Arguments and semantic roles

The properties or relationships described by different predicates may differ in any number of specific details, but many of these differences will have no effect on the grammatical structure of the sentence. For example, someone who slaps John (as Mary did in(5d)) is performing a different action from someone who spanks, beats, whips, punches, or clubs him. But, in most contexts, the semantic differences among these verbs are irrelevant to the grammar. Simple sentences which express the relationship between John and Mary will have exactly the same grammatical structure no matter which of these verbs is used. On the other hand, in some languages sentences like Mary loves John or Mary sees John would have different grammatical properties from Mary slaps John.

It is helpful to classify arguments into broad semantic categories according to the kind of role they play in the situations described by their predicates. For example in the sentence Mary slaps John, Mary plays the role of an AGENT, while John plays the role of a PATIENT. The same roles are involved if Mary spanks, beats, whips, punches, or clubs John. In the sentence Mary sees John, however, Mary plays the role of an EXPERIENCER; John is the perceived object, which we will call a STIMULUS. The use of a different role label implies a potential difference in grammatical properties.¹

How many of these categories are there? How many role labels do we need to use? Different linguists have different opinions on this issue, and (unfortunately but not surprisingly) sometimes use the same labels in different ways. We will make use of (at least) the following semantic roles:

(6) INVENTORY OF SEMANTIC ROLES:²

AGENT: causer or initiator of events

EXPERIENCER: animate entity which perceives a stimulus or registers a particular mental or emotional process or state

RECIPIENT: animate entity which receives or acquires something

BENEFICIARY: entity (usually animate) for whose benefit an action is performed

INSTRUMENT: inanimate entity used by an agent to perform some action

THEME: entity which undergoes a change of location or possession, or whose location is being specified

PATIENT: entity which is acted upon, affected, or created; or of which a state or change of state is predicated

STIMULUS: object of perception, cognition, or emotion; entity which is seen, heard, known, remembered, loved, hated, etc.

LOCATION: spatial reference point of the event (the SOURCE, GOAL, and PATH roles are often considered to be sub-types of LOCATION)

SOURCE: the origin or beginning point of a motion

GOAL: the destination or end-point of a motion

PATH: the trajectory or path way of a motion

ACCOMPANIMENT (or COMITATIVE): entity which accompanies or is associated with the performance of an action

¹. Of course, semantic-role categories do not reflect all the semantic differences which could be relevant to grammar. However, semantic roles generally play a crucial part in the assignment of Grammatical Relations, which, in turn, determine a number of important grammatical features. As we will see, these features often include case, agreement, word order, and participation in various syntactic processes.

². Notice that this list is restricted to ARGUMENT roles. Some other commonly expressed types of semantic information, e.g. time, manner, purpose, etc., are not included here, because the elements which express these concepts are almost always ADJUNCTS rather than arguments.

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

جامعة أم البنين (عليها السلام) الإلكترونية تعلن فتح باب التسجيل للدراسات التبليغية والقرآنية

مستشفى الكفيل يعتمد أحدث التقنيات العالمية في عمليات زراعة القوقعة

مركز السيد جعفر الحلي يستقبل مدير صحة كربلاء للاطّلاع على خدماته المقدّمة للزائرين

قسم الشؤون الفكريَّة يقدِّم ندوة ثقافية لوفد شبابي من الموصل

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

حالة صحية شائعة قد تُخفي "إنذارا مبكرا" للإصابة بالسرطان !

"أوميغا 3" صديق القلب.. هل يربك سكر الدم؟

بدائل لليمون.. 8 إضافات للماء تعزز فوائده الصحية

دراسة: محاولة متعمدة لنشر الإنفلونزا تنتهي بـ"مفاجأة"

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

سلامة الأطفال: سبع قواعد ذهبية للركوب الآمن بالسيارة

توقع خطير لماسك: الروبوتات ستتفوق على البشر من حيث العدد

دراسة تكشف عاملا غير متوقع يرتبط بزيادة خطر الإصابة بالتوحد

"ميتا" توقف وصول المراهقين إلى شخصيات الذكاء الاصطناعي ؟

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Anaphora vs. deixis

Grammatical case vs. semantic case

Semantic roles and Grammatical Relations Conclusion

Semantic roles and Grammatical Relations

Constituency

Identifying meaningful elements Summary

Identifying meaningful elements within words

Identifying meaningful elements Identifying word meanings

Consequences of modifying Gunlogsons 2001 model

A case study of the semantics of clear - Factivity revisited

A case study of the semantics of clear - The analysis

A case study of the semantics of clear - Vagueness