semantic roles

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear all,

One of WATA members sent a personal message asking me to help him assign sematic roles to the underlined NPs in the following:

1. This book reads easily.
2. He listened to the tree fall.
3. Winter brings snow which refills the mountain lakes.

My explanation reads as follows:

As for your query, I advise you to make paraphrases for the sentences you come across before you determine the theta (semantic) roles of the arguments (participants) a verb takes. Semanticists disagree over labels, but I'll do my best to explain. In (1), the verb is ergative. So the re-reading would be: The book is easy (for X) to read. Here you are assigning the property of easiness to the book. When you contrast it with 'difficult', then you come to the conclusion that the book is 'attributive'. In (2), listening is associated with the event of 'the tree while falling', so the NP is 'eventive'. (3) is rather controversial. Although 'brings' is transitive, where 'snow' is the object, 'winter' can never become an 'agent' as is normally the case with passive structures. English speakers take this main clause as lexicalised, i.e. a phrasal chunk, rather than a clause. So 'winter' is a personified 'temporal' and 'snow' is 'resultative', i.e. English speakers take it for granted that winter is the season for snow to be all around. And, therefore, 'mountain lakes' would function as 'container', a term which I borrow from cognitive linguistics, or you may just select 'locative' although it is an object to 'refills'.

Those of you who are interested in the query are kindly encouraged to contribute to the discussion.

Prof. Dinha T. Gorgis

[Prof. Ahmed Shafik Elkhatib]

Dear Prof. Dinha,
Your exhaustive discussion leaves nothing to be added, except for two minor remarks.

(1) You said that in (1), the verb is ergative. However, what should be referred to as ergative is the SUBJECT of the transitive verb (vs. the subject of the intransitive verb, along with the object of the transitive verb, which are both referred to as "absolutive").

(2) The point was made that English speakers take the main clause in (3) as lexicalized, i.e. a phrasal chunk, rather than a clause. How come it is a phrasal chunk? Are you referring to the subordinate clause "which refills the mountain lakes", or rather to a part of it "the winter fall"? And is this really an NP?

Best regards,

Ahmed

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear prof. Ahmed,

'read' is normally transitive which requires an agent. In our case, rather than calling it intransitive, grammarians have come to call it 'ergative' (cf. The door opens easily). To my knowledge, 'absolutive' is a term given to 'cognate' objects, e.g. He died a terrible death.

As for your second point, I would like to assert that not only phrases are said to be lexicalised, but all idiomatic (formulaic) expressions, be them phrases or clauses, e.g. proverbs, function as chunks in the lexicon. This is at least the position held by cognitive semanticists.

Best regards,

Dinha

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear All,
I received a second message from our WATA member. I wish he could publish his views right here. However, I quote him:

No. Semantic Role Definition
1. Agent Doer , Actor
2. Patient Entity affected by deed of agent or cause
3. Location Location of deed / event
4. Instrument Entity employed by an agent in a deed
5. Time Time of deed / event
6. Recipient Receive of result of deed of agent
7. Experiencer Perceiver of a stimulus
8. Stimulus Entity perceived / experienced by an experiencer
9. Cause Cause not an agent
10. Goal Targeted location
11. Beneficiary A recipient who benefits from the receiving
12. Source Acorns grow into Oak trees
13. Possessor I have a car


1) This book reads easily.

This statement was mentioned under the title (Paraphrases and Semantic Roles), Subtitle: (Change of state verbs) in which verbs may have the patient as active verb subject with no agent expressed and a manner adverb present.

The example provided is: These logs light easily. (= Someone lights these logs easily.) I can understand completely why (logs) is the patient.

Then came our statement as an exception. (Book) isn't an agent neither a patient (as logs). I would like to show how I thought of it:

This book reads easily = This book is interesting which means the description here is for the book itself regardless of who is reading/going to read it. So, the book is (described). The problem is that I couldn't find which of the roles mentioned above can fit!!

2) He listened to the tree fall.

It came in comparison with (He heard the tree fall) where (he) is an experiencer and (the tree fall) is the stimulus. I understand this analysis completely.

Our statement: (he) is an agent because he is (hearing intentionally). Now (the tree fall) could it be a (cause) because it attracted him to listen!! Or it is the time in which he started to listen; as if we are answering the question (when did he start to listen?)

3) Winter brings snow which refills mountain lakes.

Somebody told me that (winter) is a (cause) but I wasn't convinced because winter doesn't cause snow but it is the time in which snow comes. But if (winter) is (time) what shall (snow) be?! Can it be (patient)? as the paraphrase will be (snow is brought in winter NOT by winter)

Also, for (winter) I thought of it as personification as if winter is a person bringing something. That's why I thought it is an (Agent) and (snow) will be (patient) it's all about semantics after all!

(Mountain lakes) the book underlined each word separately that's why I understood the exercise is seeking two separate semantic roles. I thought of them like that:

(Mountain lakes) is a noun phrase as a whole with lake and a modifier. Yet since these semantic roles are for nouns and noun phrases and since mountain is not an adjective by class (it is a noun but adjectival by position); we can give each a semantic role.

The refilling applies to the lakes only but which lakes and where are they? By the mountain. So, (Mountain) is (location) and (lakes) is recipient.


I hope you didn't get bothered by this discussion ƒ؛

I adore playing with Applied Linguistics yet I have to make sure that I think well or my friends are going to fail ;-)

Thanks again and again..

Sincerely,
Joseph


My feedback:

Dear Joseph,

The list you provided is still inexhaustive and incomplete. All participants may be given a role within causality theory. But since we are interested in applied linguistics, it's prefereable that we introduce to our learners the most widespread roles in the semantic/pragmatic literature without speculating on meaning too much. Your paraphrases are not too bad; they're O.K., but further comments follow:

1. In grammar, the head of NP is central, not the premodifier(s). So 'mountain' is irrelevant and cannot have a role.
2. That logs light easily is the intrinsic property of 'logs', not that it's easy for someone to light them. I may propose for 'logs' the role of 'self-contained', rather than patient because patients are mostly 'affected'.
3. Whether interesting for someone or not is not the point; rather the book is being described as easy, so it's 'attributive'.
4. lakes cannot be a recipient because there's no process of delivery whereby an agent is involved, which is not the case here.

Have a nice day!

Dinha

P.S. For the translated poem, visit: literary & poetry translation forum on WATA web.

[Prof. Ahmed Shafik Elkhatib]

Dear Prof. Dinha,

Thank you very much for your response. However, may I make the following remarks about it?

1. I have a questions and a comment about your statement: "'read' is normally transitive which requires an agent. In our case, rather than calling it intransitive, grammarians have come to call it 'ergative'."
The question: Do you mean 'patient' not 'agent'?
The comment: I assert that 'ergative' describes the NP itself, rather than the verb. How
about 'quasi-passive' as a description of the verb?

2. 'Aabsolutive' is a term used when there is a formal parallel between the object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive one, in the sense that they both display the same case. These are referred to as 'absolutive', whereas the subject of the transitive verb is referred to as 'ergarive'.

3. About your statement: "… not only phrases are said to be lexicalised, but all idiomatic (formulaic) expressions, be them phrases or clauses, e.g. proverbs, function as chunks in the lexicon", can we consider "winter brings snow" an idiomatic/formulaic expression or a proverb?

Thank you for your patience.

Cordial greetings,

Ahmed

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear prof. Ahmed,

Please feel very much at home. Ask any question, but not related to religion, money, politics, and sex; such issues require private chats.

1. Normally 'read' requires both, but it may additionally require a 'beneficiary', e.g. I read this strory for you and nobody else.

2. Quasi passives are not real passive. The ergative verb has formally one argument, a subject, which is the 'goal', neither a source, an agent,
or even a patient, semantically speaking..

3. In my view, and many other grammarians', the formal parallel is between the verb and the object, and hence the term 'cognate' or 'absolute' objects; the verb in this case is only formally transitive, but functionally a middle verb, because you cannot passivise:

He died a terrible death.

4. "winter brings snow" is so familiar to every native English speaker that it has become conventionalised (or, frozen), just like /salaamu 'alykum/. In other words, it requires no cognitive processing to be interpreted; it's more of a cliche (routinized). That's why I say it has been lexicalised.

I hope I've argued convincingly.

Most cordial greetings,

Dinha

[Prof. Ahmed Shafik Elkhatib]

Dear Prof. Dinha,
Your first remark about censored topics brought a big smile to my face.:)
As for your other points, they were really well argued, and in most cases quite convincingly.
On a more optimistic tone, how about "He lived a happy life" instead of "He died a terrible death"?
My best regards,
Ahmed

[د. دنحا طوبيا كوركيس]

Dear prof. Ahmed,

All the same; 'life' is a derivative, and the whole NP functions as a cognate (or absolute) object.

Cordially,

Dinha