With all due respect:A happy baby makes a happy mother.You say this must be identifying, so the baby and the mother refer to the same entity - that can't be right.It's simple present — I see no reason why a simple present cannot be material: physical actions are material whether they are habitual or not."'I walk on the beach every day".And you say it's reversible: this is perhaps true in the pragmatic sense that if the mother is happy the baby probably will be too, but that's not what the clause says, and "A happy mother makes a happy baby" is not the same thing as "A happy baby makes a happy mother". What about
"A sunny day makes a happy tourist"?What have I missed?
Blogger Comments:
[1] This is misleading, because it is not true. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 276):
In the ‘identifying’ mode, some thing has an identity assigned to it. What this means is that one entity is being used to identify another: ‘x is identified by a’, or ‘a serves to define the identity of x’. Structurally we label the x-element, that which is to be identified, as the Identified, and the a-element, that which serves as identity, as the Identifier.
Cf. the identifying clauses:
- Peter owns the house and
- asbestos dust causes mesothelioma
[2] This misses the point. It is not a question of whether or not the simple present tense can be used in material clauses, but whether or not it is the marked or unmarked option. Because the simple present tense is the marked option for material clauses, but the unmarked option for relational clauses, it is one diagnostic tool for distinguishing these two process types.
[3] To be clear, the 'reversibility' is one of voice:
- A happy baby makes ('produces') a happy mother [operative]
- A happy mother is made ('produced') by a happy baby [receptive]
and it distinguishes (reversible) identifying relational clauses from (non-reversible) attributive relational clauses.
[4] See above.
