TLGA 103: Types of Processes in Grammatical Analysis

Types of Process

The following list is the principle process types recognized in Systemic Functional Grammar. As can be seen, each individual process type is usually associated with a characteristic set of participant types.

Systemic Functional Grammar

Material processes

- They express the notion that some participant (called actor) does something (may be to some other entity, called goal).

- Verbs of action like run, kick, climb, spring are used.

Mental processes

- These are expressed by verbs of feeling,perceiving and thinking such as like,hate,love,know,think and understand.

- Here, participants have different names of Senser (the conscious being animate or inanimate that is feeling,thinking or seeing) and Phenomenon (that which is sensed or felt).

Relational processes

- In these clauses a relation is being set up between two separate entities.

- Relational clauses construe being and do this in two different modes – attribution and identification.These two types of this process have different sets of participants roles:

             1. Attributive clauses with Carrier + Attribute.

             2. Identifying clauses.

Behavioral processes

- They are expressed by verbs such as: 
 cough, yawn, smile, breathe, faint, sleep, look, watch, stare, listen, think, worry, dream, sing , dance, lie(down), sit up/down, chatter, grumble, talk, cry, laugh, smile, frown, sing, snarl,whine.

- As distinct from other groups, only one participant is required, the person doing the laughing,smiling and coughing or yawning.

- This participant is termed the BEHAVOR, a conscious being like the SENSOR but the process is more like one of  “doing”.

Verbal processes

- This is a large category that not only includes not only the different modes of saying (asking, commanding, offering, stating) but also semiotic processes that are not necessarily verbal (showing, indicating) as in:

      "His face tells stories untold"

- The central participant is the SAYER. The VERBIAGE is what is said and TARGET or RECEIVER is the person it is said to.

Existential processes

- These represent that something exists or happens, as in:

      "There was a cat" or "There was a solitary girl"

- In these cases what we are doing is affirming the existence of something,or someone.

- As with behavioral verbs there is only one participant here.

- In these clauses there acts as a grammatical subject but it doesn’t fulfill any function outside of its grammatical role.The only significant element is the thing ,or person,being affirmed as existing.This is termed the existent.

Verb processes according to systemic functional grammar. 

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