In the previous discussion, we suggested that transitivity does not begin with self-contained entities that later enter into relations.
Rather, it construes experience as configurations of participation.
This immediately raises a question that tends to feel unavoidable:
If participants are not things, then what are they?
The most natural response is to resist the premise.
After all, it seems obvious that language refers to things:
a boy,
a rock,
a city,
a thought,
a river.
Surely these are entities first, and participants second.
But this is precisely the assumption that transitivity quietly complicates.
1. The Seduction of “Thingness”
The idea of a “thing” feels fundamental because it aligns with everyday perception.
We encounter relatively stable forms in experience:
bodies persist,
objects endure,
names recur.
From this, it is tempting to conclude:
there are things, and language describes what they do.
But transitivity analysis repeatedly resists this ordering.
It does not treat “boy,” “rock,” or “city” as stable carriers of identity that subsequently acquire roles.
Instead, it treats them as elements whose experiential function is distributed by process configuration.
This is a subtle but important shift.
2. The Same “Thing” Does Not Remain the Same Participant
Consider again the familiar example:
The rock shattered the window.
He lifted the rock.
The rock was heavy.
She noticed the rock.
We are inclined to say:
the rock is the same thing in each case.
But grammatically, something more interesting is happening.
In each clause, “rock” is not functioning as the same kind of participant.
It is:
Actor (in one configuration)
Goal (in another)
Carrier (in another)
Phenomenon (in another)
If participant roles were properties of things, this would be paradoxical.
A single thing would be simultaneously many incompatible types.
But transitivity does not require this paradox because it does not treat participant roles as intrinsic properties at all.
It treats them as relational positions within experiential configurations.
The “rock” is not a stable participant with multiple roles.
It is a lexical resource entering different configurations of participation.
3. Participant Roles Are Effects of Configuration
A key reorientation follows:
participant roles are not assigned to things; they are generated by processes.
This can be stated more precisely:
A process configures an experiential domain.
Within that configuration, positions become available.
Lexical items are construed as occupying those positions.
Thus:
Actor is not “what something is”
Goal is not “what something is”
Senser is not “what something is”
They are what something becomes intelligible as within a configuration of meaning-making.
This means that participant roles are not ontological categories.
They are grammatical effects of relational organisation.
4. There Is No “Bare Participant”
Once this is seen, a further implication becomes difficult to avoid.
There is no participant outside participation.
A “boy” outside any process configuration is not yet a grammatical participant.
It is a lexical potential.
Only within a process does it become:
Actor,
Senser,
Carrier,
Behaver,
or otherwise.
This is not merely a technical observation about clause structure.
It is a more general claim about how experience is made meaningful in language:
participation precedes participant identity.
Or more carefully:
participant identity is an effect of participation.
5. What Replaces “Thing”?
At this point, a resistance often arises.
If we abandon “things,” what do we have left?
The answer is not emptiness.
It is relational structure.
What appears as a “thing” is:
a node in a configuration of processes,
a stable enough recurrence across instances of participation,
a recognisable pattern within experiential organisation.
In other words:
not a substance, but a repeatable position in meaning.
This is why the same lexical item can appear across multiple participant roles without contradiction.
It is not shifting between properties.
It is being reconfigured across different experiential events.
6. A Shift in Ontological Intuition
The cumulative effect of transitivity analysis, when taken seriously, is a quiet but persistent shift:
Not:
there are things that act and are acted upon
but:
there are configurations of participation in which “things” become intelligible as participants.
This does not deny the everyday reality of objects or persons.
It reframes what “object” and “person” mean within the grammar of experience.
They are not prior to participation.
They are what participation makes available.
7. Why This Matters
This matters because it destabilises a very deep habit of thought:
the assumption that identity is primary and relation secondary.
Transitivity reverses this silently.
It suggests that:
relational configuration is primary,
participant identity is derivative.
This is not a philosophical imposition on grammar.
It is a reading of what grammar is already doing when examined carefully.
And once this becomes visible, it becomes difficult to return to the idea that language is primarily about naming things and describing their properties.
Instead, language appears as something closer to this:
a system for construing experience as participation.
Which is, in the end, a much more demanding and much more interesting claim.
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