Semantic Role

Definition:
A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the
main verb in a clause. Semantic role is the actual role a participant plays in some real or
imagined situation, apart from the linguistic encoding of those situations.
Kinds of Semantic Role:

 Accompaniment As A Semantic Role

 Agent As A Semantic Role
 Beneficiary As A Semantic Role
 Causer As A Semantic Role
 Counteragent As A Semantic Role
 Dative As A Semantic Role
 Experiencer As A Semantic Role
 Factitive As A Semantic Role
 Force As A Semantic Role
 Goal As A Semantic Role
 Measure As A Semantic Role
 Result

Examples:
If, in some real or imagined situation, someone named John purposely hits someone
named Bill, then John is the agent and Bill is the patient of the hitting event. Therefore, the
semantic role of Bill is the same (patient) in both of the following sentences:

 John hit Bill.

 Bill was hit by John.

In both of the above sentences, John has the semantic role of agent.
Source:
Payne, T. 1997a
47-49

ACCOMPANIMENT AS SEMANTICS Role

Definition:
Accompaniment is the semantic role of a thing that participates in close association with an
agent, causer, or affected in an event.

Examples:

(English)
In the following sentence, with has the semantic role of accompaniment:

I ate dinner with my wife.

Agent As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Agent is the semantic role of a person or thing who is the doer of an event. An agent is
usually the grammatical subject of the verb in an active clause. A prototypical agent is
conscious, acts with volition (on purpose), and performs an action that has a physical, visible
effect.
Examples:
(English)

 The boy ran down the street.

 He was chased by the dog.

Beneficiary As A Semantic Role

Definition:
A beneficiary is the semantic role of a referent which is advantaged or disadvantaged by an
event.
Examples:
(English)
John sold the car for a friend.

Causer As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Causer is the semantic role of the referent which instigates an event rather than actually doing
it.
Discussion:
The causer is usually the surface subject of the verb in a sentence.
Examples:
(English)
Peter tripped John.

Counteragent As A Semantic Role

Definition:
A counteragent is the semantic role of a force or resistance against which an action is carried
out.

Dative As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Dative is the semantic role of a referent that is conscious of being affected by the state or
action identified by the verb.

Experiencer As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Experiencer is the semantic role of an entity (or referent) which

 receives
 accepts
 experiences, or
 undergoes the effect of an action.

Discussion:
Normally an experiencer is an entity that receives a sensory impression, or in some other way
is the locus of some event or activity that involves neither volition nor a change of state.
Examples:
(English)
He was scared.
Lucretia saw the bicycle.
It was Bill who smelled the bacon first.
The explosion was heard by everyone.

Factitive As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Factitive is the semantic role of an referent that results from the action or state identified by
a verb.
See Also:
Semantic Role
Referent
Verb (Linguistics)
Source:
Lyons 1977b
491

Force As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Force is the semantic role of an entity that instigates an action, but not consciously or
voluntarily.
Discussion:
Force is distinct from agent because an agent is volitional, while a force is not.
Goal As A Semantic Role
Definition:
Goal is the semantic role of the:

 place to which something moves

 thing toward which an action is directed

Examples:
(English)

 John swam to the raft

 He threw the book at me

Measure As A Semantic Role

Definition:
Measure is a semantic role which notes the quantification of an event.
Examples:
(English)

 The new coat costs $70

Result
Definition:
A result is a semantic role that refers to that which is produced by an event.
This role is usually encoded as the surface object of a sentence.
Discussion:
The term result is similar in meaning to the term range as used by Longacre and others.
Examples:
They baked a cake.
Sentence semantics (advanced)
Sentence semantics (sentential semantics), as well as phrasal semantics, deals with
the meaning of syntactic units larger than words, i.e. phrases, clauses, and sentences, and the
semantic relationships between them. In describing the meaning of such larger syntactic
units, we usually start with its core meaning or semantic kernel, which is referred to as
its proposition (propositional core, propositional content). Propositions play an important
role in analyzing the meaning relations among sentences. The meaning of the sentence itself
can be described with reference to the so-called Principle of Compositionality according to
which the meaning of a sentence is composed of the meaning of its components. Thus,
besides the propositional core described above, aspects
like modality and quantification have to be examined.
 Source of the cartoon:graphicshunt.com
Propositions and predicates
Meaning relations among sentences
The Principle of Compositionality
Modality
Quantification
Exercises on sentence semantics
Sentential Semantics

Some Sense Properties of Sentences

Analytic: An analytic sentence is one which is necessarily true, because of the senses of the
words in it. Therefore, an analytic sentence can be judged true without recourse to real world
knowledge separate from the sense of the words contained in it.

EXAMPLES: Elephants are animals Cats are not fish. My brother is male.

Contradictory: A contradictory sentence (or a contradiction) is a sentence which is

necessarily false, because of the senses of the words in the sentence.

EXAMPLES: Elephants are not animals. Cats are fish. A man is a butterfly.

Synthetic: A synthetic sentence is one which is not analytic or contradictory, but which may
be true or false depending on the way the world is.

EXAMPLES: My oldest cousin is female. My brother is tall. Some cats eat wool.

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Data Analysis 1: Identify each of the following sentences as analytic, synthetic or

contradictory. For some you will have to imagine relevant situations.
1. That girl is her own mother's mother.
2. That boy is his own father's son.
3. Alice is Ken's sister.
4. Some typewriters are dusty.
5. If it breaks, it breaks.
6. John killed Bill, who remained alive for many years after.

From Semantics: A Coursebook, Hurford & Heasley

One way we talk about the meaning of synthetic sentences is by evaluating the conditions
under which they would be true or false--we call these truth conditions. Two or more
synthetic sentences would be synonymous if they were true under all the same conditions and
false under all the same conditions. In other words, if all possible universes they shared the
same truth conditions. So, for example, it is not possible to have a world in which Mary
arrested Bill, but Bill was not arrested by Mary and vice versa, in which Mary did not arrest
Bill, but Bill was arrested by Mary. These sentences aresynonymous.

Some sentences, however, don't have truth conditions; that is, they cannot be judged either
true or false. Sometimes this is just because the sentences is anomalous. Consider the
sentence The present king of France is bald. If this sentence were true, then the negative of it,
The present king of France is not bald would have to be false. If it were false, then the
negative of it would have to be true. However, there is no present king of France to have hair
or to lack it. So the sentences The present king of France is bald and The present king of
France is not bald are equally true or false -- or to put it another way, unevaluatable for truth,
not false, but anomalous.

Other Sense Properties: Presuppostion and Assertion

Presuppositions: the propositions or beliefs assumed by an utterance.

Those people stopped smoking presupposes that (1) the designated people exist; (2) that the
activity called smoking exists; (3) that that activity is known to the hearers; and (4) that the
designated people habitually smoked in the past.

Assertions: the propositions or beliefs which are conveyed, but not assumed, by an
utterance.

The utterance above assertions that the designated people ended the habitual activity
(smoking).

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Data Analysis 2: Consider the following sentences: What do they presuppose and what do
they assert?

1. Surprisingly enough, Marvin turned out to be nice guy.

2. Everybody believes that the world is round.
3. Everybody knows that the world is round.
4. After the children finished eating his dinner, they went up to bed.
5. I like to sing.

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Data Analysis 3: Notice that the anomalous sentence discussed above (The present king of
France is bald) is anomalous because it presupposes something (the existence of a present
king of France) which is not true. If the presupposition fails, the assertion cannot be evaluated
for truth. Some sentences don't have truth values because they don't make assertions; they do
something else. They perform some kind of act. Consider the following sentences, and decide
whether they can be evaluated as true or false in any universe of discourse:

1. Do your homework!
2. If you don't do your homework, you will not do well in this class.
3. I warn you to do your homework.
4. I warned you to do your homework.
5. Will you do your homework?

While some of the sentence above don't have truth conditions, they do have conditions under
which they are appropriate--that is, necessary conditions for them to work. Consider the
sentences which you determined could not be evaluated as true or false. What were they
intending to do? Under what conditions could they work?

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Semantic/Thematic Roles

Semantic/Thematic Roles: "the term...used to describe the part played by a particular entity
in an event." (O'Grady, Dobrovolsky, & Aronoff: 226)

Some thematic roles (O,D,&A: 227):

Agent: the entity who deliberately performs an action Harriet broke the window with a
baseball bat.
Theme: the entity undergoing a change of state or transfer Harriet broke the window with a
baseball bat.
Source: the starting point for a transfer Harriet took the baseball bat from the closet.
Goal: the end point for a transfer Harriet put the baseball bat in the closet.
Experiencer: the entity perceiving something Harriet heard a noise.
Location: the place at which an entity or action is located. Harriet worked in her office.
Stimulus: the entity perceived Harriet heard a noise.
Instrument: the entity used to carry out an action Harriet broke the window with a baseball
bat.

Some other proposed thematic roles

(http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~beatrice/syntax-textbook/box-thematic.html) include

Cause/Actor: the entitiy that brings about some event or state The wind broke the window.
Measure: the extension on some dimension (size, time, price) Harriet worked in her office
for five hours.

These aren't all the available semantic roles, but they do cover a wide range of possible
semantic forms. Consider I saw a gopher and I watched a gopher. What is the difference?
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Data Analysis 4: Identify the thematic roles of each of the underlined noun phrases in the
sentences below.

1. Mary took the new book from the discouraged salesman.

2. The discouraged salesman gave Mary the new book.
3. The discouraged salesman gave the new book to Mary.
4. Did you see that man kick the dog?
5. I left the last assignment at home.
6. Oliver doesn't work with his hands.
7. Marvin brought a bunch of refugees from Guatemala to northern Iowa.