Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

Sentence Semantics 2: Participants

1. Thematic Roles

   • Two principal problems
     • Delimiting particular roles
     • Identity individual thematic roles for each verb.

2. Types of roles

   • Agent
   • Patient
   • Theme
   • Experience
   • Instrument
   • Location
   • Goal
   • Source

3. Grammatical relations

   • Passive voice
     • Alllowsss the foregrounding of non-agent roles o subject and the backgrounding of agent roles away from subject.
   • Middle voice
     • Reflect the affectedness of the subject in the action of the verb.

4. verbs thematic roles

   • Thematic role grind