of behavioral clauses and ideational metaphor are mentioned in this section

2.2.1 Functional Grammar

In the history of grammatical study, there have always existed two opposite

variables in the way grammars are written: Formal (Chomsky 1965) and Functional

(Halliday 1994) The former sees grammar as a set of rules which specify all the possible grammatical structures of the language while the latter, FG, is the name

given to any of a range of functionally–based approaches to the scientific study of language such as the grammar model of the Prague school, the London School Systemic functional grammar is related to the older functional traditions of European schools of linguistics as British Contextualism and the Prague schools As discussed in section 1.2, Halliday’s FG has its roots in the work of Hjelmslev (1969), the Prague School and Firth (1948), the London School Based on their ideas and accounts, Halliday (1994) develops and suggests a model which becomes known as systemic functional grammar, and later in his work with Matthiessen (2014) as functional grammar The main tenet of this theory is through the semantic base, the progressive semanticization of grammar Halliday offers an introduction of new ways of looking at function in language There is no doubt that meaning is absolutely central to Halliday’s conception of language and so to FG Halliday (1994) states that “A systemic grammar is one of the classes of functional grammars, which means (among other things) that it is semantically motivated, or

"natural" In contradistinction to formal grammars, which are autonomous, and therefore semantically arbitrary, in a systemic grammar every category (and

"category" is used here in the general sense of an organizing theoretical concept, not

in the narrower sense of 'class' as in formal grammars) is based on meaning: it has a semantic as well as a formal, lexico-grammatical reactance there is no clear line between semantics and grammar, and a functional grammar is one that is pushed in

the directions of semantics” TG is subdivided into two inter-related studies:

Morphology and Syntax whilst FG deals with system, metafunction, and rank

FG has its unique features as compared with transformative - generative grammar elaborated by Chomsky (1965) FG takes “language as communication” as

a central core and its function is to make meanings In other words, it looks at language in the culture and society that form the context in which language is used whilst Transformative-Generative grammar takes “language as structure” as a central one Chomsky (1965) insisted that there were two types of structures: deep structure and surface structure The former represented to core semantic relations of

a sentence and was mapped on to the latter which followed the phonological form

of the sentence very closely via transformations Unlike Chomsky (1965), Halliday’s FG (1994) is involved in the meanings of language in use in the textual processes of life Halliday argued “the aim has been to construct a grammar for purposes of text analysis: one that would make it possible to say sensible and useful things about any texts, spoken or written, in modern English” (Halliday 1985: xv)

Sharing the same opinions with other functional linguists, Halliday believed that the form of language is explicable in terms of function Halliday (1994) states

“a functional grammar is essentially a “natural” grammar in the sense that everything in it can be explained, ultimately, by reference to how language is used” (Halliday 1985: xiii) It seems to me that Halliday took a very strong stance on the functional motivation that everything in grammar can be explained in the terms of use

Halliday and Matthiessen (2000) stated that “Language, therefore, is a resource organized into three strata differentiated according to order of abstraction These strata are related by means of realization Semantics, or the system of meaning, is realized by lexicogrammar, or the system of wording (that is, grammatical structures and lexical items); and lexicogrammar is realized by phonology, or the system of sounding” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2000: 4) Language viewed as tri-strata system is illustrated in figure 2.1

Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) employed the term of lexicogrammar instead of grammar in his functional theory They argued that “The lexical region,

or lexis, is not a separate component, but simply the most "delicate" end of the (unified) There is a complementarity here Lexis and grammar are not two different

semantics (meaning)

content

expression

lexicogrammar (wording)

phonology (sounding)

Figure 2.1 Language as tri-stratal system (Halliday & Matthiessen 2000: 5)

phenomena; they are different ways looking at the same phenomenon Some aspects

of this phenomenon of "wording" in language are foregrounded by viewing it as grammar, others by viewing it as lexis Some models of language used in computational linguistics are lexis based”

FG is a linguistic theory with many new key ideas and concepts such as: acts

of meaning, context of culture and of situation: field, tenor, mode, three metafunctions, socio-semiotics, grammar metaphor and other terms Among them, three metafunctions, the three lines of meaning mapped onto the structure of the clause, are the most prominent in his theory Halliday (1994) insisted language is structural to make three kinds of meaning Eggins elaborated “this semantic complexity, which allows ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings to be fused together in linguistic units, is possible because language is a semiotic system, a conventionalized coding system, organized as sets of choices.” (Eggins 1994: 3)

2.2.2 Ideational metafunction

In this study, ideational metafunction plays a crucial role and a lot of efforts have been made to show a clear explanation because this study explores and analyzes the clausal grammar of Vietnamese from a perspective of FG: construing our experience of the world, enacting our social roles and relations and enabling the creation of text To put it into technical terms, the study will closely examine the network of the ideational metafunction and its lexicogrammatical realization Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) stated that “language enables human beings to build a mental picture of reality to make sense of what goes on around them and

inside them” Transitivity system: Participant, Process and Circumstance takes

center stage in ideational metafunction The theoretical framework of transitivity

was established and developed by Halliday and Matthiessen (2000, 2014) Clauses represent events and processes of various kinds, and transitivity aims to make clear how the action is performed, by whom and on what Transitivity is an important and powerful semantic concept It is a part of the ideational function of language, therefore, an essential tool in the analysis of representation Implicitly and crucially,

different social structures and values require different patterns of transitivity According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), the transitivity system construes the world of experience into a manageable set of PROCESS TYPES Each process type has its own model or schema for construing a particular domain of experience and a figure of a particular kind - a model such as the one illustrated above for construing signification: Token (usually) + Process (means) + Value (mostly)

For Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), a process often consists of 3 elements: the Process itself, Participant associated with the process, and Circumstance A Process typically has the potential of an organizing Participant and is often realized

by a verbal group while a Participant is often realized by a nominal group A Circumstance elaborates different circumstantial roles in the Process It is an optional element and realized by an adverbial group or a prepositional phrase (2.1-2.2)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 226) Process, Participant and Circumstance are three core elements to construct clauses Therefore, these elements provide the framework for interpreting our experience of what goes on The concepts of the Process, Participant and Circumstance are semantic categories which explain in the most general way how phenomena of the real world are represented as linguistic structure Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) offered the tripartite interpretation of the Process, Participant and Circumstance shown in figure 2.1

Hoàng Văn Vân (2002, 2012) agreed that in Vietnamese there are also six types of process and arranges them into 3 broader types: doing, projecting and being processes in which Vietnamese doing processes are grouped and sub classified into two process options: material and behavioral processes while Vietnamese projecting processes are involved in mental and verbal processes

Figure 2.2 Central and peripheral elements in the experiential structure of the

scholars and researchers bear in minds a question why Halliday categorizes and labels six kinds like that and try to determine his rationale In my opinion, Halliday sees the inter-relationship of language, mind and world and applies it in his theory There are three worlds in his theory: the outer world, the inner world and the abstract relationship world in experiential metafunction The outer world is the physical world with natural phenomena, human beings’ as well as other entities’ activities as it is realized into Material, Existential, Behavioral processes The inner world is the world of consciousness and awareness including processes of perception, cognition and affection and it is realized into Mental and Verbal processes The last world is the abstract relationship between human and nature and the relationship among human beings and it is realized in Relational processes The three worlds and their processes in grammar of experiment are shown in the figure 2.3

Table 2.1 Metafunctions Metafunction

(technical name) Definition (kind of meaning)

Corresponding status in clause

Experiential Construing a model of experience Clause as representation Interpersonal Enacting social relationships Clause as exchange

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 85)

It can be seen from figure 2.3 that there are some overlaps and complementarities These overlaps and complementarities explain why there are borderlines between kinds of clauses in terms of ideational metafunction analysis It

is widely claimed that behavioral processes construe human behavior, including

material, mental and verbal behavior, labeled as Semiotic, Social, Biological and

Physical behavioral processes (See section 2.2.3.6)

Figure 2.3 The three worlds and their processes in grammar of experiment

2.2.3 Types of processes and their associated participants

According to Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) the transitivity system of a language construes experience into a small set of domains of meaning which differs

in the process itself and the nature of the participants involved in it Processes play a central role to Transitivity The process centers on that part of the clause that is realized by the verbal group, but it can also be regarded as what ‘goings-on’ are represented in the whole clause There are indeed six different process types identified by Halliday (1994) : Material, Behavioral, Mental, Verbal, Relational, and Existential In this section, each type of process and its associated participants are examined

2.2.3.1 Material processes

Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) stated that Material processes are processes

Language and real worldMaterial, Existential, Behavioral Processes

Language and relation

worldRelational processes

Language and inner

worldMental and Verbal processes

of doing They have an obligatory participant which is the Actor- the doer of the action A second participant, the Goal of the action, is the optional participant to

which the doing is done There are still other participants which are Goal, Range and Beneficiary

Besides two participant roles in Material clauses – The Actor and the Goal,

Halliday (1994) classified Participants into 4 subtypes These are: Scope, Recipient,

Client and Attribute The 6 subtypes of participants and their characteristics are

shown in table 2.2

Table 2.2 Six subtypes of participants of material and their characteristics

Subtypes of participants Their characteristics

Attribute A quality ascribed or attributed to an entity

The following examples are cases of Recipient, Client, Scope and Attributive

(2.6)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 239) (2.7)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 241)

2.2.3.2 Mental processes

Mental processes encode the inner world of cognition, perception and

affection They tend to be realized through the use of verbs like think, know, feel,

smell, hear, see, want, like, hate, wish, etc There are two constant participants in a

Mental process: a Senser and a Phenomenon, even if the Phenomenon is not

explicitly realized

(2.10)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 245) Semantically, a Mental process involves sense, which is inside the human or conscious being Mental process is related to psychological matters The participant

that is related to the sense must be a conscious or human being; labeled as Senser for example: Mary [Senser] likes the gift While Senser refers to the one who feels (emotionally), thinks, and perceives, Phenomenon refers to that which is felt

(emotionally), thought about, or perceived In other words, its position is in a sense reserved The 2 subtypes of participants and their characteristics are shown in table 2.3

Table 2.3 Two subtypes of participants of mental and their characteristics

Subtypes of participants Their characteristics

perceives Phenomenon That which is felt (emotionally), thought about, or

perceived The Phenomenon can represent the content of sensing Nevertheless, this content is not always represented as a participant within the clause It may be also

be represented by a separate clause For example:

(2.11) David thought →The moon was a balloon (Lock 1996: 106)

Senser Process: Mental Phenomenon Circumstance

(2.12) She guessed → He would be late (Lock 1996: 106)

It is noteworthy that the two above examples are projected clauses that represent ideas brought into existence by the mental processing In addition to this case, Phenomenon can be a thing or a fact or even an action as in:

(2.14) I learned that lesson a long time ago (Phenomenon: thing)

(2.15) I like swimming early in the morning (Phenomenon: action)

(Lock 1996: 105) Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) divided mental processes into 4 sub-types:

Perceptive, Cognitive, Desiderative and Emotive The examples of four subtypes of

mental process are illustrated as follows:

(2.17-2.18)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 256)

(2.19-2.20)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 256) (2.21)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 256)

(2.21)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 256)

2.2.3.3 Verbal processes

Verbal processes can be identified as the processes of saying which are

expressed by verbs tell, say, ask, suggest and others Verbal processes also include

modes of expressing and indicating Two main typical participants in the process

are: Sayer and Receiver The Sayer is the addresser, or the one who does the verbalization, and the Receiver is the addressed which the saying is addressed

(2.23)

They were speaking Arabic

Sayer Process: Verbal Verbiage

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 306)

The Sayer can be a human or human-like speaker Of course, it can also be any other symbolic source for example:

(2.25) She (Sayer-human) told me a strange story (Lock 1996: 108)

(2.26) He (Sayer-human) asks me too many questions (Lock1996: 108)

(2.27)The paper (Sayer- non-human) says that there’ll be another election

(Lock 1996: 108) Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) classified Participants of Verbal processes

into 3 subtypes These are: Sayer, Receiver and Verbiage The 3 subtypes of

participants and their characteristics are shown in table 2.4

Table 2.4 Three subtypes of Participants of verbal process and their characteristics

Subtypes of participants Their characteristics

2.2.3.4 Relational processes

Relational processes are processes of “being”: something is being said to

“be” something else That is to say, there are always two participants in relational processes which consist of two main modes: Attributive and Identifying In other words, a relationship of being is set up between two separate entities

Attributive: “ A is an attributive of X”

Identifying: “A is the identity of X”

(2.28-2.29)

Carrier Process: Relational Attribute

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 296) (2.30-2.31)

Token Process: relational Value

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 294)

If the Process falls into Identifying, the participants are Token and Value and

if the Process is Attributive, the participants are Carrier and Attribute According to

Halliday and Matthiessen (2014), participants of relational processes are classified

into four subtypes These are: Carrier, Attribute, Token and Attribute The 4

subtypes of participants and their characteristics of relational process are shown in table 2.5

Table 2.5 Four subtypes of participants of relational and their characteristics

Subtypes of participants Their characteristics

Attribute A class of thing is typically attributed to an entity

2.2.3.5 Existential processes

Existential processes represent experience by positing that “there was/ is

something” and the function of Existential processes is to construe being as simple

existence Unlike other processes, there is only one participant known as the

Existent in Existential processes This participant, which usually follows the there

is/ there are sequence, may be a phenomenon of any kind

(2.32–2.33)

Process: existential Existent: entity Cir: location

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 309)

The progressive is forbidden in the Existential processes Existential

processes typically employ the verb be or synonyms such as appear, exist, occur

2.2.3.6 Behavioral processes

Behavioral processes are processes of psychological and physiological

process, like breathing, coughing, smiling, dreaming, chatting, watching and others

These construe human behavior including mental and verbal behavior as an active version of Verbal and Mental processes Saying and sensing are construed as

activity Typically, the Participant is a conscious being, like the Senser, but the process functions are more like one of doing The participant is labeled Behaver -

the conscious being who behaves as in:

(2.34-2.35)

(Halliday and Matthiessen 2014: 301) Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) offered lists of behavioral processes in

English such as: breathe, cough, faint, shit, yawn, sing, sleep, dance, lie down, sit,

chatter, grumble, talk, think, worry, dream, cry, laugh, frown, sigh, snarl, whine, look, watch, stare, listen and others

A question raised is that how to distinguish behavioral processes with the

other five ones At Transitivity level, there are five major process types – Material,

Mental, Verbal, Relational and Behavioral that cover the grammatical and semantic

space of happenings, doings, sensing, saying, being and having These five major process types have both core and peripheral cases As a result, it is impossible for us

to interpret a clear borderline among these processes As for behavioral processes themselves, in addition to its prototypical cases of psychological and physiological

processes such as sneezing, dreaming, breathing, stuttering and others There are a

lot of peripheral cases that mix characteristics of with Material, Verbal and Mental processes Therefore, behavioral processes also include more Mental-like, Verbal-like and Material-like subtypes For these reasons, behavioral processes are considered as “fuzzy” processes (“fuzzy” was introduced by Matthiessen in 2005) and their boundaries are indeterminate According to Martin and Matthiessen (1991:

Behaver Process: Behavioral

368) “There may be border areas in semantic-grammatical space such as the space

of processes; for instance, behavioral processes lie between material ones on the one hand and verbal and mental ones on the other” A decision has been made to adopt typological perspective to explain and address a number of challenges of behavioral processes classification and interpretation since topological perspective sees objects

in a set of criteria for establishing degrees of nearness or proximity and turns a set

of objects into a space defined by the relations of those objects

Behavioral processes draw a lot of attention of researchers and they make huge efforts to explore, analyze and categorize them due to theirs diversity and ambiguity Martin et al (1997) illustrated 4 sub-types of behavioral processes in the table 2.6

Table 2.6 Four subtypes of behavioral processes by Martin et al (1997)

Perception

Look at, watch, stare, gawk, view, look over, observe See, observe

Cognition Ponder, puzzle, solve, work out,

mediate, ruminate, think Think, know, believe

Affection (subtype

of emotion)

Smile, frown, laugh, pout, gasp, grin, scowl, shake, shudder, tremble

Fear, enjoy, like, frighten, scare, disgust, please, amuse, upset

Verbal

stammer, stutter, mutter, moan, chatter, gossip, talk, speak, sing, frown, grimace, snort, cough, stander, insult, praise, flatter

Say, tell, ask

(Martin et al 1997: 110)

Matthiessen et al (2010) argued that behavioral clauses resemble mental ones

in having a central participant: Behaver and Senser, respectively and they are also

similar to Mental clauses in that those represent sensing as an activity that can be

configured with a macro-phenomenon as Range In addition, behavioral clauses

bear some resemblance to Material clauses with respect to the unmarked tense selection for construing the present Matthiessen et al (2010:65) stated that “ the mixed properties of behavioral clauses are due to the fact that they construe prototypically human behavior in different realms of experience – our experience of semiotic, social and biological phenomenon.”

Table 2.7 Four subtypes of behavioral processes by Matthiessen et al (2010)

Semiotic Behavioral: he is watching the lizard

watch, listen, smell, touch, mediate, ponder

Behavioral: they are chatting about

the lizard ~ he is chatting with her about the lizard

chat, chatter, gossip, argue, quarrel, bicker, babble, jab

Mental: he sees the lizard Verbal: he says to her

that the lizard has come back

Social Behavioral: they are dancing the

tangle

dance, boogie, hug, embrace, caress, kiss, neck, fight, wrestle, struggle

Biological Behavioral: he’s sneezing

laugh, smile, grin, simper, smirk, frown, glower, sneer, grimace, whimper, cry, scream, whine, neigh, bray, whinny, moo, low, twitter,

breath, pant, wheeze, sneeze, snivel,

hiccup, burp, cough

Physical Material: he/it’s falling

fall, drop, tumble, plummet, sink

dive, spin, whirl, turn, pivot, swivel, revolve, rotate

A close look at table 2.7 reveals that behavioral clauses are in relation to Mental, Verbal, and Material ones in terms of the ordered typology of systems operating in different phenomenal realms (Matthiessen et al (2010:65)) Behavioral clauses are sub-classified into four: (1) Semiotic behavioral clauses are active variants of mental and verbal processes, that is, sensing and saying activity Therefore, they wrap up any kind of symbolic exchange of meaning, the realms of our own consciousness and serve means of communication to transfer messages and can serve as the outward sign of semiotic processes (2) Social behavioral clauses are accompanied by interpersonal processes that involve two or more people and which can be either associative or dissociative (3) Biological behaviors are physiological in nature involving biological organisms (4) Physical ones are concerned with our experience of the real world and are partly like the material clauses

Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) discussed the indeterminate boundaries of behavioral processes and finds out the five kinds of verbs serving as process in behavioral clauses as in table 2.8

Table 2.8 Examples of verbs serving as processes in behavioral clauses