LING2006 Semantics Week 6 lecture Feb 16, 2024

Instructor: CHEN Zhuo

Lecture: Fri 09:30-11:15, LSK 306
Tutorial: Wed 09:30-10:15, LSK 208, LDS 218.
Office hours: G27 Leung Kau Kui Building or https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/5652900145, by appointment
Email: zhuochen@cuhk.edu.hk

TAs: CHEN Yige, LI Xiangyu

Office hours: G19 Leung Kau Kui Building, Wed 2-4pm (CHEN Yige), or by appointment
Emails: yigechen@link.cuhk.edu.hk, lixy255@link.cuhk.edu.hk

Things to do:
1. HW1 is due at 11:59pm, Sat, Feb 24.
2. Read Saeed (2016) pp.149-156;
3. The anonymous Google form survey is available;
4. Download class handouts from Blackboard and check your emails regularly;
5. Reach out to us if you cannot attend the class physically.

Thematic roles and theta grids

1. Thematic roles: Introduction

(1) Thor smashed Superman with his hammer.

• This sentence identifies:

 One event with three entities: Thor, Superman, his hammer, and
 How they are related to each other by participating in the particular action described
by the verb smash.

• Each participant has a specific role in this event:

 ________ is the participant responsible for initiating and carrying out the smashing
action,
 ________ is what the action of smashing acted on and is affected by the action,
 ________ is the means by which Thor carries out the action.

• These roles are called participant roles (Allan 1986), deep semantic cases (Fillmore 1968),
semantic roles (Givón 1990), thematic relations (Jackendoff 1972, Gruber 1976) and
thematic roles (Dowty 1986, 1989, 1991, Jackendoff 1990).

• Given its wide usage in recent work, we will adopt the last term: thematic roles, usually
abbreviated to theta-roles, sometimes θ-roles).
 Thematic roles are defined semantically, in terms of the meanings of sentences, and not
grammatically, in terms of position in sentences;

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 Grammatical positions in a sentence and thematic roles which occupy these positions
are independent kinds of linguistic notions.

2. Types of thematic roles

• Agent
 The participant that deliberately carries out the described action;
 The initiator of some action, capable of acting with volition.
- Volition is concerned with whether the action is intentional or unintentional.

(2) a. Superman baked a cake.

b. The cat chased away the bird.

• Affected/Patient
 The entity upon which an action is carried out;
 In many cases the entity that is changed by the action in the most obvious way, e.g.,
often undergoes some change in shape/state.

(3) a. Thor drank up the bubble tea.

b. The heat melted the chocolate.

• Instrument
 The means by which an action is performed or something comes about.

(4) a. Batman baked a cake with an oven.

b. Shelton Cooper goes to campus by the MTR.

• Experiencer
 A person who is mentally aware of, perceives, or experiences the action or state
described by the sentence, but who is not in control of the situation.
 Experiencer characteristics can also sometimes be attributed to animals.

(5) a. The cat felt cold, so she moved closer to the fireplace.
b. Batman saw Superman fly away.
c. Hong Kong’s fans didn’t enjoy Messi’s performance.

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• Theme
 The entity whose location is described, or
 The entity that is perceived by an Experiencer (sometimes also as “Stimulus”).

(6) a. The University Station is close to the CC college.

b. The president heard the news.

• Beneficiary
 The person for whose benefit or to whose detriment the action described by the
sentence is carried out.
 It is usually assumed that the Beneficiary, if mentioned, is distinct from both the Agent
and the Affected.

(7) a. Batman baked a cake for Joker.

b. Joker will send Batman a postcard.
c. Batman donated all his money to CUHK’s Linguistics Department.

 The Beneficiary of an action might not always be positively affected by that action, but
could be negatively affected depending on the action.
 The participant that is interpreted as negatively affected by an action is sometimes
called a Maleficiary.

(8) a. Will Smith gave Chris Rock a slap in the face.

b. The police fined Superman $200 for speeding.

• Location
 Any expression referring to the place where the action or state described by a sentence
takes place or is situated.

(9) a. Superman had a meeting with Batman near the University Mall.
b. Batman gave out free pizzas outside the University Station.
c. Rolando’s selfie hangs on the wall.

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• Differentiating certain thematic roles

 Agent vs. Experiencer (in subject position)

(10) a. Hulk stole the hammer from Thor.

b. Hulk realized his mistake.

- An agent typically deliberately involves oneself in an event, and phrases like

deliberately, on purpose, in order to, and so on can be added to the sentence;
- Whereas this is not the case with an Experiencer.

(11) a. Hulk stole the hammer from Thor.

b. Hulk deliberately stole the hammer from Thor.
c. Hulk stole the hammer from Thor on purpose.
d. Hulk stole the hammer from Thor in order to work out at home.

(12) a. Hulk realized his mistake.

b. #Hulk deliberately realized his mistake.
c. #Hulk realized his mistake on purpose.
d. #Hulk realized his mistake in order to work out at home.

 Affected/Patient vs. Theme (in object position)

(13) a. Superman baked/ate/smashed the cake.

b. Batman smelled/saw the cake.

- Affected/Patient is directly affected by an agent in an action/event;

- Whereas a Theme is only perceived by an Experiencer and such perception has no
effect on a Theme.

 Theme vs. Location (in subject position)

- A proper name of a place can occur in the subject position.

(14) a. Hong Kong is humid in the summer.

b. Hong Kong is in the southeast of the Greater Bay Area.

- Theme may be a place whose spatial/geographic position is described; whereas a

Location is a place where an event takes place, or where a state is situated.
- A Location may be alternatively realized as a prepositional phrase (PP), whereas
this is not the case of a Theme.

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(15) a. Hong Kong is humid in the summer.

b. It is humid [PP in Hong Kong] in the summer.

(16) a. Hong Kong is in the southeast of the Greater Bay Area.

b. In the southeast of the Greater Bay Area is (*in/at/on/below…) Hong Kong.

3. Thematic roles and grammatical relations/positions

• Thematic roles are independent from grammatical positions.

• On the one hand, in describing the same event, the same participant may be realized in
different grammatical positions (and/or may even not be realized at all).
 Intransitive weather verbs.

(17) a. It’s snowing (in Hong Kong).

b. Hong Kong is snowing.

- No matter whether Hong Kong is syntactically realized as an object/complement of

P (hence an oblique) or a subject, the way it participates in the act of snowing is the
same: its thematic role remains as _____________.

 Even for the same transitive verb, there is an alternation between active voice and
passive voice.

(18) a. Thor lifted a hammer.

b. A hammer was lifted (by Thor).

- No matter whether a hammer is syntactically realized as an object or a subject, the

way it participates in the act of lifting is the same: its thematic role remains as
_____________.
- No matter whether Thor is syntactically realized as an object/complement of P (an
oblique) or a subject, the way it participates in the act of lifting is the same: its
thematic role remains as _____________.

• On the other hand, in describing the same event, different participants may occupy the
same grammatical position.

(19) a. Doraemon opened the treasure box with his magic key.
b. His magic key opened the treasure box.
c. The treasure box opened.

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- In (19a), the thematic role of Doraemon is __________ and its grammatical

position is __________; the thematic role of the treasure box is ___________ and
its grammatical position is ____________; and the thematic role of his magic key
is ___________ and occurs in a PP.
- In (19b), _____________ is the subject.
- In (19c), _____________ is the subject.
- Hence, open allows all its three distinct thematic roles to occupy subject position.

 However, note that when speakers are constructing a sentence, they tend to place an
Agent into subject position, the next preference being for a Recipient or Beneficiary,
then Theme/Patient, then other roles.

• A Universal Subject Hierarchy

Agent > Beneficiary > Affected/Patient/Theme > Instrument > Location

 The leftmost elements are the most preferred, basic and expected subjects, while
moving rightward along the hierarchy gives us less expected subjects.
 If a language allows any particular role to be subject, we expect that it will allow all roles
on its left must also be allowed to occur as subjects, without any gaps.

(20) a. Hulk submitted his Homework 1. (Agent)

b. Thor likes Semantics. (Experiencer)
c. CUHK’s Linguistics Department received a donation from Batman. (Beneficiary)
d. The window cracked. (Affected/Patient)
e. CC college is at the foot of the hill. (Theme)
f. The key opened the door. (Instrument)
g. This classroom fits forty students. (Location)

 Not all languages are English-like, e.g., Italian and Japanese do not allow experiencers
to be subjects:

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(21) a. Italian b. Japanese

questo mi piace molto boku-ni eigo-ga wakaru
this 1SG.DAT pleases much 1SG.DAT English-NOM understand
‘I like this a lot’ ‘I understand English’

 The hierarchy is psychologically real: Evidence from Alzheimer’s disease

- Compared to canonical action verbs, psych verbs like fear and frighten have special
properties and may deviate from canonical thematic hierarchy.

(22) a. The boy feared the thunder.

b. The thunder frightened the boy.

♦ fear does not assign an Agent role to the subject position of the sentence, but
instead assign the role of ____________ to that position.
♦ frighten does not assign the role of Agent to its subject either. Moreover, it
assigns the role of ____________ to the subject position.
♦ In Manouilidou et al. (2009), participants were asked to complete sentences like
“The boy ___ the thunder” by using one of four alternative verbs provided.
♦ Alzheimer patients had difficulties making the right choice when they had to
complete a sentence with a psych verb: They were unable to assign thematic
roles when these result in a noncanonical argument realization.

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4. Verbs and Thematic Role Grids

• Even in English, not all verbs allow all kinds of thematic roles to be their subjects.

(23) a. Loki raised a question.

b. *A question raised.
c. A question arose.

• In their mental lexicon, speakers’ semantic knowledge about verbs includes not only how
many arguments a verb requires (i.e. whether it is intransitive, transitive, ditransitive, etc.)
but also what thematic roles the verb’s arguments may hold.

• In the generative grammar literature, this listing of thematic roles is often called a thematic
role grid, or theta-grid for short.
 Thematic role grid/theta-grid: A representation of a verb’s required participants in
terms of their thematic roles.

(24) a. [Thor]ag put [his hammer]af [on the desk]lo.

b. put V: <Agent, Affected, Location>

- put is a ditransitive verb that takes three participants.

- One is an Agent, one is an Affected/Patient, and the third is a Location.
- Agent is underlined, indicating that it is this role that typically occurs as the subject
of the verb put.

 Some participants are optional

(25) a. [Thor]ag hid [his hammer]af [in the library]lo.

b. [Thor]ag hid [his hammer]af
c. put V: <Agent, Affected, (Location)>

 One word may be associated with more than one theta-grid

(26) a. Doraemon opened the treasure box with his magic key.
b. open V: <Agent, Affected, Instrument>

(27) a. His magic key opened the treasure box.

b. open V: < Instrument, Affected>

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