Benefactive Ranged Middle Material Clauses

Matthiessen (1995: 244):

Ranged middle material clauses that can be interpreted as a service may be benefactive in the sense of cliency and thus have a Client: He sang us an old folk song : He sang an old folk song for us.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, for Halliday ± Matthiessen (1985, 1994, 2004, 2014), these are behavioural clauses. For example, Halliday (1994: 139):

Behavioural processes are almost always middle; the most typical pattern is a clause consisting of Behaver and Process only, like Don’t breathe!, No one’s listening, He’s always grumbling. A common variant of these is that where the behaviour is dressed up as if it was a participant, like she sang a song, he gave a great yawn;