Sentence Semantics 2:

Participants
 Group 6:

Tuti
a tu l Aulia Nur Azizah Alaw
M u z a y y in iyah
ah Sri M
M u s h a f iy yta M
S
 Materials:

Introduction: Classifying The Motivation for

Participants Identifying Thematic Roles
Thematic Roles Causation
Grammatical Relations and
Voice
Thematic Roles
Classifiers and Noun Classes
Verbs and Thematic Role Grids
Problems with Thematic Roles
 Introduction: Classifying
Participants

“Gina raised the car with a jack”

This sentence identifies an event with three entities, Gina , the car, and a
jack, related by the action described by the verb raise.
The sentence portrays these entities in specific roles: Gina is the entity
responsible for initiating and carrying out the action, the car is acted upon
and has its position changed by the action, and the jack is the means by
which Gina is able to cause the action.

Such roles have a number of labels in semantics, including participant roles,

deep semantic cases, semantic roles, thematic relations, and thematic roles.
 Thematic Roles

Thematic roles, also known as List of thematic roles

semantic roles or theta roles, (relevant role nominals in bold):
are a fundamental concept in 1.AGENT, the initiator of some action,
linguistics that describe the capable of acting with volition, e.g.
roles that different entities play David cooked the rashers.
in a sentence (Khalid, 2023). The fox jumped out of the ditch.
2.PATIENT, the entity undergoing the
Each sentence consists of effect of some action, often
different entities, so semantic undergoing some change in state,
roles are used to indicate the e.g.
role played by each entity in a Enda cut back these bushes.
sentence. The sun melted the ice.
3. THEME, the entity which is moved
6. INSTRUMENT, the means by
by an action, or whose location is
which an action is performed or
described, e.g.
something comes about, e.g.
Roberto passed the ball wide.
She cleaned the wound with an
The book is in the library.
antiseptic wipe.
4. EXPERIENCER, the entity which is
They signed the treaty with the
aware of the action or state
same pen.
described by the predicate but
7. LOCATION, the place in which
which is not in control of the action
something is situated or takes place,
or state, e.g.:
e.g.
Kevin felt ill.
The monster was hiding under
Mary saw the smoke.
the bed.
Lorcan heard the door shut.
The band played in a marquee.
5. BENEFICIARY, the entity for whose
8. GOAL, the entity toward which
benefit the action was performed,
something moves
e.g.
Sheila handed her license to the
Robert filled in the form for his
policeman.
grandmother.
Pat told the joke to his friends.
They baked me a cake.
9. SOURCE, the entity from which
something moves Thus to return to our first example,
The plane came back from repeated below:
Kinshasa.
We got the idea from a French Gina raised the car with a jack.
magazine.
10. STIMULUS, the entity causing an we can describe the thematic roles
effect (usually psychological) in the by calling:
Gina the AGENT of the action
EXPERIENCER, e.g.
the car the THEME
John didn’t like the cool breeze.
the jack the INSTRUMENT
The noise frightened the
passengers.
 Grammatical Relations and
Thematic Roles

Grammatical Relations refers to the way words and phrases in a sentence

relate to each other grammatically. This includes relationships such as
subject, object, and oblique in the sentence.

Thematic Roles refers to the roles played by elements in the sentence that
relate to the meaning of the verb or predicate in the sentence. Some
examples of common thematic roles include agent (who performs the
action), theme (who receives the action), source (the origin of the action),
and goal (the purpose of the action).
It is important to understand how thematic roles relate to the
grammatical relations in the sentence.
For example, in the sentence

"John kicked the ball"

John is the subject (grammatical relationship), while the thematic

role is the agent (the person performing the action).
The ball is the object (grammatical relationship), while the
thematic role is the theme (the object that receives the action).
While in English there is a tendency for subjects to be AGENTS, direct
objects to be PATIENTS and THEMES, and INSTRUMENTS to occur as
prepositional phrases, this need not always be the case.

There are two basic situations where this is not the case: the first is
where roles are simply omitted, and the grammatical relations shift to
react to this and the second is where the speaker chooses to alter
the usual matching between roles and grammatical relations, a
choice often marked by an accompanying change of verbal voice.
Verbs and Thematic Role Grids

In the generative grammar literature, this listing of

thematic roles is often called a thematic role grid, or
theta-grid for short.
put V: <Agent, Theme, Location>
(This entry tells us that put is a three-argument, or
ditransitive, verb and spells out the thematic roles the
three arguments may carry).
Example :
To distinguish between the role of argument played by the prepositional phrase
in the bathroom in number 1 below and its status as an non-argument in number
2:
1. [S Roland [ VP put [ NP the book] [ PP in the bathroom] ] ]
2. [S Roland [ VP read [NP the book] ] [ PP in the bathroom] ]
The square brackets in number 1 reflect the fact that while in the bathroom is
an argument of the verb put, explaining why it cannot be omitted:
Roland put the book.
it is not an argument of the verb read, on the other hand, which can form a
sentence without it:
Roland read the book.
In grammatical terms, in the bathroom is an argument in number 1 , it is an
adjunct in number 2.
English has a class of TRANSFER , or GIVING , verbs which in one subclass
includes the verbs give, lend, supply, pay, donate, contribute. These verbs
encode a view of the transfer from the perspective of the AGENT.
Example :
V: <Agent, Theme, Recipient>

Another subclass of these TRANSFER verbs encodes the transfer from the
perspective of the RECIPIENT . These verbs include receive, accept, borrow,
buy, purchase, rent, hire.

V: <Recipient , Theme, Source>

Problems with Thematic Roles

There are two general problems with thematic roles

(usually abbreviated to “theta-roles,” sometimes also
called θ-roles).
The first problem is really about delimiting particular
roles.
To identify individual thematic roles for each verb,
we would say that a verb like beat gives us two
theta-roles, a BEATER -role and a BEATEN -role
Example :
V: <Agent, Patient , Instrument>
 Properties of the Agent Proto-Role (Dowty
1991: 572):
The second problem is more a. volitional involvement in the event or state
general: how do we define theta- b. sentience (and/or perception)
roles in general? c. causing an event or change of state in
Dowty (1991) proposes a solution another participant
where theta-roles are not d. movement (relative to the position of
semantic primitives but are another participant)
defined in terms of entailments of Properties of the Patient Proto-Role
the predicate. (Dowty 1991: 572):
Theta-role is a cluster of a. undergoes change of state
entailments about an argument b. incremental theme8
position, which are shared by c. causally affected by another participant
some verbs. d. stationary relative to movement of another
· participant
Example :
a.Maggie pruned the roses. (involves all four entailments)
b.Joan felt the heat as the aircraft door opened. (while an
Experiencer ,
Joan can be seen as a more marginal Agent, including sentience
but not volition or causation)
c.The scalpel cut through the muscle (an Instrument like the
scalpel includes causation and movement but not volition or
sentience)
 The Motivation for Identifying
Thematic Roles

Linguists use thematic roles to describe the interface

between semantics and syntax, focusing on the links
between semantic classification of participants and
grammatical relations. For example, in an English verb
like "feel," the verb's meaning is linked to an
"experiencer" and a "percept." This conventional linkage
between participant roles and grammatical relations is
predicted by thematic roles. For example, Dowty's
prototype and entailments approach describes this
linkage using an argument selection principle.
a. The argument selection principle: in c.Corollary 2: The three-place predicate
grammatical predicates involves lexicalizes a non-subject argument with
more Proto-Patient properties as the
lexicalizing the argument with the most
direct object, while arguments with fewer
Proto-Agent propertieas as the subject
properties are oblique or prepositional
and the argument with the most Proto-
objects.
Patient entailments as the direct object.

b. Corollary 1:If two arguments of a d. Non-discreteness: Proto-roles do not

relation have equal numbers of Proto- exhaustively, uniquely, or discretely classify
Agent and Proto-Patient properties, arguments, as some may have both roles
either or both can be lexicalized as the or qualify partially but equally for both.
subject or objects.
Dowty's principles, despite appearing to compete for grammatical
slots, are viewed as constraints on verbal linking rules. These
principles are lexicalized and work by examining the relations
between subject position and theta-roles in sentences.

a. Captain Nemo sank the ship with a torpedo.

b. The torpedo sank the ship.
c. The ship sank.

Captain Nemo, the torpedo, and the ship all possess Proto-Agent
properties, making them subject positions. The ship's movement
property is sufficient, making it the subject in the sentence.
Thematic roles help characterize Theta-role grids are used to describe
semantic verbal classes, such as two argument-changing processes like passive
classes of psychological verbs in English, and argument structure alternations, with
which take transitive arguments and example sentences in a, link between
differ in linking roles to subject and theta-grids and syntactic arguments in b,
object position. and some example verbs in c.

Psychological verbs type 1

a. V: <EXPERIENCER, STIMULUS>
b. admire, enjoy, fear, like, love, relish,
savor
Psychological verbs type 2
a. <STIMULUS, EXPERIENCER>
b. amuse, entertain, frighten, interest,
please, surprise, thrill
Thematic roles in some languages, such as Lakhota (Siouan), are
believed to influence verbal agreement morphology. Examples
include the prefixes wa for an agent argument and ma for a
patient.
 CAUSATION

The importance of causation in thematic role selection

is evident in the English causative-inchoative verb
alternation, which can occur in intransitive or transitive
forms, highlighting the role of causers.
a. The water boiled.
b. Helen boiled the water.
This pattern allows the speaker to either select or omit
a causing entity. In
terms of thematic roles such verbs allow the cause to
be an AGENT
In English the same form of the verb occurs in both alternants, leading
scholars to label the causatives lexical causatives.
In other languages special affixes signal causative readings, producing
morphological causatives, as in the examples in 6.95 below from Somali:

In this example the causative affix, here in the form iy, creates a
transitive causative verb from an intransitive inchoative, thus adding an
AGENT role.
 So for example in English we can compare the
inchoative with the causatives in 6.97b–d:
The causal chain is an analysis of
events as segments of a causal 6.97
network where individuals act a. The car stopped.
asymmetrically. It involves how the b. I stopped the car.
semantic frame for an event is c. I made the car stop.
profiled by the verb and its thematic
d. I had the car stopped.
roles. Some writers describe the
expression of causation in language The lexical causative in b indicates
as selective merging of sub-events,
such as causal chain windowing, normal car stopping, while versions in c
which can be used to characterize and d are periphrastic causatives,
the connection between sub-events employing two verbs in complex clause
constructions. The make in c suggests
unusual car stopping or resistance, while
have implies other actors.
 Voice
A. Passive voice
In English, the "passive voice" verb form can be used to make someone or something other than the
AGENT serve as the subject of the sentence.

Billy groomed the horses.

Billy , the AGENT , is subject and the horses , the PATIENT , is object.
- In this sentence, "Billy" is the agent performing the action, while "the horses" is the patient
receiving the action.

The horses were groomed by Billy.

- In semantics, the passive voice changes the focus of the sentence from the agent to the object
receiving the action (the patient).
- In the passive voice, the focus changes to "the horses" as the patient receiving the action from
"Billy" as the agent.
In the change from active to passive voice, the verb changes form, and the nouns exchange
grammatical relations, but their semantic roles do not change.
B. Comparing passive construction across language
The aim is to identify common patterns as well as possible differences between the
languages.

Often languages have more than one passive construction: in English for example, it is
possible to distinguish between be-passives and get-passives:
a. Mary was shot on purpose.
b. Mary got shot on purpose

6.119 a. Thug siad Siobhán abhaile inniu.

brought they Joan home today
"They brought Joan home today."
b. Tugadh Siobhán abhaile inniu.
brought-IMPERS Joan home today
"Joan was brought home today."

This impersonal passive in 6.119 does not straightforwardly correspond to the trans- lation
given: that is to an English passive where no AGENT is expressed. In 6.119b we can see how
both in Irish and in the English translation the passive verb form is differentiated from the
active, and how in both the AGENT is often omitted.
C. Middle voice
While very many languages display this active/passive voice contrast, some languages have
a three-way distinction between active, passive and middle voice.

This affectedness can be of several types:

• Neuter intransitives: Refers to sentences that show actions that have no clear agent or
specific object.
• Bodily activity and emotions: Involves actions or states associated with physical activity or
emotions.
• Reflexives: Involves subjects performing actions on themselves.
• Autobenefactives : Sentences in which the subject performs an action that benefits himself
or herself.
 Classifiers and Noun Classes
A. Classifiers

Classifiers in semantics refer to words or phrases used to categorize or

describe certain objects or entities in language.
B. Noun classes
In linguistics, "noun classes" are classification systems used in some languages
to group nouns into specific categories. This system can be based on various
criteria such as gender, size, shape, or other semantic characteristics.

For example, in Swahili, nouns are classified by gender, while in Bantu

languages, they can be classified by semantic properties such as human vs.
non-human or animate vs. inanimate objects. This affects grammar and
sentence formation in the language.
Conclusion

Bla....
Thank you
 Any
Questions?