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, oftne undergoing some change in state
       • Theme: the entity which is moved by an ation, or whose location is described
         • Experiencer: the entity which is aware of the action or state described by the predicate but which is not in control of the action or state
           • 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 situated or takes place
                 • Goal: the entity towads which something moves, either literally or metaphorically
                   • the entity from which something moves, eitherliterally or metaphorically

2. In the generative grammar literature, this listing of thematic roles is often called a thematic role grid, or theta-gridfor short

   • A problem with thematic roles, is first about delimiting particular roles
     • The second problem is more general: how do we define theta role in general?

3. We can use the term figure and ground to describe this kind of linguistic perspective: if we call the situation described a scene.

   • Other languages have a special type of passive, often called the impersonal passive, which does not allow the Agent to be mentioned in the sentence