Transitivity

[Mohamad Zaki Hussein]

Dear friends in sysfunc and discours mailing lists,

I want to ask a question which is related to my thesis. The question is
about the following sentence and its relation to 'transitivity':

"The workers demand that their wages be increased in accordance with the
minimum wages of the Bogor municipal region."

The question is: what is the process type of the first clause of the
above sentence (which is "The workers demand")?

I found the difficulty to determine the process type of the first clause
in the above sentence because it seems not suitable to any process
types.

We cannot say that it is a 'material process' because it leads to a
projection in the second clause (which is "that their wages increased in
accordance with the minimum wages of the Bogor municipal region"),
whereas according to Halliday and Matthiessen, a material process 'does
not lead to a system of PROJECTION' (Halliday and Matthiessen).

We cannot say that it is a 'verbal process' because its projection has a
different function from the projection in the 'verbal process'. A
projection in the 'verbal process' expresses the 'content' of the
'verbal processing', while in the above sentence, the projection does
not express the 'content' of the 'demand' process but it expresses the
'hope', a future result which is desired, by the workers from the
'demand' process.

We cannot say that it is a 'mental process' because it could lead to a
benefactive option (for example, "The workers demand (to the
employer)"), whereas according to Halliday and Matthiessen, 'a mental
clause does not lead to a benefactive option.'

And off course it is too far from the 'relational process'.

So what is the process type of the first clause in the above sentence
("The workers demand")?

I think that's all. Thank you very much for your attention.

Best regards,
Zaki