Analysing English Grammar: A Systemic Functional Introduction (2012)

Chapter 10: Answers to exercises

10.1 Chapter 1

Exercise 1.1 Clause recognition exercise

Text 1.1

Hello there. How are you? How are you managing with work, school and the boys? Are you finding time for yourself at all? Again, sorry I have been so long in getting back to you. Work has been crazy too. I always feel like I am rushing. So now, when I feel that, I try and slow myself down. I also have the girls getting more prepared for the next morning the night before and that has seemed to help the mornings go more smoothly. I will be glad when we don’t have to bother with boots, hats and mitts. The days are getting longer so hopefully it will be an early spring.

Text 1.2

This module aims to offer an introduction to a functionally oriented approach to the description of the English language and to provide students with an understanding of the relationship between the meanings and functions that are served by the grammatical structures through which they are realized. The major grammatical systems will be explored through a functional framework. At all stages the description and analysis will be applied to a range of text types. By so doing, we will be able to explore both the meaning potential that speakers have and how particular choices in meaning are associated with different texts.

Exercise 1.2

There are many ways to answer this question. There is considerable similarity in what each person is saying about themselves and in relation to the political party of which they are a member. However, Tony Blair is expressing an act of choosing and he is representing himself as the one doing the choosing and the Labour party as having been chosen by him. Nick Clegg is saying something similar but he expresses it very differently. He is describing himself as a liberal. There does not seem to be the same active agency in what Clegg says as compared to Blair.

10.2 Chapter 2

Exercise 2.1 Word class recognition

Exercise 2.2

The process in each clause has been underlined and the outcome of the process test is given in the right-hand column.

Exercise 2.3 Ambiguity

The ambiguity for each sentences is explained below each example.

1.

1. He gave her dog treats There are three participants in this situation but we can’t tell whether dog treats were given to her or whether treats were given to her dog. The ambiguity is based on whether her dog is one group and treats is another group, or whether her is one group and dog treats is a separate group.

2.

2. She saw the man from the store The ambiguity in this sentence is just like the Groucho Marx example. This is a process of seeing but we can’t tell if the second participant is one group, the man, which is a separate group from from the store or whether the second participant (i.e. who was seen) is expressed by a single group, the man from the store.

3.

3. He painted the canvas in the bedroom The ambiguity here is the same as in the previous sentence. There are two readings. In one, the canvas in the bedroom is a single group which means that there is more than one canvas and the one that was painted was in the bedroom. Alternatively, if what was painted was the canvas, expressed as a separate group from in the bedroom, then the in the bedroom is expressing where the canvas was painted.

4.

4. The girl teased the cat with the ribbon The ambiguity is the same here as well. The thing that was teased by the girl is either the single group, the cat, or the cat with the ribbon, where in this case with the ribbon is part of the group and is describing which cat was teased.

10.3 Chapter 3

Exercise 3.1

The nominal groups have been indicated in boxes.

I do have asthma. I’m not getting enough oxygen into my bloodstream. I must find a doctor.

I hope that things are on the mend now for Rowan. It’s good that he is being checked out so well. Hopefully the chamber thing will deliver the meds better and get to the problem. Breathing problems are so weird. One of the most important things that I’ve learned is staying calm. There is an automatic response to get excited when unable to breathe, and the added stress makes it more difficult to breathe.

Exercise 3.2

The tree diagrams for the nominal groups are given in Figures 10.1 to 10.3.

Figure 10.1 Tree diagram for the nominal group some symptoms

Figure 10.2 Tree diagram for the nominal group a couple of awards

Figure 10.3 Tree diagram for the nominal group the extra hands around the flat

10.4 Chapter 4

Exercise 4.1

The tree diagrams for each clause are given in Figures 10.4 to 10.19.

Figure 10.4 Tree diagram for After three more hours of work we discover one of the spark plug cords is frayed

Figure 10.5 Tree diagram for We work for another hour

Figure 10.6 Tree diagram for We notice a cracked bracket

Figure 10.7 Tree diagram for We are sent to a garage for some welding

Figure 10.8 Tree diagram for They send us to a different garage

Figure 10.9 Tree diagram for The people here love our vehicle

Figure 10.10 Tree diagram for Everyone of them used to own one

Figure 10.11 Tree diagram for It’s not working optimally

Figure 10.12 Tree diagram for We head to a new garage

Figure 10.13 Tree diagram for The man behind the counter is sweet

Figure 10.14 Tree diagram for He says it will cost approximately $2000

Figure 10.15 Tree diagram for We run back to Mark’s garage

Figure 10.16 Tree diagram for We need a new distributor

Figure 10.17 Tree diagram for He orders one

Figure 10.18 Tree diagram for It will be in by noon tomorrow

Figure 10.19 Tree diagram for We love this man

10.5 Chapter 5

Exercise 5.1

The analysis of the interpersonal strand of meaning is given below. The Subject is enclosed and the Finite is underlined. Modality and polarity are indicated in italics. Embedded clauses are indicated by square brackets.

1.

1. In the event of an emergency over water, you must put on your life jacket

2.

2. The life jacket is located in a bag under your seat

3.

3. You will find a belt at your side

4.

4. On the chest, there are two pull-tabs

5.

5. These lights will guide you to the exits during an emergency

6.

6. The location of the nearest emergency exit should be known

7.

7. Do you know the location of the nearest emergency exit?

Exercise 5.2

The analysis of the interpersonal function for these clauses is given below. The Subject is enclosed and the Finite is underlined. Modality and polarity are indicated in italics. Mood is given in curly brackets. Any ellipsed elements are given in parentheses. Embedded clauses are indicated by square brackets.

1.

1. The President says [my proposed reduction of tax rates would be inflationary] {declarative}

2.

2. Well, (you) (____) let me [ask him a simple question in economics] {imperative}

3.

3. Why is it inflationary {interrogative}

4.

4. if you keep more of your earnings {declarative}

5.

5. and (you) spend them [the way you want to] {declarative}

6.

6. but it isn’t inflationary {declarative}

7.

7. if he takes them {declarative}

8.

8. and (he) spends them [the way he wants to] {declarative}

9.

9. The fact is this program will give us a balanced budget by 1983, and possibly by 1982 {declarative}

10.

10. We also need faster, less complex depreciation schedules for business {declarative}

11.

11. Outdated depreciation schedules now prevent many industries from [modernizing their plants] {declarative}

12.

12. Faster depreciation would allow these companies [to generate more capital internally, permitting them to make the investment necessary to create new jobs, to help workers become more productive, and to become more competitive in world markets] {declarative}

13.

13. Another vital part of this strategy concerns government regulations [which work against rather than for the interests of the people] {declarative}

14.

14. No one argues with the intent of regulations [dealing with health, safety, and clean air and water] {declarative}

15.

15. But we must carefully re-examine our regulatory structure [to assess to what degree regulations have cost jobs and economic growth] {declarative}

16.

16. There should and will be a thorough and systematic review of the thousands of federal regulations [that affect the economy] {declarative}

10.6 Chapter 6

Exercise 6.1

The three-strand analysis for each clause is given in Figure 10.20 in the form of box diagrams.

Figure 10.20 Three-strand analysis for the clauses from Exercise 6.1

10.7 Chapter 7

Exercise 7.1

Clause list:

1. I always get to this computer later at night

2. John is out golfing

3. and Jane is at a sleepover birthday party

4. where they are sleeping outside in tents

5. and Sue has three friends over for a sleep over

6. They are watching a movie now

Exercise 7.2

Clause list:

1. When it first happened, there was a big thunderstorm that shook the house

2. and the rain fell really fast

3. My brother was startled

4. because he was outside

5. Now the water is knee-high

6. but we’re alright

7. We went canoeing to a nice park which is really fun

8. We saw some iguanas today

9. and we even had a black snake at our house

10.and I saw a snake on a canoe too

11.Every time I go out we go out in a canoe

12.or our dad carries us

13.because me and my brother don’t like going out in the water because of the snakes

14.We should be going back to school in three weeks

15.It’s a long time off

Exercise 7.3

Clause list:

1. The future must see the broadening of human rights throughout the world

2. People who have glimpsed freedom will never be content until they have secured it for themselves

3. In a truest sense, human rights are a fundamental object of law and government in a just society

4. Human rights exist to the degree that they are respected by people in relations with each other and by governments in relations with their citizens

5. The world at large is aware of the tragic consequences for human beings ruled by totalitarian systems

6. If we examine Hitler’s rise to power

7. we see how the chains are forged which keep the individual a slave

8. and we can see many similarities in the way things are accomplished in other countries

9. Politically men must be free to discuss and to arrive at as many facts as possible

10.and there must be at least a two-party system in a country

11.because when there is only one political party

12.too many things can be subordinated to the interests of that one party

13.and it becomes a tyrant and not an instrument of democratic government

10.8 Chapter 8

Exercise 8.1

The analysis is given here in the form of tree diagrams, in Figures 10.21 to 10.26.

Figure 10.21 Tree diagram for I always get to this computer later at night

Figure 10.22 Tree diagram for John is out golfing

Figure 10.23 Tree diagram for and Jane is at a sleepover birthday party

Figure 10.24 Tree diagram for where they are sleeping outside in tents

Figure 10.25 Tree diagram for and Sue has three friends over for a sleep over

Figure 10.26 Tree diagram for they are watching a movie now

Exercise 8.2

The three-strand analysis for each clause is given in Figure 10.27 in the form of box diagrams.

Figure 10.27 Three-strand analysis for the clauses from Exercise 8.2

Exercise 8.3

The three-strand analysis for each clause is given in Figure 10.28 in the form of box diagrams.

Figure 10.28 Three-strand analysis for the clauses from Exercise 8.3

10.9 Chapter 9

Exercise 9.1

Clause list:

1. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land?

2. The idea is strange to us

3. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water

4. how can you buy them?

5. Every part of this earth is sacred to my people

6. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people

7. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man

8. The white man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars

9. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth

10.for it is the mother of the red man

11.We are part of the earth

12.and it is part of us

13.The perfumed flowers are our sisters

14.the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers

15.The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man – all belong to the same family

16.The rivers are our brothers

17.they quench our thirst

18.The rivers carry our canoes

19.and feed our children.

20.If we sell you our land

21.you must remember and teach your children, that the rivers are our brothers, and yours

22.and you must henceforth give the rivers the kindness you would give any brother

23.We know that the white man does not understand our ways

24.One portion of the land is the same to him as the next

25.for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs

26.The earth is not his brother

27.but (the earth is) his enemy

28.and when he has conquered it he moves on

29.He leaves his father’s graves

30.and his children’s birthright is forgotten

31.He treats his mother, the earth, and his brother, the sky, as things to be bought, plundered, sold like sheep or bright beads

32.His appetite will devour the earth

33.and (it will) leave behind only a desert

34.There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities

35.(There is) No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in the spring, or the rustle of an insect’s wings

36.But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand

37.The clatter only seems to insult my ears

38.And what is there to life

39.if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night?

40.I am a red man

41.and (I) do not understand

42.The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleansed by rain or scented with the pine cone

43.The air is precious to the red man

44.for all things share the same breath

45.the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath

46.The white man, they all share the same breath

47.The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes

48.Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench

49.But if we sell you our land

50.you must remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports

51.The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath received also his last sigh

52.And if we sell you our land

53.you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow’s flowers

Sample clause analysis

Clauses [36] to [53] have been analysed for the three main metafunctions and are presented in Figure 10.29 in the form of box diagrams.

Figure 10.29 Three-strand analysis for clauses [36] to [53] from Exercise 9.1

Exercise 9.2

The following is a sample discussion of the text, taken from Schönthal (2009).

The nature of red and white: the influence of the experiential and interpersonal metafunction of language on the portrayal of two opposing viewpoints

Introduction

In 1854, Chief Seattle, a leader among the Puget Sound Indians of America, gave a memorable speech, which is still remembered today. Much controversy has taken place around this speech, mostly because there are several written versions of it and because it has never been proven that any of them follow the exact wording of the actual speech of 1854. One of the most famous versions is now generally believed to have been written by screenwriter Ted Perry in 1971. It is a short extract from this version that will be discussed in this report.

Ted Perry wrote the speech in Chief Seattle’s voice talking about the possibility of selling the red man’s land to the American government and depicting his people’s beliefs and relationship with nature. In this paper the contrast between representations of the red man and the white man in this speech will be analysed in terms of the experiential and interpersonal strands of meaning in order to reach a deeper understanding of the representation of the two opposing viewpoints.

Halliday (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 60) claims that ‘the clause is constituted not of one dimension of structure but of three, and that each of the three construes a distinctive meaning’. The different meanings portrayed function simultaneously within the clause (Thompson, 2004: 86). From the experiential perspective, language comprises a set of resources for referring to entities in the world and the ways in which those entities act on or relate to each other (Thompson, 2004: 86).

Hence, the experiential metafunction looks at how experience is represented in the clause. This is done by dissecting the clause into its constituents – process, participants and circumstances (Thompson, 2004: 87) – and identifying the process ‘with respect to . . . the number and kind of participants involved’ (Martin et al. 1997: 102). The interpersonal metafunction, on the other hand, is the part of meaning where speakers establish what they want to achieve with their message: Whether they are ‘giving’ or ‘demanding’ ‘information’ or ‘goods and services’ (Eggins, 2004: 144–5). Furthermore, it contains the function of whether the given information in the clause is ‘affirmed or denied, . . . including a number of choices of degree of certainty, or of usuality’ (Eggins, 2004: 172). It is these elements and features of the clause that will be used to discuss the representation of the red and the white man in Chief Seattle’s speech.

Two opposing viewpoints

In Chief Seattle’s speech, two opposing viewpoints of how to treat nature are being presented. This becomes apparent when looking at a specific kind of circumstance, which is used throughout the text. Within the short extract chosen for this analysis, the speaker makes use of a circumstance expressing an angle or a point of view, six times. These six occurrences are presented in Table 10.1.

Table 10.1 Circumstances of Angle

Furthermore, the use of mood and the clauses’ role in exchange illustrate the presence of two different viewpoints as well. In seventy-three out of eighty-two finite clauses the mood structure is a declarative forming a statement, presenting the two different perspectives, which creates a sense of factuality. In the nine remaining clauses, however, there is a shift in perspective when the red man, namely Chief Seattle, tries either to understand the white man’s position or to impose his own position onto the white man. This is done four times by using an interrogative mood structure asking for information and five times by using a declarative mood structure issuing a command with the help of the modal verb must. An example for each of these three uses of the interpersonal metafunction is given in Table 10.2.

Table 10.2 The use of ‘mood’ and ‘role in exchange’

The depiction of the white man

Let us now consider how these two opposing standpoints are represented individually by the experiential and interpersonal metafunction, focusing on the different participant roles in which the two parties may be found. Throughout the extract, the white man occupies the role of Actor nineteen times out of thirty-two occurrences as participant. In Hasan’s ‘scale of dynamism’ (1985: 46) Actor is placed at the very top of the continuum, identifying it as an active participant. In most of these cases the material process is realized by a verb with negative connotation in relation to nature, which is shown in Table 10.3.

Table 10.3 Material processes with the white man as Actor

In all but one of these nineteen clauses, aspects of nature occupy the participant role of either Goal or Scope. Hence, considering the different material processes, illustrated in Table 10.3, the white man is represented as an Actor in processes that either anticipate possession – the land is something that can be acquired (buying, taking, conquering), owned (keeping) and given away (selling) – or maltreatment (plundering, devouring, treating) of nature.

In addition to material processes, the white man is also represented as Senser in six further clauses with parts of nature. In Hasan’s scale of dynamism, Senser is placed in the middle of the continuum, hence it is less active and more passive than Actor. This would diminish the white man’s ‘activeness’ attributed to him by the material processes. However, in three of these cases, the polarity of the process is negative. Therefore, it follows that he is not a Senser. In the other three instances it is twice the red man who insists that if he sold the land to the white man he must honour it in return (see clauses 22 and 52) and once Chief Seattle makes use of a negatively connotated process, namely forgetting (see clause 9). Thus, in all the clauses where the white man is represented as a Senser, experiencing nature, it is done so negatively.

The depiction of the red man

In contrast to the depiction of the white man’s relationship with nature, the red man’s connection to his land is attributed with positive features. First, the red man carries the function of Actor only three times, in all of which Chief Seattle talks about the hypothetical case of him selling the land to the white man, hence shifting his perspective towards the white man’s point of view of how nature can be treated. In all the other cases where the red man is a participant within a material process he occupies the position of Goal which, having a strong sense of passivity, features near the lower end of Hasan’s scale of dynamism. In these instances it is nature itself which is the Actor of the material process. In any further clauses with nature as Actor, it simultaneously occupies the function of Goal too. Thus, nature either acts upon itself or the red man, which places them on an equal position. Moreover, on all these occasions the process is represented by a verb implying either support or care, as shown in Table 10.4.

Table 10.4 Material processes with nature as Actor

In almost all other clauses where the red man is occupying an ‘-er role’ (Hasan 1985: 45) which refers to the participant that is the source (i.e. the active part) of the process, the red man is either a Senser or a Carrier, both of which are placed versus the lower end of the scale of dynamism. In fact, the most frequent process type in which the red man appears within a participant role is relational attributive. Most often he is incorporated indirectly within the Attribute as possessive determiner of kinship terms, such as brother, sister or mother. The Carrier of these clauses is always an aspect of nature. Three instances of such an occurrence are given in Table 10.5.

Table 10.5 Kinship terms in relational attributive processes

These clauses support the fact that the red man and nature are on equal hierarchical levels, which is emphasized by the following statement: ‘We are part of the earth, and it is part of us.’

Conclusion

In this report, the opposing viewpoints of the white man and the red man have been discussed in terms of their grammatical representation in relation to nature in an excerpt from Ted Perry’s version of Chief Seattle’s speech. Circumstances of Angle and the varying use of mood and the role of the clause in exchange have been identified as setting up the two opposing positions. Furthermore, the different participant roles of the white man and the red man have been shown to contribute to their contrasting depiction. The white man is depicted negatively as dominating nature, whereas the red man is shown to share the same level with nature, being part of the same family.