Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

1. Thematic Roles

   • AGENT: the initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition.
   • PATIENT: the entity undergoing the effect of some action.
   • THEME: the entity which is moved by an action, or whose location is described.
   • EXPERIENCER: the entity which is aware of the action or state described by the predicate.
   • BENEFICIARY: the entity for whose benefit the action was performed.
   • INSTRUMENT: the means by which an action is performed or something comes about.
   • LOCATION: the place in which something is situaded or takes place.
   • GOAL: the entity towards which something moves, either literally or metaphorically.
   • SOURCE: the entity from which something moves, either literally or metaphorically.

2. Thematic tier: describes spatial relations.

3. Action tier: describes ACTOR-PATIENT type relations.

4. Participant Roles

   • Correspond to our arguments. They are needed by the predication; in the sense we have been discussing.

5. Non.participant Roles

   • Give extra information about the contex, typically information about the time, location, purpose or resul of the event.

6. Properties of the Agent Proto-Role

   • (A). volitional involment in the event or state.
   • (B). sentience (and/or preception).
   • (C). causing an event or change of state in another participant.
   • (D). movement (relative to the position of another participant).

7. Properties of the Patient Proto-Role

   • (A). undergoes change of state.
   • (B). incremental theme.
   • (C). causally affected by another participant.
   • (D). stationary relative to movement of another participant.

8. In Dowty's prototype and entailments described in the last section this linkage is described by an argument selection principle:

   • a. Argument selection principle: In predicates with grammatical subject and object, the argument for which the predicate entails the greatest number of Proto-Agent properties will be lexicalized as the subject of the predicate
   • b. Corollay 1: If two arguments a relation have equal numbers os entailed Proto-agent and Proto-patient properties then either or both may be lexicalized as the subject.
   • c. Corollary 2: With a three-place predicate, the non subject argument having the greater number of entailed proto-patient properties will be lexicalized as the direct object and the non subject argumen
   • d. Non-discreteness: Proto-roles, don't classify arguments exhaustively or discretely.