Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T19:32:58.730Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
Coming soon

3 - Syntactic Forms, Grammatical Functions, and Semantic Roles

Jong-Bok Kim
Affiliation:
Kyung Hee University, Seoul
Laura A. Michaelis
Affiliation:
University of Colorado Boulder
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores two kinds of intra-clausal relations: grammatical functions and semantic roles. Each such relation allows us to describe the dependencies that exist between a predicator and the units that it combines with to make phrases of various kinds. The grammatical functions discussed include subject, (direct and indirect) object, predicative complement, oblique complement, and modifier. The chapter explores diagnostics used to identify each of these grammatical functions in a sentence. For instance, tag questions, agreement, and subject-auxiliary inversion can tell us if a given constituent is a subject or not. We note here that a key to understanding the syntax of English is the recognition that the mapping between form (categorial type) and function is not one-to-one; mismatches, as when a clause or even a PP serves as a subject, are possible. The chapter describes cases in which a given grammatical function can have various categorical realizations. We see that semantic roles (or participant roles) are combined in the manner they are because they reflect what kind of event, state, or relation the sentence depicts. One cannot, for example, have an event of transfer without a donor, gift, and recipient. The chapter gives examples of semantic roles like agent, theme, patient, location, source, and goal. We observe that, although there are instances in which it is difficult to diagnose an argument’s semantic role, semantic roles can be of use in classifying verbs into distinct subclasses.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×