will be
will be Simple Thing
Simple Quality
a. Simple Things
Some ‘simple things’ are metaphorical; the remainders are referred to as ‘ordinary’, and these are either conscious or non-conscious this is the distinction
that is actually made in the semantic system, not animateinanimate or humannon-human see: Diagram 2.7.
animal conscious
object material material
substance Simple Thing
abstractionmaterial Non-conscious
institution
semiotic object
abstraction
Diagram 2.7: Simple Things
Halliday M.A.K. Matthiessen, 1999: 61 showers
heavy
Most of the South - west
clear to partly cloudy and dry
Table 2.8: Examples of participants
general meteorological
culinary
Conscious Person,
man, woman, boy, girl,
baby Cook [‘you’]
Material: animal: higher
Horse, stallion,
mare, foal; dog, bitch, puppy
[only as
ingredients] Material: animal:
lower Ant,
butterfly, slug
Material: object House, rock, car,
hammer Scattered clouds
[ingredients:] Potato,
onion, stem, root,
[implements:] knife, pan
Material: substance
Water, air, tea, sand
Air, cloud,
sunshine [ingredients:] fat,
sugar, puree Material:
abstraction History,
mathematic A
slow-moving weather system
Heat, taste, colour Semiotic:
institution Government,
school Weather bureau
Semiotic: object Book, document,
report, film,
picture, painting, symbol
Forecast Recipe
Semiotic: abstraction
Notion, idea, fact, principle
Chance Halliday M.A.K. Matthiessen, 1999: 61
Non-conscious ordinary things are distinguished along more than one dimension, but the categorization given here can be taken as primary, in the sense
that it is the one that seems to have the clearest reactances in the grammar.
Most of the participants in the meteorological texts are in fact metaphorical; but there are a few which illustrate these categories: a slow-moving weather
system abstraction, ice substance, scattered clouds object, weather bureau institution. In contrast, most of the participants in the culinary texts are non-
metaphorical we refer to this congruent. They are concrete objects and
substances that can be chopped, added, sprinkled, and pored: vegetable, fat, sugar, puree, spinach, stems; or used as implements: knife, saucepean. These and other
examples are tabulated in Table 2.8.
b. Simple Qualities