Construing experience in Spanish: Revisiting a Systemic Functional Description of Spanish Nuclear Transitivity

Abstract

This paper examines the systemic functional description of Spanish Nuclear Transitivity as proposed by Lavid, Arús and Zamorano (2010) and proposes two modifications to their system network. The first is to reevaluate their concept of 'causation', which is limited to 'lexical ergativity' (He broke the window/The window broke). It is argued that causation can be realized with a range of structures that include analytical (He made the boy run) and synthetic (He chased the boy) versions. Furthermore, lexical ergativity is subdivided into 'Instigation' (He broke the window) and 'Initiation' (He rolled the ball). These options are considered more 'delicate' choices of the 'effective voice' subsystem. The second modification is the inclusion of the ER-participant (Actor, Carrier, Sayer, Behaver, Senser) explicitness system, which is exclusive to Spanish. This set of options allow the speaker to present crucial participants in Agent•Process•Medium and Medium•Process configurations obliquely. Although the different realizations of this system ('se' passives, periphrastic passives, impersonal 'se' and impersonal 3 person plural), have been widely discussed in the literature from both systemic and non-systemic perspectives, these had not been mapped into the system network of Spanish Transitivity.

What’s in a name? The representation of illegal actors in the internal conflict in the Colombian press

“…Whenever the Agent was ellipsed, a common feature in Spanish, the co-text was searched for the referent and coded accordingly. Non-agentive forms such as passive voice or third-person plural (see García, 2013) were labelled as implicit. Examples (17) to (20) illustrate this classification.…”

“…Whenever the Agent was ellipsed, a common feature in Spanish, the co-text was searched for the referent and coded accordingly. Non-agentive forms such as passive voice or third-person plural (see García, 2013) Since indifferentiated forms do not allow the reader to identify the group responsible for the crimes, these and implicit forms were grouped together and contrasted with the differentiated forms. Figure 10 shows the percentage of implicit or indifferentiated Agent in clauses where the process is murdering or killing.…”

Análisis ideacional e interpersonal de escritos estudiantiles de historia en español dentro del marco sistémico

“…En términos del potencial de significado, "la transitividad es el componente ideacional en las cláusulas" (Halliday, 1976: 21). Este sistema construye gramaticalmente la experiencia con toda su complejidad, en el mundo afuera y dentro de nosotros, a partir de diversos tipos de procesos que se pueden realizar (García, 2013). Alrededor de cada tipo de proceso se organizan diferentes combinaciones de participantes en cada cláusula.…”

Motives and social actor positioning: the representation of the Chilean student movement in the national press

“…Motive in other texts (such as news reports), even in interaction, are hardly ever so. Finally, while van Leeuwen's model was originally devised to analyse English data, its foundations can be extrapolated to Spanish as both languages share important similarities when constructing causation at the clause-level (see Lavid, Arús & Zamorano-Mansilla, 2010;García, 2013).…”