The Six Processes in Halliday's Approach to

Transitivity
The six processes involved in Halliday's approach to transitivity are best illustrated in
Table 5(27) from the third edition, which is reproduced with a slight modification
below: the round brackets indicate that the second participant which they enclose is
optional.1
Table 8.7
Process type

Category meaning

material
action
event

'doing'

behavioural

Participants,
directly involved

Participants,
obliquely involved

Actor, (Goal)

Recipient, Client;
Scope; Initiator;
Attribute

'behaving'

Behaver

Behaviour

mental:
perception
affect
cognition

'sensing'
'sensing'
'feeling'
'thinking'

Senser, Phenomenon

verbal

'saying'

Sayer, Target/Recipient

Receiver, Verbiage

relational:
'attributing'
attribution
'attributing'
identification
'identifying'

Token, Value
Carrier, Attribute
Identified, Identifier

Attributor,
Beneficiary,
Assigner

existential

Existent

'doing'
'happening'

'existing'

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Note on learning the above table For the sake of simplicity, you may want to
concentrate on the first column initially, followed by the second (which in a way
explains the first), then the third. You should go to the fourth column only when you
are clear about the two earlier columns.

Some Notes and Further Observations on the Above Table

One of the things one can notice when one looks at the above table, is the number of
(direct) participants involved for each of the processes:

 Behavioural and existential processes have only one participant each.

The other processes may have two.
We can also note that
the second participants of material and relational processes may or may not be
present.2
We can note two further points:
Firstly, the participants are usually represented by nominal groups, and
Secondly, processes with single participants make use of intransitive verbs,
whilst those with two participants make use of transitive verbs (except
for relational processes which make use of intensive verbs).
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Passivisation and Participant Positions

As you know, most clauses with transitive verbs may be passivised. For our purpose
here, passivization changes the roles of the participants:
the second participant becomes the subject, whilst
the first participant becomes the adjunct, as illustrated below.
This indicates an important difference between Halliday's conception of
the subject in the analysis of mood and modality, and his conception of
the actor in transitivity analysis:
The actor (or first participant) and subject occur in the same position only in
the active voice.
In the passive voice, they occur in different positions.
As we can see below, the actor or First Participant is realised
by the Subject in the active voice and
by the Adjunct in the passive voice.

The passive voice, as you know, may also give rise to the stylistically interesting
phenomenon of agent deletion, where the actor or First Participant is not indicated,
as in the clause 'the ghost has been seen', which does not indicate who has or have
seen the ghost.
Table 8.8
a) Active Voice
the boy

saw

Participant[1] Process
Subject

b) Passive Voice

the ghost

the ghost

was seen

by the boy

Participant[2
]

Participant[2
]

Process

Participant[1]

Predicator Complement

Subject

Predicator

Adjunct
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Some Notes on the Behavioural Process

It should be mentioned here that behavioural processes stand
between material and mental processes. Partly as a result of this, some of you may
find it difficult to distinguish
between behavioural process verbs and material process verbs on the one hand,
and
between behavioural process verbs and mental process verbs on the other.
As a rule of thumb, a behavioural process verb is
intransitive (it has only one participant) and
indicates an activity in which both the physical and mental aspects are
inseparable and indispensable to it.
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Some Notes on the Mental Process

We should also note that a mental process is either
transitive, or alternatively,

 the target of the mental activity indicated by the verb is either implicit, or
mentioned in the adjunct that follows the verb.
Thus if a verb that describes sensing, feeling or thought is transitive, there is a very
good likelihood that it is a mental, and not a behavioural process verb.
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Some Notes on the Material Process

Material process verbs, like mental process verbs, can either
be transitive or intransitive. If a verb which describes physical action is transitive, it is
virtually definite that it is a material, and not abehavioural process verb.
For intransitive verbs, one way to determine whether an action is
a material or behavioural process is to look at the actor:
If the first participant of the intransitive verb denoting physical action is nonhuman, it is usually a material process verb.
If the first participant of the intransitive verb is human, the process is
o material if the verb is decidedly actional, or
o behavioural if the verb is not only actional, but in some way dependent
on the person's emotive, sensory or cognitive responses as well.
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Notes
1. The final column in the corresponding Tables 5(7) and 5(6) from the earlier editions of Halliday's Introduction is
not found, and is added from the third edition to the above table . Although there are some difficulties in the first
edition on whether the attribute in attributive relational processes is a participant, Halliday does appear to regard it
as such in the second and third editions. Back to earlier position..
2. With regard to material processes, cf. the examples 'the lions sprang' and `the lion caught the tourist' found in
Halliday's book. Both of them are material process clauses; but the former has one participant, whilst the latter has
two. Back to earlier position..