So far, we have made two linked adjustments to the usual reading of transitivity.
First, we suggested that clauses do not represent self-contained entities interacting, but rather configurations of participation.
Second, we suggested that participants are not things that enter relations, but relational positions constituted within those configurations.
At this point, one element of the traditional picture still tends to linger.
The idea of the process as an action that happens between or around participants.
It is easy to retain this intuition without noticing it.
We still tend to think:
there is a “doer”
there is something done
and there is an “action” connecting them
Even if we have given up on “things” as primary, we may still be holding onto “action” as something independently real.
Transitivity analysis, however, invites a more radical adjustment.
1. The Process Is Not an Extra Layer
Consider again:
The boy kicked the ball.
It is tempting to imagine:
boy = entity
ball = entity
kicked = action linking them
But this still treats the process as something added onto pre-existing entities.
A more careful reading suggests something else:
“kicked” is not an external force connecting participants; it is the configuration through which “boy” and “ball” become intelligible as Actor and Goal.
The process is not an additional component.
It is the organising principle of the entire experiential configuration.
2. What a Process Does
A process does not simply describe movement or change.
It:
distributes participant roles,
defines relational asymmetries,
establishes experiential structure,
and makes certain meanings available while excluding others.
In this sense, a process is less like an action and more like a mode of participation structuring experience.
It is what allows something to be construed as:
doing,
sensing,
being,
saying,
existing,
behaving.
Each process type is not a category of “actions” but a different way participation is organised.
3. The Illusion of the Independent Verb
Traditional grammatical intuition often treats the verb as the “core” of the clause.
This is understandable.
The verb tends to carry dynamic energy in interpretation.
But from a participation-oriented reading, the verb is not the source of action.
It is the locus of configuration.
It does not add motion to a static scene.
It establishes the experiential geometry within which participant roles become meaningful.
To say:
“kicked”
is not to name an action that then links boy and ball.
It is to construe a specific type of participation in which:
one participant is positioned as initiating force,
another as impacted entity,
and the event is construed as material transformation.
The “action” is the name we give to that configuration once it is stabilised in interpretation.
4. Process Types as Modes of Participation
Once this shift is made, the familiar process types begin to look different.
Material processes
Not “actions in the world,” but configurations of participation where change is construed as externalised interaction.
Mental processes
Not “internal actions,” but configurations where experience is construed through sensing, feeling, or thinking participation.
Relational processes
Not “static descriptions,” but configurations where participation is construed as identification, attribution, or equivalence.
Verbal processes
Not “speech acts,” but configurations where meaning emerges through communicative participation.
Behavioural and existential processes
Not residual categories, but specialised configurations of experiential participation at the boundary of action, consciousness, and presence.
In each case, what is primary is not the “type of action,” but the organisation of participation that makes that type of experience intelligible.
5. What Becomes of “Action”?
At this point, a natural question arises.
If processes are not actions, do actions disappear from the analysis?
The answer is no—but they are relocated.
“Action” becomes a secondary interpretation of certain configurations of participation, not their foundation.
We experience something as an action when:
participation is asymmetrically distributed,
change is construed as externally oriented,
and roles are stabilised as Actor/Goal configurations.
In other words:
action is a reading of participation, not its cause.
6. Experience Without an Underlying Mechanism
One of the consequences of this shift is that we no longer need to imagine a hidden layer of mechanisms beneath language.
We do not need:
entities doing things behind the clause,
forces moving between objects,
or actions connecting pre-given units.
Instead, we have:
structured participation becoming intelligible as experience.
The clause is not a surface representation of deeper mechanical relations.
It is the site at which participation is construed as meaning.
7. A Reversal of Intuition
This leads to a subtle inversion of the everyday model.
We tend to think:
first there are things, then they act, then language describes it.
Transitivity suggests instead:
first there is participation, then configuration, then the distinction between “things” and “actions” emerges within that configuration.
This is not a denial of experience.
It is a re-description of how experience is structured in meaning.
8. Closing Reframing
We might now restate the emerging picture in a compact form:
Participants are not things.
Processes are not actions.
Clauses are not containers.
Instead:
a clause is a configuration in which experience is construed as participation.
And if that sounds increasingly abstract, it may be worth noticing something quite concrete:
We never actually encounter “things” and then attach actions to them.
We encounter structured events—already meaningful, already organised, already distributed into roles.
Transitivity is simply a way of making that structure visible.
Not by adding interpretation.
But by noticing what is already there in the way experience is made into meaning.
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