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THEMATIC (THETA) ROLE
المؤلف:
John Field
المصدر:
Psycholinguistics
الجزء والصفحة:
P302
2025-10-19
355
+
-
20
THEMATIC (THETA) ROLE
The semantic role of a constituent in a sentence. Consider the following sentences:
Julie opened the door.
The key opened the door.
Paul fears wasps.
In each, the first Noun Phrase is the syntactic subject. But in a. Julie is an agent (she performs an action). In b. the key is an instrument In c. Paul is an experiencer (he undergoes an experience but does not do anything). Describing constituents in terms of their theta roles gets behind the surface form of a sentence to its underlying propositional content. Major theta roles include: Agent (actor)– Patient (human sufferer of action)– Theme (non-human sufferer of action)– Experiencer Instrument– Beneficiary– Recipient– Location– Goal.
Theta roles have been incorporated into theories of speech production. An utterance is constructed around a central notion or predicate, which is often (but not always) a verb. When the speaker accesses a verb in their lexicon, they gain information about the syntactic frame which the verb usually requires: for GIVE, this might be V (_ NP1, NP2) as in give Mary a present or V (_ NP2 to NP2) as in give a present to Mary. Semantic information about theta role constraints then specifies which lexical items can fill the slots in the frame. With GIVE, NP1 requires a Recipient and NP2 requires a Theme. Further semantic information can extend the restrictions on potential fillers by specifying, for example, that NP2 is usually inanimate and portable.
See also: Argument structure, Predicate
الاكثر قراءة في Linguistics fields
اخر الاخبار
اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة
الآخبار الصحية
مواضيع ذات صلة
قسم الشؤون الفكرية يصدر كتاباً يوثق تاريخ السدانة في العتبة العباسية المقدسة
"المهمة".. إصدار قصصي يوثّق القصص الفائزة في مسابقة فتوى الدفاع المقدسة للقصة القصيرة
(نوافذ).. إصدار أدبي يوثق القصص الفائزة في مسابقة الإمام العسكري (عليه السلام)
