The semantic basis of syntactic relations

A verb has—according to its semantic type—one or two or three semantic roles; each of these must be mapped onto a core or peripheral syntactic relation.

If there is only one role then it is mapped onto S. S has a wide semantic range, relating both to roles that control an activity (e.g. He ran, They chatted, She winked ) and those that cannot—or are unlikely to—exercise control (e.g. The stone rolled down the hill, The old man died, My bubble burst).

If there are two or more core roles then one will be mapped onto A and the other onto O syntactic relation. That role which is most likely to be relevant to the success of the activity will be A, e.g. the wind in The wind blew down my house, and the thunder in The thunder frightened the child. Most often, the role mapped onto A will be human and ‘most relevant to the success of the activity’ then equates with ‘could initiate or control the activity’.

For most semantic types one particular role will always be mapped onto A (i.e. there is no choice involved)—this is the Perceiver for ATTENTION, the Cogitator for THINKING, the Speaker for SPEACKING, the HUMAN for CORPOREAL, the Causer for MAKING, the Principal for WANTING, and so on. The GIVING type uses different lexemes depending on whether Donor or Recipient is exercising control, and is thus in A relation, e.g. Mary (Donor: A) tried to lend the blue hat (Gift: O) to me (Recipient) and I (Recipient: A) tried to borrow the blue hat (Gift: O) from Mary (Donor). The LIKING and ANNOYING types involve the same two roles; for LIKING the Experiencer may be in a position to exercise control, and so is in A relation, whereas for ANNOYING the success of the activity may be due to the Stimulus, and this is A—compare John (Experiencer: A) tried to like/dislike Mary (Stimulus: O) and Mary (Stimulus: A) tried to please/annoy John (Experiencer: O).

The only verbs that may allow either of two roles to be mapped onto A relation are some from AFFECT. Normally the agent is A, e.g. John (Agent: A) hit Mary (Target: O) with his stick (Manip), but there is another construction in which Manip is A, e.g. The stick (Manip: A) hit Mary (Target: O) (e.g. as John swung it). Use of this construction may effectively deny that the Agent was responsible for the action, suggesting that it was, perhaps, an accident.

If a verb has just two core roles then that which is not coded into A is placed in O syntactic relation—the Impression for ATTENTION, the Thought for THINKING, the Substance for CORPOREAL, the Stimulus for LIKING, the Experiencer for ANNOYING.

But verbs from some types have three core roles. There is no question about which role should be in A syntactic relation—that which is most relevant to the success of the activity. Of the remaining roles, that which is most salient to the activity (often, that which is affected by the activity) is mapped onto O; the roles which do not correspond to A or to O are marked by an appropriate preposition. For instance, some subtypes of SPEAKING focus on the Addressee (which goes into O relation) while others focus on the Message (which is then O)—compare He (Speaker: A) informed Mary (Addressee: O) of the floods in Queensland (Message) and He (Speaker: A) mentioned the floods in Queensland (Message: O) to Mary (Addressee).

The O relation does in fact show much more variation than A in connection with which roles may be mapped onto it. There are a number of verbs from types that involve three roles—AFFECT, GIVING and SPEAKING—which allow two construction types, with different roles in O relation (that is, with different roles being focused on, as particularly salient in that instance of the activity). One would be likely to use John (Agent: A) hit the vase (Target: O) with his stick (Manip) if the vase broke, but to use John (Agent: A) hit his stick (Manip: O) against the concrete post (Target) if the stick broke.