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Sabtu, 10 Desember 2011

SENTENCE SEMANTICS


SENTENCE SEMANTICS
PARTICIPANTS

I.     Introduction : Classifying Participants

Gina raise the car with a jack
These sentence identifies three entities, they are:
1)      Gina is entity responsible for initianing ang carrying out the action
2)      The car acted upon has its position changed by the action
3)      A jack is the means by which Gina is able to couse the action
Such roles has a number of labels in semantics, including participant roles (Allan,1986), deep semantic cases (Fillmore,1986), semantic roles (Givon,1990), thematic relations (Gruber 1976, Jackendoff 1972) and thematic roles (Dowty 1986, 1989, 1991, Jackendoff 1990). In this paper we will use the last term here: Thematic Roles.

II.  Thematic Roles

Thematic Roles is a term used to express the role that a noun phrase plays with respect to the action or state describe by a sentence’s verb. Here are is a list of the major thematic relations:
a.       AGENT
§  A participant who performs the action or bring about the state of affairs
§  An agents is conscious, sentient, animate
§  Volition or purpose involved in the action being done
e.g       David cooked the rashers
            The fox jumped out of the ditch
b.      PATIENT
§  A Participant which the verb characterises as having something happen to it, and as being affected by what happens to its.
§  Changed by the verb’s action
e.g       Enda cut back these bushes
The sun melted the ice
c.       THEME
§  A participant which is characterised as changing its position or cindition
§  Being in a state or position or whose location is describe
§  Unchange by the verb’s action
e.g       Roberto passed the ball wide
The book is in the library
d.      EXPERIENCER
§  A participant who is aware of the action
§  Undergoes a sensory, cognitive, or emotional experience
§  Must be animate/sentient
e.g       Mary saw the smoke
I love you
Many people fear snakes
The rhesus monkey had never seen snow before
e.       RECIPIENT
§  A participant that receive something (good or bad) in a situation
§  A special kind of goal associated with verbs expressing a change of ownership, possession
e.g       They gave the worker a raise
He sent John the letter
She spared me his usual sob story
f.       BENEFICIARY
§  The entity for whose benefit the action was perform
e.g       I baked Reggie a cake
He built a car for me
I fight for the king
g.      INSTRUMENT
§  The means by which an action is performed or something comes about
e.g       She cleaned the wound with an antiseptic
Jamie cut the ribbon with a pair of scissors
h.      LOCATION
§  The place in which something is situated or take place
e.         The monster was hiding under the bed
The band played in a marquee
i.        GOAL/DIRECTION
§  Where the action is directed towards
§  The end point for a physical movement
§  May also indicate the end result of a change in possession or identity
e.g.      The caravan continued on toward the distand oasis
He walked to school
j.        SOURCE
§  The entity from which something moves
§  Where the action originated
e.g       The plane come back from Kinshasa
We got the idea from a French magazine

Thus to return to our example, repeated below:
Gina raised the car with a jack
It can be describe the thematic roles by calling Gina the AGENT of the action, the car the THEME, and the jack the INSTRUMENT.

Radford (1988) threats PATIENT and THEME as different names for some role. Here we adobt the distinction that PATIENT is reserved for entities acted upon and changed by the verb’s action, while THEME describes an entity moved in literal by the action of the verb, but constitutionally unchanged.

Fred shattered the rock; the rock = PATIENT
Fred threw the rock ; the rock = THEME

Some writers has suggested that AGENT is particular type of a more general thematic role ACTOR, where ACTOR express the participant which perform, effects, instigateds, or controls the situation denited by the predicate. So every AGENT is an ACTOR, but not the other way round.
The car ran over the hedgehog.
è The car an ACTOR but not an AGENT because it presumably is neither in possession of a wish to kill nor to animate.

III.        Grammatical Relations and Thematic Roles

Grammatical Relations must be carrefuly distinguished from thematic roles. In what follows, we illustrate three grammatical relations: subject (Subjects are ordinarily the only argument to precede the predicate in English), first object (First objects are the noun phrase argument that typically follows a transitive verb) ,and second object(second objects only occur with ditransitive verbs) .
In English there is a tendency for Subject to be AGENT, direct object to be PATIENTS and THEMES, and INSTRUMENTS to occur as prepositional phrase, this need not always be the case. There are two basic situations where this is not the case : the first is where the roles are simply omitted, and the second  is where the speaker choose to alter the unusal matching between roles and grammatical relations, a choise often marked by an accompanying change of verbal voice.
a.       Ursula        broke        the ice with     a pickaxe
AGENT                      PATIENT       INSTRUMENT
Subject                                    Direct Object  Prepositional phrase               
b.      The pickaxe               broke               the ice
INSTRUMENT                                  PATIENT                   (no AGENT)
Subject                                                            Direct Object             
c.       The Ice                        broke                                                             
PATIENT                                           (no AGENT & INSTRUMENT)
Subject                                               
è The verb break allows all three thematic roles to occupy subject position

Several writers has suggested that the process of different roles occupying the subject posistion is a Hierarchical process.
Here, a great variety of thematic roles can be expressed as subjects.
(1)
a.
Agent:
 
The lions devoured the wildebeest.

b.
Instrument:
 
This key opens the door to the main office.

c.
Cause:
 
Hurricane-force winds demolished much of the town.

d.
Experiencer:
 
The rhesus monkey had never seen snow before.

e.
Recipient:
 
The workers were given a raise.

f.
Goal:
 
The summit wasn't attained until years later.

g.
Path:
 
An unpaved road led up to the shanty.

h.
Theme:
 
The wildebeest was devoured by the lions.

i.
"
 
The ball rolled down the hill.



A wide variety of thematic roles can be expressed as first objects.
(2)
a.
Instrument:
 
You should use this key for the door to the main office.

b.
Experiencer:
 
The children's drawings pleased their parents no end.

c.
Recipient:
 
They gave the workers a raise.

d.
Goal:
 
We reached our hotel after a subway ride of less than ten minutes.

e.
Path:
 
We drove the scenic route.

f.
Measure:
 
The performance lasted two hours.

g.
Theme:
 
The lions devoured the wildebeest.

h.
"
 
We rolled the ball down the hill.

As the name implies, second objects only occur with ditransitive verbs. Unlike the other grammatical relations, second objects are thematically very restricted---namely, to themes, as illustrated in (3).
(3)
 
Theme:
 
They gave the workers a raise.
Nevertheless, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the thematic role of theme and the grammatical relation of second object. This is because, although second objects must be themes, themes don't need to be expressed as second objects. They can also be mapped onto subjects (as in (1h,i)) or first objects (as in (2g,h)).

IV.         Verb and Thematic Roles Grids

Verbs has particular requirements for their thematic roles. We need to know not only how many arguments a verb requires (whether it is intansitive, transitive, etc) but also what thematic roles its arguments may hold.
In generative grammar literature, this listing of thematic roles is often called a thematic role grid or theta grid for short. Simple example might be:
Put V : <AGENT, THEME, LOCATION>
JohnAGENT put the bookTHEME on the shelfLOCATION
è Put is a three-arguments or ditransitive, verb and spells out the thematic roles the three arguments may carry. It also has three syntactic arguments : subject, object, locative
Eat V : <AGENT,PATIENT>
SheAGENT ate a cakePATIENT
è Eat has two semantic arguments, the AGENT (the eater) and the PATIENT (what is eaten), but only one require syntactic argument (the subject) and only optionally a second syntactic argument (the object).

Not all nominals in a sentence are arguments of a verb and thus specified in verbal theta-grid in the lexicon. We will make the assumption that one can employ grammatical tests to identify arguments: for example to distinguish between the role of argements played by the prepositional phrase ‘in the bathroom’ below and its status as non argument:
(a)    [ S Roland [VP put [NP the book] [PP in the bathroom]]]
è In the bathroom is an argument of the verb put, why it cannot be omitted.
Roland put the book
(b)   [ S Roland [VP read [NP the book] ] [PP in the bathroom]] 
è In the bathroom Not an argument of verb read, which can form a sentence without it
Roland read the book
In grammatical term, while in the bathroom is an argument in (a), it is an adjunct in (b). As well as not being required by the verb, adjuncts are seen as less structurally attached to the verb.
All verb may co-occur with adjuncts (usually adverbial of time, place, manner, etc) and that requirements need only be listed in the lexicon for arguments. Another way making this distinction is to distinguish between participant roles and non-participant roles. They are need by the predication, the latter are optional adjuncts which give extra information about the context, typically information about the time, location, purpose or result of the event.

V.           Problems with thematic roles

The first problem is really about deliminating particular roles. The extreme case would be to identify individual thematic roles for each verb: thus we would say that a verb like beat gives us two theta roles, a BEATER-role and a BEATEN-role. This would of course reduce the utility of the notion: if we lose the more general role-types like AGENT,PATIENT etc, then we cannot make the general statements about the relations between semantic roles and grammatical relations. But if we are to classify individual theta-roles like BEATER and BEATEN into theta-role type like AGENT and PATIENT, we will have to find some way of accomodating variation within the role type.
The second problem is more general: how do we define theta-roles in general? That is, what semantic basis do we have for characterizing roles?. Facing both of these problems, Dowty (1991) proposes a solution where theta-roles are not semantic primitive but are define in term of entailment of the predicate. In this view a theta-role is a cluster of entailments about an argument position which are shared by some verbs. He gives example like x murder y, x nominates y, x interrogates y, where:
Entailments they all share include that x does a volitional act, that x more over intends this to be the kind of act named by the verb, that x cause some event to take place involving y (y dies, y acquires a nomination, y answers questions – or at least hears them), and that x moves or changes externally (i.g not just mentally). (1991:552)

Dowty proposes that we view the roles not as discreate and bounded categories but instead as prototypes, where there may be different degrees of membership. There are two basic prototype : Proto-Agent and Proto-Patient. Each of them has characteristic lists of entailments:
Properties of the Agent Proto-Role
a.       Volitional involvement in the event or state
b.      Sentience (and/or perception)
c.       Causing an event or change of state in another participant
d.      Movement (relative to the position of another participant)
Properties of the Patient Proto-Role
a.       Undergoes change of state
b.      Incremental theme
c.       Causally affected by another participant
d.      Stationary relative to movement of another participant

John cleaned the house
è John include all four entailment or AGENT Proto-Role (volition, sentience, causation, movement)
John fainted and dropped the vase
è John  no volition
The storm destroyed the house
è The storm  involved neither sentience nor volition
Maggie pruned the roses
è The roses will involve all four entailments of PATIENT Proto-Role (undergoes change of state, incremental theme, causally affected, stationary relative to movement of another participant)
Roberto watched the game
è the game does not undergo a change of state nor is causally efected by another participant

VI.        Voice

Voice is a grammatical category that expresses the semantic functions atributed to the referents of a clause. It indicates whether the subjects in an actor, patient, and recipient. Voice devided into three types : active voice, middle voice, and passive voice.
Many language allow an opposition between active voice and passive voice. We can compare for example the English sentence below:
(a)    Billy                groomed         the horses       (Active voice)
AGENT/S                               PATIENT/O  
(b)   The horses      were groomed by Billy                      (Passive voice)
PATIENT/S                            AGENT/PP

This is a typical active-passive voice alternation: the passive sentence has a verb in a different form – the past participle with the auxiliary verb be – and it allows the speaker a different perspective on the situation described. This passive sentence (b) allows the speaker to describe the situation from the point of view of the PATIENT rather than that of the AGENT. Many writers describe this foregrounding of the PATIENT and backgrounding of the AGENT in term of promoting the PATIENT and demoting the AGENT or as reflecting the speaker’s greater empathy with the PATIENT rather than the AGENT. There are other lexical and syntactic strategies which alter perspective in this way. It is accomplished by the syntactic patterns known as pseudo-cleft.
a.       What Joan bought was a Ferrari à the speaker interested in Joan’s purchase
b.      It was Joan who bought the Ferrary à the speaker intersted in the Ferrari’s purchaser

Passive constructions is used to place focus on the grammatical patient, rather than the agent. This properly occurs when the patient is the topic of the sentence. Here the examples of THEME and RECIPIENT roles occuring as the subject of passive:
Ø  Someone donated this money to the school (active)
This money was donated to the scholl (passive)
Ø  His grandmother gave him a camera (active)
He was given a camera by his grandmother (passive)
The typical pattern is that a nominal occupying Object is fronted to subject in passive. To further underline this grammatical aspect of passive, i.e that it is the Object position that is relevant to passivization (the process of passivizing sentence). The discourse factors affecting passives have been described in a number of frameworks; for example, Kuno (1987:209-16) employs the notion of speaker empathy. He gives an example of a person relating a story about their friend Mary and her experiences at the party. In the narrative the speaker’s empathy is with Mary and thus events are viewed from her perspective.
(a)    Mary had quite an experience at the party she went to last night
·         An eight-foot-tall rowdy harassed her
·         She was harassed by an eight-foot-tall rowdy
(b)   Mary had quite an experience at the party she went to last night
·         She slapped an eight-foot-tall rowdy in the face
·         An eight-foot-tall rowdy was slapped in the face by her (incorrect)

Passive construction have received a great deal of attention in the linguistics literature. This is not surprising: even from our brief discussion we can see that while the general effect of passive is to allow a shift in linkage between theta-roles and grammatical relations, the process is subject to a complex of grammatical and discourse factors.

VII.          Comparing passive construction across language

English passive outline where the AGENT is demoted from subject position, a non-AGENT role is promoted to subject, and the verb shows a distinct form which agress with the promoted subject: the total package being what we have called passive voice. Other languages have a special type of passive, often called the impersonal passive. Impersonal Passive is not common in English. Here the example of impersonal passive in Irish:

(a)    Thug                siad      Siobhan           abhaile inniu
Brought           they     Joan                 home   today
‘They brought Joan home today”

Tugadh                  Siobhan                 abhaile inniu
Brought-IMPERS Joan                       home   today
‘Joan was brought home today’

è Both in Irish and in the English translation the passive verb form is differentiated from the active, and how in both AGENT is often omitted.
è The Irish passive differs from its English translation because the THEME , Siobhan, remains in its original position as an object while in the English passsive Joan becomes subject.
è The PATIENT is not promoted to subject in the Irish impersonal passive, but the AGENT is omitted.

(b)   Here the following pair of examples from Dutch:
De jongens      fluiten
The boys          whistle
The boys whistle/are whistling’

Er        wordt              door     de jongens       gefloten
There   becomes          by        the boys           whistling
‘By the boys (there) is whistling’
è The AGENT is backgrounded, but there is no otner argument to be foregrounded and subject position is taken by the word er ‘there’, which does not refer dirctly to any entity and which has no theta-role. It is also possible to delete the AGENT altogether in this passive:
Er              wordt              gefloten
There         becomes         whistling        
‘There is whistling/People whistle/Someone whistles’

One conclusion from comparing passives across languages seems to be that the phenomenon is typically a cluster of functions: in each case following the general pattern of allowing the speaker planning her discource some variation in the linkage between thematic and grammatical roles, but with considerable variation in the associated semantic and grammatical elements of the cluster.

VIII.       Middle Voice

Beside the active and passive voices, Greek has a third voice, the middle. The use of middle voice varies from language to language but a central feature is that middle forms emphasize that the subject of the verb is affected by the action described by the verb. This affectedness can be of several types, they are:
a.       Neuter intransitives à this type of middle is where the subject undergoes a non-volitional process or change of state.
e.g From Sanskrit
·           So      namati             dandam
              He     bends               stick
             ‘He bends the stick’
·           Namate          dandah
Bends            stick
The stick bends’

b.      Bodily activity and emotion à in some languages the verb occurs in a middle voice when the activity involves the body or emotion of the subject
e.g       Classical Greek                                   Somali
            klin-e-sthai      ‘lean’                           fadhiis-o          ‘sit down’
            hêd-e-sthai      ‘rejoice’                       baroor-o           ‘mourn,wail’

c.       Reflexives à In some language the middle used where the subject’s action affect the subject himself, or a possession or body part of the subject
e.g       Classical Greek
            Lou – w means ‘I wash’ (the clothes), but
Lou-omai means ‘I wash myself’ or ‘I bathe’

d.      Autobenefactives à this type of middle is used to signify that the action of the subject is done for his or her own benefit.
E.g       Classical Greek
            Hair-ō  moiran                         Hari-oumai      moiran
            ‘I take a share’                                    ‘I take a share for myself’
           
            Somali
            Active verbs                middle verbs
            Wad    ‘to drive’         wad-o  ‘to drive for my self’
            Beer     ‘to cultivate’    beer-o  ‘to cultivate for oneself’
In the examples so far, middle voice has been marked by verbal inflection. In English there is no inflection marker of the middle: the distinction is only shown by alternations between transitive active verbs and intransitive middle verbs, where the agent is omitted, e.g:
They open the gates very smoothly     (Active)
The gates open very smoothly (Middle-neuter)
These intransitive middles in English are often used to describe the success of a non-AGENT in some activity:
These clothes wash well
This model sells very quickly
These saws dont cut very efficiently