Subject manipulation in texts
Our answer (description 2)
"Hour after hour the walls of the womb close in upon her in powerful
regular contractions . . . Now at last we can see who it is that has
been struggling to be born."
(birth in Penelope Leach, Baby and Child)
In the first clause ('Hour after hour the walls of the womb close in
upon her in powerful regular contractions': ASPAAA) the subject of the
active transitive construction is a noun phrase referring to part of
the mother, and the object of the clause is a pronoun referring to the
mother. So this account seems less abstract. But because a part of the
woman is the subject of the dynamic predicator and she is the object,
it still seems that the mother is not in control of what is going on.
The second sentence is a complex one. Its overall structure is AASPO,
with 'we' as the subject. So we are moved to the viewpoint of the observers
in the birthing room, watching what is happening from the outside. But
the noun phrase acting as object 'who it is that has been struggling to
be born' involves a complex relative clause postmodifying 'who', which
has the baby referred to as the agent of the dynamic verb 'struggling'.
So in this extract, written by a woman, although the abstractions have
been removed, the woman is still not in control, and if anyone is, it
is the baby.
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