Semantic Roles Of Clause Elements PDF

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SEMANTIC ROLES OF CLAUSE ELEMENTS AGENTIVE: It is the animate being instigating or causing the happening denoted by the verb. This is the semantic role characteristic of the subject of transitive verbs with a dynamic meaning. Examples: “Mary kicked the door”, “They declared her the winner”, “John pl...

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SEMANTIC ROLES OF CLAUSE ELEMENTS 1. AGENTIVE: It is the animate being instigating or causing the happening denoted by the verb. This is the semantic role characteristic of the subject of transitive verbs with a dynamic meaning. Examples: “Mary kicked the door”, “They declared her the winner”, “John placed the book on the shelf”, “I bought her a gift”. 2. AFFECTED: It refers to an animate or inanimate participant which does not cause the happening by the verb, but is directly involved in some other way. This is the semantic role characteristic of the direct object with transitive verbs. Examples: “Mary kicked the door ”, “They declared her the winner”, “John placed the book on the shelf”, etc. It is also the semantic role characteristic of the subject of intransitive, copular verbs as well as transitive verbs in the passive, examples: “My friend fell” , “The border lies across the river”, “She is happy”, “She was at home”, “The city was completely destroyed after the war”. It can also be associated with the indirect object with transitive verbs taking an eventive object (see 14 below). Examples: “We gave the baby (affected Oi) a bath (eventive Od)” vs. “We bathed the baby (affected Od)”; “He gave the door (affected Oi) a kick (eventive Od)” vs. “He kicked the door (affected Od)”. 3. RECIPIENT: It denotes the animate being that is passively implicated by the happening or state encoded in the verb. It is the semantic role characteristic of the indirect object. Examples: “We paid them the money”, “I’ve found you a place to live”. Some distinguish a benefactive or beneficiary role (“intended recipient”) from the recipient role. Example: “Mary has given John (recipient) a scarf for Jane (beneficiary)”. Moreover, it is the semantic role characteristic of the subject of so-called “verbs of possession” (eg., “have”, “own”, “possess”, “benefit (from)”, etc). Example: “John has a very expensive car”. 4. EXPERIENCER: It denotes the animate being that perceives the process denoted by the verb (eg.,verbs of cognition; physical perception except “watch” and “listen to”; “smell”, “taste”, “feel”, “like”, etc. Examples: “He thought that the idea was sensible”, “He saw the thief leave the room”. It is the role characteristic of the subject, not the direct object. “He (experiencer) tasted the pepper in the soup” vs. “The soup (affected) tasted good”). Notice that if the verb can be construed with an agentive meaning, the subject will be “agentive” rather than “experiencer”- Examples: “He watched the football match”, “Foolishly, he tasted the soup”. 5. POSITIONER: It denotes the animate or inanimate being which occurs with intransitive stance verbs (eg., “sit”, “stand”, “lie”, “live”, “dwell”, “stay”) and transitive “remember”, and with transitive verbs related to stance verbs such as “carry”, “hold”, “keep” and “wear”. Examples: “The casualties lay by the side of the road”; “I have lived in London all my life”, “They are staying at a hotel”, “She remembered the story”, “He was holding a gun”, “The models were wearing beautiful clothes” (see 7 below) 6. INSTRUMENT: It denotes the entity (generally inanimate) which an agent uses to perform an action or instigate a process. Examples: “A stone broke the windscreen”, “The computer has solved the problem”. 7. LOCATIVE: It refers to the place of the state or action denoted by the verb. It can be associated with the subject of intransitive and copular verbs or with the subject or direct object of transitive verbs, always with a locative reference. Examples: “London is foggy”, “The Sahara Desert is extending westward”, “I will visit Athens in the summer”, “He swam the channel”, “This container holds tons of rubbish”. A locative expression can also function as an object-related adjunct with some complex-transitive verbs in resultative constructions (eg., “He placed it on the shelf”). 8. EXTERNAL CAUSER OR FORCE: It expresses the unwitting (generally inanimate) cause of an event (usually related to atmospheric forces). Examples: “The wind opened the door”, “The sun dried the clothes”, etc.

9. TEMPORAL: It denotes the time at which the action or process denoted by the verb takes place. It is associated with the syntactic functions of subject and subject-oriented adjunct. Examples: “Tomorrow is Sunday”, “The party was yesterday”. 10. EVENT: As the name suggests, it denotes the event being talked about in the sentence. The noun at the head of the noun phrase is usually deverbal or a nominalization. Examples: “ The party is tomorrow”, “The Norman invasion took place in 1066”, “The explosion caused a lot of damage”. 11. PROP IT SUBJECT: This is the kind of word with little or no semantic content which fills the subject function in clauses signifying (i) time, (ii) atmospheric conditions and (iii) distance. Examples: “ It’s very late”, “It`s very hot in here”, “It’s a long way to Denver”. 12. RESULTANT OR EFFECTED OBJECT: It is an object whose referent exists only by virtue of the activity denoted by the verb. The effected object, unlike the affected object, creates the referent. Thus, consider: “Baird invented the television”, “I’m writing a letter”, “She made a fire”; “She baked a cake” (resultant) vs. “She baked some potatoes” (affected). 13. COGNATE OBJECT: It is similar to a resultant object in that it refers to an event indicated by the verb. However, unlike resultant objects, cognate objects are semantically and often morphologically related to the verb. Its semantic function is to repeat, wholly or partially, the meaning of the verb. Examples: “Mary will sing a song for us”. In most cases, the cognate object must be modified to save an otherwise unacceptable result. Examples: “He died a (miserable) death”, “She lived a (good) life”. Notice, incidentally, that cognate objects are not participants at all. 14. EVENTIVE OBJECT: This is the type of object which generally takes the form of a deverbal noun preceded by a common verb of general meaning, such as “do”, “give”, “have”, “make” and “take”. The eventive object is semantically an extension of the verb and bears the major part of the meaning. Examples: “She had an argument with her father” (cf. “She argued with her father”). The general vs. specific character of the verb, among other factors, helps us distinguish between cognate objects and eventive objects. Thus, consider: “She had a fight (eventive) with her father”, “She fought a long fight (cognate) with her father”. 15. ATTRIBUTE: This is the typical semantic role characteristic of attribution whereby one can either identify or characterize the subject complement or object complement of a clause: “Peter is the teacher” (identification) vs. “Peter is an honest man” (characterization). At a syntactic level, identification attributes allow reversal of subject and complement (eg., “The teacher is Peter”). Attributes can be further subdivided into current attributes (normally with verbs used statively, such as “be”, “appear”, “seem”, “feel”) and resulting attributes, resulting from the event described by the verb (with verbs used dynamically, such as “become”, “turn”, “make”, etc.). Examples: “He’s my brother” (current subject-related attribute), “I want my food hot” ( current object-related attribute), “He became restless” ( resulting subject-related attribute), “He made things worse” (resulting object-related attribute). If the attribute is realized by a prepositional or adverbial phrase, we shall call it an adjunct. Like complements, adjuncts can be subject-related (e.g., “John is off cigarettes”) or object-related (eg., “He placed it on the shelf”). Adjuncts can also be current or resulting, depending on the stative or dynamic nature of the verb. Examples: “I prefer them on toast” (current object-related adjunct), “The storm drove the ship ashore” (resulting object-related adjunct)....