After Annabelle Lukin wrote asflanet on 5 Feb 2024 at 11:56:
I'm keen to hear thoughts on the analysis of this clause:
The earth formed some 4,600 years ago from a vast cloud of gas and dust.
If "formed" is a creative process, and "the earth" is what is created, it can't exist before the process takes place. So it can't be the actor of that process. My memory tells me that somewhere (but I haven't got a refrerence to hand) Halliday talks about an "effected" - the participant created by a process (as opposed to an "affected" - the participant altered by a process). To avoid any confusion, with my (non-anglophone) students I used to use the term "result". I would suggest that "the earth" is effected/result.
Blogger Comments:
[1] See the clause analysis here.
[2] To be clear, in terms of ergativity, The Earth is the Medium of the Process formed, which, in an intransitive clause is the Actor.
[3] To be clear, the affectum/effectum distinction applies to transitive clauses, not intransitive clauses. Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 148):
The subtypes that have been generally recognised in grammar are (1) intransitive/transitive; (2) within intransitive, action/event; and (3) within transitive, effectum/affectum. … The third is the distinction between a Goal that 'exists' prior to the doing of the deed (affectum: Mary threw the ball) and one that is brought into existence by the doing (effectum: Jack built a house). We shall use this distinction, referred to as dispositive/creative, to explain figures of doing in terms of their outcome in other figures.
[4] To be clear, this only creates confusion, since "effected" applies only to transitive clauses, and 'result' is a type of Cause circumstance, not a participant.
On the other hand, Halliday & Matthiessen (1999: 149) classify subtypes of figures of doing according to outcome:
