Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

1. Entities

   • Subject
   • Object
   • Complement of Object

2. Thematic Roles

   • Agent
     • The initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition
   • Patient
     • The entity undergoing the effect of some action, often undergoing some change in state.
   • Theme
     • The entity which is moved by an action or whose location is described
   • Location
     • The place in which something is situated or takes places.
   • Goal
     • the entity towards which something moves,
   • Source
     • the entity form which something moves,

3. Grammatical Relations

   • There is a tendency for subjects to be agents, direct objects to be patients and themes, and instruments to occur as prepositional phrases

4. Verbs

   • The listing of thematic roles in generative grammar literature is often called a thematic role grid,

5. Problems

   • Delimiting particular roles
   • Defining theta-roles in general

6. Voice

   • Passive
   • Middle
     • The subject of the verb is affected by the action described by the verb
   • Active