Grammatical Functions and Thematic

Role, Ambiguity Modification

Dr. VMS
Grammatical Functions and Thematic Roles
Why do we need thematic roles? To answer this
question, consider (32)—(35) below, all of which
contain the verb smash
1. David smashed the window.
2. The window was smashed by David.
3. A brick smashed the window.
4. David used a brick to smash the window.
grammatical functions of the argument expres­sions
David, the window and a brick are different in each of
the sentences in which they appear, their thematic roles
are the same.
Thematic role
, the NP David carries the role of Agent in each case,
despite the fact that it has two different syntactic
functions, namely Subject in (1) and (4), and Comple­
ment of a preposition in (2).
Similarly, in all sentences the NP the window is a
Patient, regardless of the grammatical function it
carries. Finally, the NP the brick carries the role of
Instrument, and appears in two different functional
slots: Subject and Direct Object.
Grammatical and semantic function
What these examples clearly show, then, is that there is
no one-to-one relationship between grammati­cal
function and thematic role, and we therefore need to
distinguish these notions.
grammatical function is primarily a syntactic notion,
whereas thematic roles are primarily semantic in
nature.
MODIFICATION &
AMBIGUITY
Syntactic trees allow us to capture another remarkable
fact about language. Let’s start with the following two
sentences:
a) The man killed the king with a knife.
b) The man killed the king with the red hair.
(a) meaning “the man used a knife to kill the king.”

(b) meaning “the king with red hair was killed by the
man.”
(a) meaning “the king with the knife was killed by the
man (who
used a gun.)”
b) (
b) meaning “the man used the red hair to kill the king
(perhaps
by strangling him with it.)”
These alternate meanings have the exact opposite structures from (a) and (b). The
meaning in (76a) has the PP with the knife modifying king, and thus attached to the
NP: