TRANSITIVITY

1. TRANSITIVITY TEXT ANALYSIS:Text:As Dead as a Dodo[from Bowler, Bill and Sue Parminter (1999) Network. Student’s Book 2. Oxford: OUP, pp. 80-81]

2. As dead as a dodo Have you ever seen a quagga or a great auk in a zoo? No? Don’t be surprised! They are actually extinct animals. Right! But here’s the surprise: did you know that 99 % of all the animals that have lived on earth are extinct? That’s a lot of extinct animals.

3. Analysing processes & circumstances and finding patterns

5. CLAUSES IN THE PREVIOUS CLAUSE:

6. Long ago most animals became extinct naturally, because of changes in the weather or because their usual food or habitat disappeared. In recent times, however, most animals have become extinct because of humans. Sometimes people have destroyed a species for its meat, its fur or its feathers. Sometimes, farmers have destroyed a species to protect farm animals or farmland. Sometimes hunters have destroyed a species just for sport.

7. Analysing processes & circumstances and finding patterns

10. THE DODO

11. The dodo, which lived in the island of Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, built its nests on the ground and couldn’t fly. European sailors first arrived on the island in 1507. They killed dodos for their meat. They also brought dogs, cats and rats to Mauritius. These animals destroyed the dodos’ nests, eggs and chicks. Soon there weren’t many dodos left. Some dodos were sent to animal collectors in Europe. The collectors didn’t breed these birds, however. They just put them on show in cages. The dodo became extinct more than 300 years ago, in 1681.

12. Analysing processes & circumstances and finding patterns

16. THEQUAGGA

17. The quagga lived in S. Africa. It was a kind of zebra. The front half of its body was striped brown and white. The back half of its body was plain brown. Like other zebras, quaggas lived in grasslands. In the 19th c. hunters killed many quaggas for their meat and for their skins. During the same period, farmers took large parts of the quaggas’ grassland habitat and turned them into farmland. Some people tried to domesticate the quagga, but with little success. The last wild quagga was killed by hunters in 1878. The last quagga in the world died in Amsterdam zoo in 1883.

18. Analysing processes & circumstances and finding patterns

22. THE PASSENGER PIGEON

23. The passenger pigeon lived in North America. A hundred and fifty years ago there were thousands of millions of passenger pigeons. American Indians killed them for food, but they didn’t hunt young birds or they didn’t kill more than they needed. They treated the passenger pigeon like the buffalo, with respect. White Americans hunted the birds for sport. They sometimes killed hundreds of thousands in a day. The feathers were used to make pillows and the meat was cheaper than chicken. Soon there weren’t many passenger pigeons left. In 1900 a boy shot the last wild bird. In 1914 the last passenger pigeon bird died in Cincinnati Zoo.

24. Analysing processes & circumstances and finding patterns

29. Animals like the dodo, the quagga and the passenger pigeon have disappeared forever. Today other animals are in danger of following them. The Spanish lynx and the black-headed uakari are endangered species because people have destroyed large areas of their natural habitat. Slow-moving Caribbean manatees are endangered because humans have turned the sea in which they live into a leisure area. Speed boats have already killed many of them, and fishing lines have seriously injured others. Shouldn’t we stop these animals from becoming extinct too before it’s too late?

30. The Spanish lynx

31. The black-headed uakari

32. The Slow-moving Caribbean manatee

35. clause embedded in the previous clause:

37. Commenting on processes in :“As dead as a dodo” The processes that prevail are in order of decreasing frequency: • material effective • attributive intensive classifying/ descriptive/ circumstantial • material middle • existential • material middle w/ range (only one) • mental perception (one) • mental cognition (one)

38. The uses the different processes are put to are: material effective: representing actions by human beings that have extended to certain species of animals and have affected them negatively. When those actions are negated, they represent actions that have not been so destructive (as in the section on American Indians) attributive intensive :classifying/ descriptive/ circumstantial:classifying and describing animals that no longer exist so the reader can picture them in his/her mind

39. The uses the different processes are put to are: material middle: representing actions of animals that do not extend to other entities and affect them (couldn’t fly) or actions that set the context to what’s to be said (arrived) or actions/ happenings that are the result/consequence of effective actions (died) existential : to represent non-existence as consequence of effective actions, i.e. actions affecting animals. mental (perception, cognition): to engage readers’ interest by having him, in combination with questions, reflect upon perceptions and knowledge related to topic to be dealt with

40. Note that all material effective processes, which are by far the most frequent one, are associated with human beings as Actor participants, sometimes as a generic class, sometimes as a more specific member of the class = white man; Europeans; a boy, sometimes represented indirectly by something that he typically uses (Speedboat, fishing lines). This clearly reflects the author’s view that human beings are to be held as responsible for the extinction of animals and signals his purpose of showing/ demonstrating/providing plenty of conclusive evidence of this.

41. The Circumstances prevailing are the following: • Circumstances of location: spatial • Circumstances of location: temporal • Circumstances of cause: purpose The uses they seem to be put to in the text are suggested below:

42. Circumstances of location: spatial representing the location, mainly of animals unknown to us because now extinct. Circumstances of location: temporal : organizing sections of the text chronologically to represent the history/evolution of the problem.

43. Circumstances of cause: purpose They are usually associated with effective material processes and represent the purposes behind the human actions that affected animals. Many of these purposes, interestingly enough, are not worthy or such that they can justify the actions, except again in the case of the American Indians. In conclusion, apart from helping organize the text, circumstances, especially those of cause: purpose, help drive home/ effectively convey the author’s point of random destruction of the animal world by humans