Syntax Ch 11 Roles PDF

Ch 11: Roles 11.1 Roles, grammar and meaning Why do we discuss roles? Concepts such as Agent, Patient, Instrument and so on are regularly used in accounts of the active and passive constructions, of prepositions in English and of prepositions and case suffixes in other languages, and with r...

Ch 11: Roles 11.1 Roles, grammar and meaning Why do we discuss roles? Concepts such as Agent, Patient, Instrument and so on are regularly used in accounts of the active and passive constructions, of prepositions in English and of prepositions and case suffixes in other languages, and with respect to various syntactic structures. There are central participants, such as Agent and Patient, and peripheral participants (which some analysts call ‘circumstances’) such as Place and Time. 11.2 Criteria for roles Roles are assigned to nouns; since nouns are the heads of noun phrases, the property of being an Agent or Patient, say, spreads from nouns to the noun phrases that they head. We begin with the simplest sort of example, as in (1)–(2). 1. The baby chewed the biscuit. 2. The baby is heavy. In (1), baby is an Agent and biscuit is a Patient. Since it is not so obvious what role is to be assigned to baby in (1), we will leave the role undecided for the moment.  What is important is that there are tests in English that distinguish the constructions in (1) and (2): (1), but not (2), is an appropriate answer to the question in (3). 3. What happened? The above question enables us to sort out events from states, since only sentences describing events can answer the question What happened? The questions in (4) and (5) pick out Agent and Patient. 4. What did X do? 5. What happened to X?  In (4), X can be replaced by the baby : What did the baby do? He/she chewed the biscuit. In (5), X can be replaced by the biscuit: What happened to the biscuit? The baby chewed it. Example (2) is not an appropriate answer to either (4) or (5). Other tests for Agent are available in English. One test is whether a clause can be incorporated into the WH cleft construction What X did was/What X is doing is and so on. For example, (1) can be incorporated in the construction to yield (6). 6. What the baby did was chew the biscuit. Other tests are whether the verb in a given clause can be put into the progressive or into the imperative. Example (1) meets both of these criteria, as shown in (7) and (8). 7. The baby was chewing the biscuit. 8. Chew the biscuit!  Examples (9)–(11) introduce other roles. 9. Hartfield House is in Surrey. (Place) 10. Mr. Knightley rode to Kingston. (Goal) 11. Eleanor and Marianne travelled from Shropshire. (Source) In (9), Surrey has the role of Place; it denotes the location of Hartfield House. In (10), Kingston has the role of Goal, in that it denotes the goal of Mr Knightley’s journey, while in (11) Shropshire denotes the starting point, or source, of the journey and has the role of Source.  Other roles are illustrated in (12)–(13). 12. The thief smashed the window with a hammer. (Instrument) 13. Captain Wentworth recovered the property for Mrs. Smith. (Benefactive) Hammer in (12) has the self-explanatory role of Instrument, although we will argue below that Instrument is a subtype of a more general role. Instruments are signaled by with in English. (Typically, the Instrument role is played by inanimate objects such as hammers and saws, but it could be played by an animate being in unusual situations). In (13), Mrs Smith has the role known generally as Benefactive, the person who benefits from an action. Benefactive is signaled by for. Some analysts treat Benefactive as a subtype of Goal.  Another role that has been proposed is that of Theme, a role that is neutral with respect to Agent and Patient and is assigned to noun phrases such as the vase in (14a) and (14b). 14. a. The vase stood on the table in the hall. (Theme) b. Imogen took the vase to her mother’s. c. Imogen broke the vase. Example (14a) describes a state, but what role should be assigned to vase? By the same token, (2) describes a state too: what role is appropriate for baby? The grammar of English remains neutral in this respect, and we will treat vase in (14a) and baby in (2) as merely being neutral between Agent and Patient.  Certain verbs and adjectives denoting states do require a different role for subject nouns, as shown by (15). 15. a. Sue knows the answer. (Experiencer) b. The answer is known to Sue. Example (15a) is not an answer to the question What does Sue do? or to the question What is happening to Sue? The paraphrase in (15b) shows that to is a possible preposition in the passive, which in turn indicates that Sue does not simply have the Neutral role. Many accounts of participant roles propose the role of Experiencer, the label reflecting the notion that (15a) describes a situation in which Susan has a psychological experience.  Verbs like know are called stative verbs. Lists of stative verbs in English usually include verbs such as understand, like, believe, see and hear, which denote psychological experiences. Adjectives such as sorry, ashamed and joyful are often included as denoting psychological experiences. 11.3 Roles and role-players The most reliable and general criteria for Agents – answering questions such as What does X do? or What is X doing?, completing WH clefts – What X does is __ and occurring in the progressive – lead to a very general concept of Agent. Prototypical Agents are human beings acting of their own volition, initiating an action, carrying it out using their own energy and producing an effect on something. Jim in (1) is a prototypical Agent. 1. Jim was happily chopping logs. Prototypical Agents allow clauses to be continued by be at it and to contain adverbs such as enthusiastically or masterfully, as in (2a) and (2b). 2. a. Jim was chopping logs when Margaret left and was still at it when she got back. b. Jim was enthusiastically chopping logs.  Some Agents meet the general criteria outlined above but achieve some goal by exerting their will-power. Consider the examples in (3). 3. a. Captain Oates died in order to save his comrades. b. The fugitive lay motionless in order to avoid discovery. Verbs such as die and lie do not denote actions but can be put into the imperative, which is not a test for actions but is a test for volition: Die a hero’s death for Sparta! and Lie still or they will see you! An adverb such as accidentally signals that an action is not voluntary, but it can occur in imperative sentences and the latter can be given an interpretation. Thus, Kick the defender accidentally can be taken as an instruction to kick the defender but to make it look accidental.  Some Agents do not have volition, do not initiate an action and do not expend energy. Nonetheless, they produce an effect by virtue of being in a certain position in a certain place. Example (4) is an instance of this; note that it meets the above general criteria, as demonstrated by (5). 4. This arch supports the weight of the tower. 5. a. What does this arch do? It supports the weight of the tower. b. What this arch does is support the weight of the tower. c. This arch is supporting the weight of the tower.  Some Agents initiate an action but do no more because they merely give a command to others to carry out some action. An example is in (6). 6. The guard marched the prisoners round the yard. A fourth type of Agent is conceived of as using its own energy – a living creature, a machine or a natural force. Examples are in (7). 7. a. The computer is playing six simultaneous games of three-dimensional chess. b. The machine is crushing the wrecked car. c. The flood swept away whole villages. An extra role of Causer was proposed at one time for nouns such as flood in (7c). Floods have their own non-human properties, and these are set out in the lexical entry for flood. Floods are simply a subtype of Agent, not prototypical but not peripheral either.  The Instrument role: The typical instrument is a tool such as a saw, hammer, screwdriver and so on. The peripheral instrument is a machine, with impromptu tools, such as lengths of wood or stones. It is possible to imagine situations in which human beings are used as instruments: compare Bond smashed the window with his opponent. Of course, such situations are not normal, but they do occur from time to time, mostly in novels. The crucial fact is the occurrence of with, signaling an Instrumental role, and the unusual nature of the particular instrument will emerge from the combination of that role with a human noun.  Finally, consider the examples in (8). 8. a. The intense cold killed the climbers. b. The climbers were killed by the intense cold. c. The climbers were killed with the intense cold. The important point is that we have to go by the grammar, and the grammar indicates that cold is presented as an Agent in (8b) but as a non-Agent in (8c).  Are all occurrences of the same preposition can be analyzed as signaling the same role? Consider the sentences in (9). 9 a. Catriona opened the door with this key. (Comitative= accompanying or being the same place) b. The visas are with the passports. (Comitative) c. Sally went to the party with Andrew. (Comitative) d. Alan made the loaf with strong white flour. (Comitative) e. The builders made the wall with concrete blocks. (Comitative) The examples in (9) have in common the notion of being in the same place, for which the term Comitative (= accompanying) is commonly used. Examples (9a–e) all contain with and can all be interpreted as involving the notion of being in the same place. In (33a), key is in the Comitative role and it denotes an instrument. 11.4 Problems with Patients: planting roses A well-known set of examples that bear directly on participant roles and the question of whether they relate only to the objective world of the physicist or whether they also relate to the world as conceived and perceived by ordinary speakers of human languages. The examples are in (1). 1. a. The gardener planted roses in the garden. b. The gardener planted the garden with roses. Examples (1a) and (1b) are not identical in meaning. Example (1b) is true if the gardener filled the garden with rose bushes, whereas (1a) leaves it open whether the rose bushes are all over the garden or only in one part of it. If (1b) is true, (1a) is true; if (1a) is true, (1b) might or might not be true depending on the details of a particular event of planting.  The differences in meaning accompany differences in syntax; the syntax make it clear that we are dealing with two different constructions: 1. There are differences in word order: (1a) planted roses garden vs (1b) planted garden roses. 2. Garden is preceded by a preposition in (1a) but not (1b); roses is preceded by a preposition in (1b) but not (1a). 3. The preposition in (1a) is in, but in (1b) it is with. 4. Roses is the direct object of planted in (1a) – (1a) can be made passive, Roses were planted in the garden by the gardener. In (1b) the direct object is garden; witness the passive The garden was planted with roses by the gardener.  The crucial point is that the grammatical criteria show that in (1a) roses is the direct object; they are presented as being directly operated on by the gardener. In (1b), the garden is presented as being directly operated on by the gardener. In terms of role, roses in (1a) is Patient and garden in (1b) is Patient. Normally, the Patient in a clause is interpreted as being completely affected by the action; the roses are completely affected in (1a), but this tells us nothing about the garden. The garden is completely affected in (1b), and this gives us the essential difference in meaning from (1a). Thus, these basic differences in grammar and meaning affect (1a and 1b).  Garden in the (a) examples is the complement of the preposition in and has to be assigned the role of Place. Roses in the (b) examples has the Comitative role, based on the concept of being in the same place. Example (34b) presents the gardener as operating on the garden, causing it to be in the same place as roses. Returning to (9e), we see that The builders built the wall with concrete blocks presents the concrete blocks in a Comitative role. In contrast, The builders built the wall from/out of concrete blocks presents the blocks as the Source from which the wall emerged. Summary Participant roles play a useful part in the analysis of the syntax and interpretation of various constructions. Typical roles are Agent, Patient, Instrument, Place, Goal and Source. Two distinctions are fundamental. One is between roles and role-players, as in the recognition that the prototype or best central example of a player in the Agent role is a human being using his or her own energy and acting of their own volition. A peripheral example is an inanimate column without volition and not using energy.  The second distinction is between the very general roles and the information contributed by individual lexical verbs to the meaning of a clause. An Agent may be involved in many kinds of action, and a Patient may be unaffected by an action, say watch, or be affected to a large extent, as in the actions denoted by break or lift. Patients can be created, as in write a book, or destroyed, as in burn the manuscript. Roles do not connect up directly with the world but with the ways in which the speakers of languages conceive of and present situations in the world.