Foundations of Syntax:

Words and Categories

Part II
Nathaniel Torres
BBN-ANG-151
Wednesday, September 20
Predicates

 Thematic and functional categories can be differentiated by first

understanding how the different parts of a sentence are related to each
other, or rather, how the structure binds the words together.
 Consider the following sentence:
 John kicked the ball.
 There are three main phrases in this sentence: John, kicked, and the ball.
 Intuitively, the one doing the kicking is John. The thing being kicked is the
ball, and the word that establishes a relationship between these two things is
the work kicked.
 The verb kick is called a predicate.
 The things that the predicate binds together are called arguments.
Predicates (cont.)

 Further examples:
 John sleeps.
argument predicate
 John kicks the ball.
argument predicate argument
 Mary put the bread on the table.
argument predicate argument argument
Predicates (cont.)

 The predicate in question determines the number of arguments and their

place within the clause.
 Predicates can be categorized into three types: one-place predicates
(intransitive verbs), two-place predicates (transitive verbs), and three-place
predicates (ditransitive verbs).
 The arguments in the predicate structure are not equal in terms of what they
are.
 In a sentence like John hit the ball, the subject of the sentence is also called
the agent as he is the one doing the hitting. The object of the sentence, the
ball, is called the patient as it is the on the receiving end of the action.
Predicates (cont.)

 Consider a sentence like the following:

 Mary saw John.
 This clause is different from the sentence John hit the ball.
 The predicate see is different from hit in that its meaning involves a special
kind of predicative relationship.
 Mary in this case is not performing a deliberate action. She is, in essence,
experiencing something that is being perceived with her eyes. She is
therefore the experiencer.
 The thing being perceived is likewise not being acted upon in a deliberate
manner. John in this case is called the theme.
Theta-Roles

 Collectively, the arguments in any given predicate structure are syntactically

assigned theta-roles (Θ-roles).
 There are a great deal of these and of the ones that are identified there is
some disagreement about whether or not they are theta roles.
 For now, we can identify the following theta roles: agent, patient,
experiencer, theme.
 Theta grids can be used to provide the number of theta roles and the specific
theta roles that any given predicate can assign.
Theta Roles (cont.)

 We can set up the theta grid for verbs like so:

 Sleep <agent>
 Hit <agent, patient>
 See <experiencer, theme>
 Put <agent, patient, location>
Other predicates

 Verbs are not the only kinds of predicates you may come across.
 There are a number of constructions that involve the use of the copula and an
adjective.
 For example, is happy or is fat. The copular verb be expresses a relation
between the subject and the adjective.
 We can argue that in these cases, the adjective itself is assigning the theta
role and therefore has a theta grid.
 Fat <theme>
 We can postulate that the adjective in these cases assigns theme because the
state described by the adjective is something that is felt or perceived by the
subject. Therefore, the subject in these clauses is assigned the theme theta
role.
Adjectival Predicates

 There are a number of adjectival predicates that are used, some of which
establish slightly more complex relations between different constituents.
 Consider the following:
 John is fond of ice cream.
 Fond then has the theta grid: Fond <experiencer, theme>.
Noun Predicates

 Nouns can also occur in such structures.

 Consider:
 Jane’s picture of the Himalayas.
 Picture <agent, theme>
 In this case, the agent of the picture is Jane as she is the one who
deliberately took the photo.
 The theme of this predicate is, of course, the Himalayas as they are the
content of the photo.
Noun Predicates (cont.)

 The theta grids for noun predicates are not as “strong” as the theta grids for verbs.
 This has to do with the fact that verbs obligatorily assign theta roles in order to
complete their required argument structures.
 Observer, however, the following behavior in nouns:
 Jane’s picture of the Himalayas is on the table.
 That is Jane’s picture.
 This is a picture.
 We can see that we can manipulate the argument structure of the predicate noun
picture so that it may include both the theme and the agent; only the agent; or
neither the theme and the agent.
 Thus we can represent the theta grid for picture like so: picture <(agent),
(theme)>.
Prepositions

 The final thematic category, prepositions, can also occur in a predicative

argument structure.
 Consider:
 The man is in the classroom.
 The preposition in relates the subject of this sentence to a point in physical
space that defines their location at that moment in time. A preposition like in
can be represented like so:
 In <theme, location>
 The subject “experiences” the state of being in these constructions.
Other kinds of Grammatical Relations

 The possible grammatical relations that exist cross-linguistically can of course

become more complex as we look beyond just the structure of phrases.
 If we look at the clausal level entire ideas or scenarios can be related to the
verbs across clauses.
 Consider the following sentence:
 Mary knows that John likes to watch college football on Saturdays.
 The entire embedded clause, beginning with John is connected to the matrix
clause that has Mary as a subject.
 We can call the embedded clause a proposition and the element that
connects them, namely, that, a complementizer.
Complementizers and Modals

 Complementizers are an extremely important word category as they are used

cross-linguistically to connect ideas, that is, entire clauses.
 A complementizer is thus a functional category that does NOT assign a
thematic role to anything.
 Similar to complementizers, modal auxiliaries (like might, may, should, will,
etc.) also do not assign any theta roles.
 John might go the movies with Jane.
 This is the primary distinction between thematic and functional categories,
that is, thematic categories all assign theta roles, and functional ones never
do.
Thematic Categories - Verbs

 Verbs have a number of properties that are particular to them. Firstly, they can be
conjugated. That is, they can express a number of different meanings but affixing
certain things. In English, the past or present tense markers:
talks/talked
types/typed
brews/brewed
 There are irregular inflections in the past tense, but one can still posit that the past
tense morpheme is still being present:
go/went (*goed)
know/knew (*knowed)
fly/flew (*flied)
Verbs (cont.)

 English is a rather poor representative when it comes to the possible complexity of a

verbal conjugational paradigm. In many languages cross-linguistically, verbal inflections
very often show agreement with the subject.
 This agreement is usually with respect to person and number.
 Hungarian is one such language with a rich verbal inflection paradigm. Consider the
conjugation of the verb megy ‘to go’:
(én) megyek (mi) megyünk
(te) mész/mégy (ti) mentek
(ő) megy (ők) mennek
 The only exception to this is of course the English copula to be, which is the only verb in
English that shows a more diverse inflection paradigm
Verbs (cont.)

 Recall subcategorization.
 Our knowledge of predicate structure now allows us to make more sense of
subcategorization.
 Each of the kinds of verbal predicates (intransitive, transitive, ditransitive)
can now be analyzed as subcategorizing for arguments.
 Take the predicate put. This verb is a three-place predicate which means
that it assigns theta roles to three of its arguments.
 Not all arguments are made the same, however. The agent of put goes to the
left of the verb. The patient and the location go to the right of the verb.
 The arguments that go to the right of the verb are formally known as
complements.
Argument Structure

 What we can now analyze is that different verbs have different argument
structures.
 Intransitive verbs have something like:
 Birds fly.
fly [-F, -N, +V]
Theta Grid: <agent>
Subcategorization: Ø
Argument Structure (cont.)

 Transitive verbs have something like the following:

 Jack kicked the ball.
kick [-F, -N, +V]
Theta Grid: <agent, patient>
Subcategorization: [NOMINAL]
 Ditransitive verbs then look like:
 John gave Mary the flowers for Valentine’s Day.
give [-F, -N, +V]
Theta Grid: <agent, goal, theme>
Subcategorization: [NOMINAL,
NOMINAL]
Other Kinds of Constructions

 There are verbs that take other kinds of complements that are not
prepositional or nominal. Consider the following sentence:
 Kate seems nice.
 The guests behaved amicably.
 Each of these verbs have unique subcategorizations:
seem [-F, -N, +V]
behave [-F, -N, +V]
Theta Grid: <theme, attribute> Theta Grid:
<agent, manner>
Subcategorization: [ADJECTIVAL] Subcategorization:
[ADVERBIAL]
Other Constructions (cont.)

 There is a class of verbs that take whole sentences as complements.

 These kinds of verbs are typically verbs of cognition like think.
 I think (that) John is going to prom with Mary.
 The theta grids for these kinds of verbs are specific in that we need to account for
the change in structure.
 Verbs of perception do not involve any deliberate exertion of motion on the part of
the subject; so, the subject cannot be an agent. The breakdown of think is thus:
think [-F, -N, +V]
Theta Grid: <experiencer,
proposition>
Subcategorization:
[SENTENCE]
Exercise

 Provide the breakdowns for the verbal predicates in bold in the following
sentences:
 Jane threw the ball at Pete.
 Belle believes that John is in love with Kate.
 John heard the birds singing in the trees.
 The elephant can swim.
 Peter looks tired this morning.