The Thought Occurs

Thursday, 12 May 2011

Sample Difficult Clause Analysis

DATA:

Four German children owe their lives to an early night

ANALYSIS:

Four German children = Token
owe = Process: relational: identifying: possessive
their lives = Value
to an early night = Cause: Reason realised incongruently as Beneficiary

Compare:
Four German children owe their life savings to an email scammer

[owe (somebody something) is a possessive verb of benefaction serving as an identifying process (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004: 246)]

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