Thematic Relations: A Study in the Grammar-Cognition Interface
Author: Perini, Mário A.
Date: 2019-10-23T07:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Psychology; Cognitive Psychology & Cognition; Language Arts & Disciplines; Linguistics; General; Psychedelic Library
Description: This book presents a proposal to better define thematic relations by exploring the relation between language and cognition. It analyzes the relation between grammatically defined roles such as agent and patient (semantic roles), and elaborate thematic relations (ETRs) actually accessible to language users. It shows that many phenomena previously analyzed as grammatical can be described in a more simple and convenient way by postulating direct connection between syntactic complements and cognitive relations present in the schema evoked by the verb. The volume focuses on a topic which has been t
Publisher: Springer

Mário A. Perini

Thematic Relations

A Study in the Grammar-Cognition Interface

Mário A. Perini

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

ISBN 978-3-030-28537-1e-ISBN 978-3-030-28538-8
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

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Preface

This book grew out of questions that arose during the construction of the Valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese verbs , and from my previous work on the topic, since about 2005. In a previous book (Perini 2015), I deal with basic theory and practical questions of analysis; the present one takes these practical questions a step ahead, adding a number of new examples, and also touches on more general questions, which extend to lexicogrammatical analysis in a wider sense.

The reader may find that my text rambles over several theoretical problems, but these problems are actually connected with the general aim of making the relation between form and meaning explicit, and describing it in such a way as to reach the two extreme points of the process, namely phonetic form and meaning structure, both of which are accessible to observation, sensorially and introspectively. I argue that the introspective component is just as concrete and observable as the phonetic one; in this, I follow methodologically concerned authors such as Itkonen (1974) and Talmy (2007), as well as most linguists working on the analysis of particular languages, who sometimes do not acknowledge their debt to introspective observation, but make use of it just the same. Introspection is the only way to access meaning, and describing in clear and complete terms the relation between form and meaning is an inevitable task of linguistics; it is derived directly from the definition of a language as a system relating these two spaces. I hope I am sufficiently clear about these important points in this book.

This book is not, nor does it include, an exhaustive review of the literature on thematic relations and related topics. It is thought of primarily as a set of questions and proposals meant to help people working in an area of language structure which I feel to be insufficiently understood, as far as the descriptive quality of the proposals is concerned, namely the semantic and cognitive relations between the constituents of a sentence. Accordingly, reference is made to work directly connected with the point under discussion at the moment, and criticism is directed at its empirical import, in preference to their eventual theoretical claims. The emphasis is on description, rather than theory-building; but this does not exclude theoretical argumentation since there is nothing simple about linguistic description.

During the elaboration of the book, and for a long time before that, I benefitted from contributions, discussions, and informal talks with several colleagues. Lúcia Fulgêncio, my best reader, was very useful by unwearyingly insisting on certain points which I resisted for some time, only to recognize them as basic later on. I am also grateful to my colleagues at the VVP Project, who contributed examples, criticisms, and suggestions: Marcella Couto, Larissa Ciríaco, Eliane Mourão, Madalena Loredo Neta, and Polyana Plais. Our weekly meetings were more important than even they probably realize. José García-Miguel, Oliver Gobbo, Heliana Melo, and Gabriel Othero made useful remarks on specific points. My most heartfelt thanks to all of them. The final result, of course, is my own, and I take full responsibility for the conclusions arrived at.

I extend my gratitude to CNPq (an agency of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology) for a research grant during the writing of this book and to UFMG, where I have been a welcome guest as a volunteer and professor emeritus.

References

Itkonen, E. (1974) Linguistics and metascience . Kokemäki: Societas Philosophica et Phaenomenologica Finlandiae.

Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues . Cham: Springer.

Talmy, L. (2007). Foreword. In M. González-Márquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics . Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Mário A. Perini
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
July, 2019

Symbols and Abbreviations

>

Relates a syntactic unit and a thematic relation (e.g., VSubj> Agent ; NP> “worshipped thing” )

<>

Relates a thematic relation and its prototypical coding (e.g., Agent<>VSubj: the Agent is prototypically coded as a subject)

⊃

Relation of elaboration (e.g., Agent ⊃ “eater”)

CR

Cognitive representation (definition in Sect. 2.2 )

ETR

Elaborate thematic relation (definition in Sect. 2.1.2 )

VSubj

Valential subject (definition in Sect. 5.3 )

*

Unacceptable form, for grammatical or cognitive reasons

Contents

1 Introduction
1

References
7

Part I Grammar and Cognition

2 Language and Cognition
11

2.1 Schemata
11

2.1.1 Semes
12

2.1.2 Variables
13

2.1.3 Core and Periphery
15

2.2 Cognitive Representations (CRs)
15

2.3 Closure
16

2.3.1 Well-Formedness of CRs
16

2.3.2 Complex Stimuli
18

2.3.3 Dealing with Incomplete Information
19

2.4 Summary
22

2.5 Limits of a Language
23

2.6 Simplicity of the Analysis
24

References
25

3 Semantic Role Elaboration
27

3.1 Introduction
27

3.2 Schematic and Elaborate Relations
27

3.3 Building Tracks
35

3.4 Finding the Right Degree of Elaboration
38

3.4.1 Criteria
38

3.4.2 An Example: Agent vs. Cause
41

3.5 Multiple Semantic Roles
43

References
44

4 Notes on Methodology
47

4.1 Literal Meaning
47

4.1.1 What Is “Literal Meaning”?
47

4.1.2 Discussion of the Problem in the Literature
48

4.1.3 From Literal Meaning to Cognitive Representation
52

4.1.4 Literal Meaning and Semantic Roles
54

4.2 Fuzzy and Discrete Distinctions
55

4.3 Empirical Status of Elaborations
56

4.4 Entailment and Semantic Roles
57

4.5 Hyponymic Tracks
58

4.6 Internal Meaning of the Verb
59

4.7 Earlier Treatment of Elaboration Phenomena
60

4.8 On the Use of Introspection in Linguistic Analysis
62

References
66

Part II Valency

5 Valency
71

5.1 Diatheses
71

5.1.1 What Is a Diathesis
71

5.1.2 Valency
72

5.2 Simpler Syntax
72

5.3 Valential Subject
77

5.4 Emitter vs. Receptor
78

5.5 Alternations
79

References
80

6 The Limits of Valency
81

6.1 Traditional Conception of Valency
81

6.2 Mechanisms of Assignment
82

6.3 Limits of a Language
88

References
89

7 Assignment by Default
91

7.1 Assigning an ETR by Default
91

7.2 Constraints on Assignment by Default
93

7.3 Constructional Meaning
94

7.4 Possible Problems
96

7.4.1 More Than One Vacant Slot
96

7.4.2 Three Core ETRs
99

7.5 Transparency, Prototypes, and Schematic Filters
100

7.6 How the Assignment System Works
102

7.6.1 By Default
102

7.6.2 Blocking Action of Diatheses
104

7.6.3 Unsupported Schematic Filter
105

7.6.4 Schematic Filling-In
106

7.7 Summary
107

References
108

8 Thematic Potential
109

8.1 Thematic Potential as a Constraint on Assignment
109

8.2 Complications
110

8.2.1 Pragmatic Control of Complex Potential
110

8.2.2 Diathetic Roles
112

8.3 Thematic Potential at Two Levels
114

8.4 Syntactic Potential
115

References
116

9 Prototypes and Prototype Rules
117

9.1 Definition
117

9.2 Lexical and Grammatical Extension
119

9.3 Application of Prototype Rules
121

9.4 Prototypes and Prepositions
122

9.4.1 Prepositions as Marks of Thematic Relations
123

9.4.2 Prototypical Semantic Roles
123

9.4.3 Diathetic com “with” 125

9.4.4 Schematic Filters
126

9.4.5 Lexical Representation of Prepositions
127

9.4.6 Context-Sensitive Prototype Rules and the Diathesis
128

9.4.7 Previous proposals
129

9.4.8 Homonymy or Polysemy?
130

References
132

10 ETRs and Semantic Roles
133

10.1 How Far Can Assignment by Default Go?
133

10.2 Core and Periphery
137

10.2.1 Nature of the Opposition
137

10.2.2 Review of the Literature
138

10.2.3 Experimental Proof
140

10.2.4 Core vs. Periphery: General Traits
142

10.2.5 Complements and Adjuncts
142

10.3 Summary
144

References
145

Part III Descriptive Application

11 What Is a Patient?
149

11.1 The Notion “Patient” in the Literature
149

11.2 Difficulty of Defining the Patient
150

11.3 Degree of Activity
152

11.4 Assignment by Default as Part of the Solution
153

11.5 Defining the Patient
158

11.5.1 Definition
158

11.5.2 The Transitive Construction
159

11.6 Profiling and the Notion “Change of State”
160

References
161

12 Experiencer, Theme, Goal, and Patient
163

12.1 Is the Experiencer a Patient?
163

12.2 Patient or Goal?
166

12.2.1 A Problem
166

12.2.2 Derivations
166

12.2.3 Syntactic Correlations
168

12.2.4 Theme as a Prepositional Complement
169

12.2.5 Identical Labeling of ETRs and Semantic Roles
169

12.2.6 Cognitive Filters and the Elaborate Level
170

References
171

13 Case Studies
173

13.1 Constructions of Force and Resistance
173

13.1.1 ETRs “Force” and “Resistance”
173

13.1.2 Interaction with Negation
175

13.2 Partners and Reciprocals
177

13.2.1 Marry and mix
178

13.2.2 An Alternate Hypothesis
179

13.2.3 Nonreciprocal aproximar “come close” 182

13.2.4 Reciprocity
184

13.3 Additional Examples
185

13.3.1 Combinar “go well with” 185

13.3.2 Constructions of Identity
186

13.4 Thematic Relations with estar
187

13.4.1 On the Valency of estar “be” 187

13.4.2 (Un)Acceptability and Evoked Schemata
190

13.5 Discourse Topics
191

13.5.1 Sentence Topic and Discourse Topic
191

13.5.2 ETR Assignment in Topic Sentences
193

13.5.3 Sentence Topics
196

13.6 Constructions of Time of Day
197

13.7 Diatheses of ser “be” 199

13.8 Alternate Stimulus
200

13.9 A Dog and His Owner
201

13.9.1 Marta and Her Dog
201

13.9.2 A Hypothesis
202

13.10 Transitive and Ergative Constructions
205

13.11 Other Constructions
207

13.12 Diatheses and Semantic Roles
210

13.13 Complexity of the Relation Sound-Meaning
211

References
214

14 Apology of the Lexicon
217

14.1 On Complexity and the Lexicon
217

14.2 Downscaling Grammar
219

14.3 Constituent Structure
219

14.4 The NP head
221

14.4.1 Why NPs Have a Head
221

14.4.2 Syntactic and Semantic Factors
222

14.4.3 Semantic Function of the NP
224

14.4.4 Subcategorization
226

14.4.5 Other Morphosyntactic Criteria
227

14.4.6 Zwicky (1993) as a Starting Point
229

14.4.7 Agreement Control
231

References
232

15 Results and Conclusions
233

15.1 Complexity of the Assignment System
233

15.2 Elaboration and Linguistic Analysis
234

15.3 Schematic Filters
235

15.4 On Testing Linguistic Hypotheses
236

15.5 Defining Prototypes
238

15.6 Limits of a Language
238

References
241

Index
243

About the Author

Mário A. Perini

is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He has also taught at Campinas University (UNICAMP), Pontifical Catholic University of Minas Gerais (PUC Minas), University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), and University of Mississippi (Oxford). His current research deals with general and Portuguese lexicology, semantics, and syntax in a cognitive perspective. This is his 16th published book, all in the areas of linguistics and language teaching; the list includes: Modern Portuguese: a reference grammar (2002. Yale University Press); Talking Brazilian: a Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation workbook (2004. Yale University Press); A língua do Brasil amanhã e outros mistérios (2004. Parábola Editorial); Princípios de linguística descritiva: introdução ao pensamento gramatical (2006. Parábola Editorial); Describing verb valency: practical and theoretical issues. (2015. Springer); Gramática descritiva do português brasileiro (2016. Editora Vozes); Sintaxe (2019, Parábola Editorial).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_1

1. Introduction

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1) Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Cognitive representationElaborate thematic relationElaborationRole assignmentSemantic rolesThematic relations

I start by explaining the title of this book: thematic relations are the connections between complements of a sentence—its subject, object, prepositional phrases, and so on—and semantic functions such as Agent and Patient, which are ultimately variables of the schemata evoked by a verb or other lexical items. Thematic relations include, but are not limited to, semantic roles; they also comprise elaborate relations such as “kicker,” “drinker,” and “with his foot,” which are ingredients of our final understanding of a sentence, which we may call (following Talmy 2000) its cognitive representation (CR). This book is concerned with thematic relations, in general, and the rather complex ways they are assigned to sentence constituents.

Many of the ideas developed in this book arose during work on the construction of the Valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese verbs. At first we hoped to develop a relatively simple system of notation for the diatheses (constructions) that make up the Dictionary, avoiding the shortcomings we detected in existing valency dictionaries such as Busse (1994) (European Portuguese), DICOVALENCE (French), Erlangen Patternbank (English), and ADESSE (Spanish), as well as some others which we examined more superficially.[1]

A very simple syntax worked adequately for our purposes. We could use a pretty flat syntax, without much structure beyond the distinction of sentence-level constituents (NP, AdjP, AdvP), plus mention of specific prepositions and one syntactic function (subject); this was applied in the Dictionary and has worked well for the description of the valency of verbs.

On the other hand, semantic roles present great difficulties in what concerns both their delimitation and their definition. Besides, we find the same problems in the literature, with varied reactions: some authors opt for disregarding the problem, and deal with poorly defined roles, which leads to a degree of arbitrariness in their analysis[2]; others deny the very need for semantic roles, favoring an analysis based directly on cognitive relations[3]; some give up, simply stating that no satisfactory valential classification is possible at present, and apparently leave it for future research[4]; and, finally, some decide not to work with semantic relations at all, and define them in syntactic terms.[5] Also, to be fair, some authors, like Dowty (1991), Schlesinger (1995), and Schlesinger et al. (2001), as well as the ADESSE and Erlangen databases, do attack the problem directly, with varying success.

None of the available solutions looks sufficiently appealing, and they clearly show that thematic relations are still a largely unsolved problem, so I started looking around for a way to account for the facts in a principled way. This book is an explanation of the solution found, with examples mostly taken from our work on the Dictionary. But I feel obliged to register my gratitude to previous work that provided some of the basic ideas on which this research is based; and among these I would like to emphasize my debt in particular to the ADESSE database, Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), Schlesinger (1995), and Talmy (2000, 2007).

As will be seen, I keep the notion of semantic role more or less in its traditional form, but I am forced to complement it with cognitive relations of a more elaborate nature, named ETRs (elaborate thematic relations),[6] which are not properly linguistic, and can be viewed as components of cognitive representations. For example, take a sentence like

1. [1]

The boy crumpled my passport.

The subject, my boy, is traditionally—and correctly—analyzed as having the semantic role Agent. But this is not the end of the story: what is actually understood by a language user, and goes into the construction of the cognitive representation, is not the notion Agent, but a much more elaborate relation, something like “crumpler,”[7] which can evoke a visual image of the boy crumpling the passport. Now, in

1. [2]

The boy kicked my dog.

we again have a subject Agent, but the elaborate notion is very different, including a different visual image. I argue that in order to build a convenient analysis for these sentences we need not only semantic roles such as Agent but also ETRs like “crumpler” and “kicker,” which alone are accessible to direct intuition by speakers.

The relation between semantic roles and ETRs is one of elaboration, and depends on the identification of each understood ETR as a member of the set subsumed by the language under one semantic role; thus, the “crumpler” and the “kicker” must be recognized as elaborations of the Agent. This depends on the construction of hyponymic tracks, as explained at some length in Chap. 3. I argue there that failure to take into account the distinction between these two levels of relations has been the source of some confusion in the literature.

Furthermore, I propose that semantic roles are not necessarily assigned to all eligible constituents. In many cases, a constituent can be left unmarked for semantic role, and in these cases a special process takes over, named assignment by default; this consists of the establishment of a direct connection between the constituent—or rather its schema—and the schema evoked by the verb. This is developed in Chaps. 7–10. To give a preliminary example, take a sentence like

1. [3]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

The object of this sentence is sometimes analyzed as the Patient. But it does not resemble other cases of Patient: it does not express an entity that undergoes a change of state and, besides, this particular meaning relation seems to be restricted to the verb worship and some close synonyms, like honor and revere. Furthermore, no grammatical rule refers to this particular relation, which sets it apart from, say, the Agent, which is the object of some rules. Accordingly, the role of the object of worship, and many other cases, is an unsolved problem in the literature: all solutions seem arbitrary, and tend to vary from author to author. Some databases, like Framenet, make do with ETRs only,[8] without contemplating the possibility that some of them (of some sets of them) may have grammatical significance. Others, like traditional dictionaries, limit themselves to schematic roles such as Patient, disregarding the important cognitive differences that appear with different verbs. ADESSE goes in the right direction, often giving the relation at two levels: for instance, for adorar “worship” it gives the Experiencer and the Stimulus, which elaborate respectively into the “worshipper” and the “worshipped thing.”[9] This is the closest we found to an adequate solution, but it still leaves it open by which criteria are we to choose the schematic relations, and when they are necessary.

The solution I propose requires a change in perspective of the problem, based on the notion that in all cases a connection must be made between the form of a linguistic unit and its ultimate cognitive representation. This approach includes the assignment of semantic roles like Agent to some constituents and also in other cases a direct connection between the syntactic form and variables present in the schema evoked by the verb. In cases like the object of worship, the present analysis leaves the corresponding constituent (the sun) blank for semantic role; and a general principle binds this variable directly with the elaborate relation “worshipped thing,” present in the schema WORSHIP, which is evoked by the verb.[10]

This means that in some cases the relation between linguistic form and cognitive representation is direct, without the intermediation of grammatical relations such as a semantic role. In the case of [3], we may assign the role Agent to the subject, which is semantically easy, and derives from the action of a prototype rule; and we leave the object free. A cognitive condition[11] requires that it be assigned some kind of thematic relation—not necessarily a semantic role, but necessarily an ETR. The latter can be picked out from the core variables present in the schema WORSHIP, and the only one available is the “worshipped thing”; this is used to bind the available complement, so that the hearer ends up understanding that the “sun” is the “worshipped thing.”[12]

Finally, semantic roles are not to be totally dispensed with in grammatical description; several roles, among which the Agent, are needed in order to state grammatical rules. In other words, the grammar of the language “sees” some sets of ETRs as units, and works on them accordingly, so that the description must include both ETRs and semantic roles.

These three points—the distinction between semantic roles and ETRs; the description of the elaboration process; and assignment by default—are the main contribution of this book. Their joint action not only provides a principled way to ground the description on observable facts, but also helps analyze a number of examples formerly seen as problematic. But, above all, they provide a way to describe the connection between phonetic sequences and cognitive representations (schemata and their articulation), thus effectively building the bridge between these two extreme points in language communication.

Some other important points are also approached, in particular the notion of prototype, which is, to my mind, insufficiently clear in the literature. And all these considerations have methodological relevance, in that they help in the devising of empirically testable hypotheses. This has to do with the fact that speakers have no access to semantic roles per se, but only to their elaborations: our data come in the shape of ETRs, not semantic roles, and just saying that a particular constituent has a semantic role, say Agent, is not testable unless there is a way to connect Agent with some ETR.

A further word on testability: this is universally taken to be a mandatory feature of scientific statements, but linguistic analyses often fail it, specially in what concerns semantic representations. Some analyses stop short of anything that can be really verified against facts—and I mean facts found in the introspective judgment of language users who are not trained in semantics or logic. For instance, upon hearing Lisa filled the bucket anyone can agree that Lisa did something, that the bucket became full, and so on. But if we analyze this sentence as a bunch of logical relations it may become impossible to test in that way. Here I must take sides with linguists like Langacker, who emphasizes intuitive perceptions over the logical analysis so often found in generative work.[13] He puts the question in the following terms:

The abstract systems of rules and principles constructed by theorists seldom emerge organically from the sensitive, fine-grained description of fully representative data (hence their mortality rate is high and their lifetime often tragically short). In brief, all the glory attaches to general principles and abstract theory; careful attention to the minutiae of language is left for those without the insight and imagination to be good theorists.

[Langacker 1991: 262]

Langacker goes on to criticize the argument that considerations of detailed facts

belong to the theory of performance, not a theory of competence. But at best the competence/performance distinction is unclear and problematic; as things stand, to invoke it in this manner is essentially vacuous. In actual practice, the effect of this distinction has been to insulate the framework from any possible attack based on its obvious psychological implausibility.

[Langacker 1991: 262]

This position helps protect the analysis from attacks based on empirical inadequacy, given the highly schematic character of semantic roles such as Agent or Patient. I do not deny that such schematic relations may be psychologically real; but, as they stand, they are impossible to test in practice, and depend on the testing of relations of a more elaborate level. Without going into the controversy about the validity of the competence-performance dichotomy, one thing that must be taken into account is that the analysis of linguistic objects must arrive, at some moment, to the level of cognitive structures.

The emphasis of this book, and of the analyses here shown, is then on description and on data not selected in view of validating a particular theory. It is my belief that linguistics is still far from the stage where a theory of language will be possible. For the moment, may we be content with understanding the way some areas of the lexicon and grammar function; and may we concentrate our efforts on the collection, analysis, and systematization of the data in the area under study. As far as the present book is concerned, this amounts to a contribution to a theory of valency, perhaps more restrictedly a theory of verb valency, or even more modestly a set of guidelines for analyzing valency. In one word, this book is descriptive in its aims and outlook. This task is, as we have found in our work on the Dictionary, long and difficult enough to keep specialists busy for some time. Of course, work proceeds in parallel in other areas, and one day a reliable synthesis will be attempted.

But this should not stop linguists from speculating on more general matters. Probably no question in linguistics has raised so much controversy as the one about form vs. meaning in language. It is not a problem to be solved by a priori assumptions, but rather an empirical issue to be illuminated by careful, extensive, and painstaking examination of the data. A general panorama is not likely to arise before much work is completed; and I hope this book may offer some contribution by, at least, pointing to paths and directions of research that at present seem promising. The aim is to draw the borderline between the two main aspects (or “spaces”) of language, within the limited domain of semantic roles, verb valency, and the elaboration process. The results reported here shed some light on aspects of the articulation between language and cognition, and suggest some more ambitious statements: for instance, first, that the limits of language (as opposed to world knowledge) are more restricted than often imagined; and, second, that transmission of information by language functions in a particularly economical way, in some sort minimizing the importance of grammatical structure in favor of cognitive factors. Theoretical claims found here are then restricted to the area of thematic relations, and may be understood as proposals for discussion. I do not claim any precursory status in these insights[14]; but perhaps the results of the research reported here may help draw with some precision the boundaries of a language.

On the other hand, and despite appearances, this is not a book about the Portuguese language: Portuguese provided most of the data, but the main theme of the book has to do with the definition and delimitation of semantic roles, something that is essential to the analysis of any language. Most (not all) of the examples given come from Brazilian Portuguese—empirical evidence had to come from somewhere, after all—but the relevance of the discussion is not limited to the structure of one language. I believe many conclusions are relevant for the description of parallel phenomena in Romance languages, English, and other Indo-European languages; and, since this book offers at least as many unanswered questions as answers, I hope it contributes towards the elaboration of a program of research into many important features of those languages. The whole process of assignment and elaboration of thematic relations has to do with the need for making explicit the relation between form and content, that is, phonetic sequences and cognitive structures, which constitutes the raison d’être of a language.

I should leave it clear that much of what is said here is a direct development of ideas found in the literature; credit is given at the appropriate places.[15] Yet I am not aware of an attempt to apply them all to the main object of describing valencies and thematic relations in a coherent analysis, with sufficient empirical support. On the other hand, some of the ideas given here are original, and I have not met similar ideas made explicit in the literature, in particular the elaboration process as applied to semantic roles, and assignment of thematic relations by default. This refers of course to what I have found in my reading; in no way would I be able to read the enormous literature on the subject, and still have time left to do the research and write the book. Also, if a reader finds that this book leaves many questions unanswered, it should be made clear that this is the case with any work in linguistics at the present time; we simply do not know enough about language to approach a complete account of its structure and use, in any of its main aspects. The most we can do is to try and ask some relevant questions, and point to possible ways of answering them.

Some final notes on the text: I have kept some amount of redundancy, referring to some basic points again and again, in order to make the text more readable. While this detracts a little from the elegance of the book, it eases the task of the reader, avoiding the uncomfortable need to refresh one’s memory by often going back to previous passages; it also gives some independence to the separate chapters. Several of the ideas already published in Perini (2015) are resumed here; this cannot be helped because this is a report of a continuing research project, and it would not be fair to require the reading of a former book before reading this one.

Parts of the text may seem a little obvious for some readers; but I think many linguists are not used to take cognitive considerations into account in their analyses, and they may benefit from contact with some basic concepts such as schema, cognitive representation, and elaboration. Since these concepts are basic in my proposal, I spent some time explaining them, so as to leave their relation with the analysis of the studied phenomena as clear as possible. The result, I hope, is a more autonomous book, one that is fit to be appreciated by a wide range of readers.

References

1. ADESSE (Alternancias de diátesis y esquemas sintáctico-semánticos del español). Retrieved from http://adesse.uvigo.es

2. Busse, W. (Ed.). (1994). Dicionário sintáctico de verbos portugueses [A syntactic dictionary of Portuguese verbs]. Coimbra: Almedina.

3. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. DICOVALENCE (2010). Dictionnaire de valence des verbes français [A valency dictionary of French verbs]. Retrieved from bach.arts.kuleuven.be/dicovalence/

5. DISC. (1997). Dizionario italiano Sabatini-Coletti. Firenze: Giunti.

6. Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67(3), 547–619.

7. Faulhaber, S. (2011). Verb valency patterns. A challenge for semantic-based accounts. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

8. Framenet (data). Retrieved from Framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu

9. Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

10. Herbst, T., Heath, D., Roe, I. F., & Götz, D. (2004). A valency dictionary of English: A corpus-based analysis of the complementation patterns of English verbs, nouns and adjectives. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

11. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

12. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

13. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14. Schlesinger, I. M., Keren-Portnoy, T., & Parush, T. (2001). The structure of arguments. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

15. Straňáková-Lopatková, M., Reznckova, V., & Zabokrtský, Z. (Internet). Valency Lexicon for Czech: From verbs to nouns. Prague: Center for Computational Linguistics, Charles University. Retrieved from http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz

16. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.

17. Talmy, L. (2007). Foreword. In M. González-Márquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

18. Vilela, M. (1992). Gramática de valências: teoria e aplicação [Valency grammar: Theory and applications]. Coimbra: Almedina.

Footnotes

1

For example Straňáková-Lopatková et al. (Internet) for Czech; and DISC (1997) (a general dictionary including valential information) for Italian. Framenet, while including some valential information, is not properly a valency dictionary.

2

This is the option of traditionally oriented dictionaries, such as DISC.

3

For example, Langacker (1991).

4

For example, Vilela (1992).

5

For example, Straňáková-Lopatková et al. (Internet); Faulhaber (2011).

6

Previously called Conceptual Semantic Relations (CSR), in Perini (2015).

7

I use initial capitals (Agent) for grammatically relevant semantic roles, and quotes (“eater”) for elaborations (ETRs).

8

Not totally consistently; for instance, for crumple (frame “reshaping”), the Agent is given as the “deformer”; but for kick (“cause_harm”), the “kicker” is given as the Agent.

9

Spanish Experimentador ⊃ adorador, Estímulo ⊃ adorado.

10

I refer to schemata with English words (mostly verbs), in capitals.

11

The assignment requirement, seen in Sect. 11.4.

12

I take worship to refer to ritual, not to any kind of emotional phenomenon.

13

Haegeman (1991) makes do with eight thematic roles, and while she recognizes that distinguishing them is often difficult, she never mentions criteria by which the distinction might be effected. This seems to be an uninteresting question to some linguists.

14

To give an important example, Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) start from fundamentally the same idea, and develop it for syntax.

15

A very prominent place among works that have inspired and guided this book is to be given to Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), Langacker (1991), Schlesinger (1995), and Talmy (2000, 2007).

Part IGrammar and Cognition

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_2

2. Language and Cognition

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

SchemaSemeClosureCognitive representationCognitive well-formednessVariable

2.1 Schemata

Since we are to make crucial use of schemata, we may begin by trying to define them. Schemata are defined by Langacker as

abstract templates obtained by reinforcing the commonality inherent in a set of instances.

[Langacker 2008: 23]

This seems a good definition, although a little terse; it may be a starting point, since it captures the essential aspects of what is usually understood as a schema. The definition means simply that we construct a general schema for DOG on the basis of our past experience with Fido, Velvet, Preta, and many other instances of entities we have found in life and categorize as dogs. Fillmore is more explicit and defines the schema as,

[...] a standard set of conditions, or a conceptual framework, that characterizes ideal or prototypic instances of some category. As human beings, we can interpret an experience if we can succeed in assigning some sort of conceptual schema to it, that is, if we can locate the experience as an instance of the schema.

[Fillmore 2003: 251]

Schemata, as here understood, represent one dimension of world knowledge. There are many others, such as particularized information on specific items, scripts, expectations, and so on. Most of these have schemata as their constituent parts, and schemata are particularly useful in the description of the meaning of linguistic units. In Rumelhart’s (1976) words,

The process of understanding a passage consists in finding a schema which will account for it.

[Rumelhart 1976; apud Schank and Abelson 1977: 10]

In this book I explore some of the ways schemata are related to linguistic units in order to convey meanings in a more complete and complex way than with the units alone.

Schemata, then, are instruments we use to understand features of the world in terms of past experience. We may add that a schema is connected to other schemata, which form its defining features, so that the whole system resembles the pattern in a net. Several schemata put into some kind of relation may be called a schema complex, which for practical purposes often functions as a simple schema: for instance, some verbs can evoke a single schema such as FALL (e.g., fall in the trees are falling), while a related verb evokes a schema complex like CAUSE [FALL] (e.g., fell in the men are felling the trees). Actually, it may be that no simple schemata exist, since all of them can be defined by their features, and each feature is a schema. A schema complex that corresponds to the message of a sentence is a cognitive representation (CR), to use Talmy’s (2000) term. A woven multidimensional pattern is the best analogy to represent this structure in concrete terms.

The building of cognitive representations corresponds to the traditional, and correct, insight that the meaning of a sentence (or of a phrase, a text, etc.) is more than the sum of its parts. The components of a cognitive representation are not all directly derived from linguistic structures, but the latter are an essential ingredient in its construction, and it is this component that is considered in the present book, being of special interest to linguists.

The next problem, of course, is to unravel the internal structure of the resulting schemata, which is very rich and complex. A schema has an internal structure reflecting the different aspects of the object, event or phenomenon it refers to; here we are mainly concerned with those portions of the structure that are directly relevant for the interpretation of sentences. For our purposes, it is important to distinguish two classes of components: defining features (or semes), and variables.

2.1.1 Semes

Our idea of a dog includes defining features (semes): a dog is necessarily an animal, and also a physical object, a living being, a mammal, and so on. And the schema EAT is an action, and does not entail directional motion (unlike COME). These are semes, which are necessary components of the schema, and are partially related to one another by hyponymic tracks: a mammal is a hyponym of a living thing, and a dog is a hyponym of a mammal, which in its turn is a hyponym of an animal.

There are other kinds of information associated with the schema DOG, but which are not necessarily present in all cases: for instance, a dog is associated with guard of the house; friendship; veterinary care; and other features which, if not necessarily true for all and every dog, are strongly expected to apply to a typical dog. The schema can also include other information, some related to personal experiences, like the memory we may have of a particular dog, or, for some people, feelings of fear. These expectations are important for text building, but they are not grammatically significant, and will not be considered here.[1]

2.1.2 Variables

Another important component of schemata is its variables. Thus, a DOG has a particular color and size, and belongs to some breed; and EAT involves an “eater,” an “eaten thing,” plus circumstances like location, time, and manner. A variable can be filled in (bound) by other schemata, as for instance when we refer to a large black mongrel (DOG + “size” + “color” + “breed”), or when we say that Jim ate the pizza in the kitchen (EAT + “eater” + “eaten thing” + “location”).

Variables appear in the schema in an unbound state, only as relations of the main concept with possible participants. Each variable can be bound, in specific cognitive representations, by another schema, which identifies a participant. Thus, in sentence

1. [1]

The cat scratched the boy

the schema SCRATCH has the variable “scratcher,” which is bound by the schema CAT; and the variable “scratched thing” is bound by the schema BOY. We thus start building the pattern, which at this stage looks like this[2]:

1. [2]

One of the functions of the sentence is to provide a connection with the schemata that make up the cognitive representation. The main verb evokes SCRATCH, and the valential indications provide the right binding relations to the two core variables: the subject, the cat, evokes the schema CAT (plus additional information such as that it is given, singular, etc.), which binds the variable “scratcher,” recognized as an elaboration of the Agent. Correspondingly, the object the boy evokes BOY, which binds the variable “scratched thing,” recognized as an elaboration of the Patient. This provides a skeleton on which to build a much richer cognitive representation.

The schema SCRATCH also contains peripheral variables, such as “time,” “manner,” and “location.” In sentence [1] these are not realized, but they may:

1. [3]

The cat scratched the boy seriously, ten minutes ago, in the kitchen.

However, peripheral variables do not depend, for their assignment to particular complements, on valential information. Instead, complements that have them are always thematically transparent to some degree. They either are totally transparent—like ten minutes ago, which can only denote “time”—or have ETRs derivable by prototype rules—like to the girl, which means “goal” in Jim ran to the girl, because of semantic features of the verb; it may denote “recipient” if the verb is give (Jim gave a new coat to the girl). In any case, these constituents only depend on their own semantics, or on general features of the verb—more accurately, of the cognitive representation. In other words, these phrases express a thematic relation either independently of any context, or subject to rather general features such as “motion event.” They consequently bear thematic relations which are independent of the valency of the particular verb of the sentence.

The main reason variables are particularly interesting to us is that they are often coded by grammatical means: syntactic functions and prepositions. This contrasts with other features of schemata: for instance, the schema SCRATCH includes information such as “action,” “event,” and “use of sharp object”. All these are part of the schema, and are part of the meaning of the verb scratch; but they are globally incorporated into the corresponding lexical item, are not signaled by grammatical items or functions, and involve no binding. Now, variables are usually bound, and binding is provided, in most cases, by complements present in the sentence.[3] Unbound variables also occur, and are understood in schematic terms (e.g., she is reading (something)); see Sect. 2.3.3 below. Variables are consequently the object of grammatical devices, either constructions or rules, and are therefore of interest to language description. An important part of the thematic relation assignment to complements must be stated in terms of mechanisms pertaining to the particular language under description, which belong to its lexicogrammatical structure.

Now, what exactly is the meaning of a lexical item? My answer is that the meaning of an item is the schema, or schema complex, it evokes in our memory. A lexical item cannot evoke some cognitive complex that does not form a previously stored schema; for instance, English does not have a word to denote an entity which is a mammal, but not an animal. This complex simply does not exist in our cognition; it may be added to it (say, in the context of a fable), but until then it is not usable as a schema, and therefore cannot be the meaning of a lexical item.

It is important to note that variables are highly elaborate relations, specific to the particular schema they belong to. Thus, EAT does not include an Agent, but rather an “eater”; this is different from what appears in, say, SCRATCH, which has a “scratcher,” and so on. Schematic relations such as Agent, Patient, Instrument, and the like are actually linguistic functions, and represent each a bunch of more elaborate relations, present in schemata. These may be called semantic roles: Agent, Patient ..., and the elaborate relations present in schemata are elaborate thematic relations (ETRs)[4]: “eater,” “eaten thing,” “scratcher”... This is a fundamental distinction and will be the object of extended discussion in the remainder of this book.

For the moment, let us limit ourselves to ETRs, which appear as labels on the variables of specific schemata. The schema EAT will then, in what concerns our interests, include the following:

- EAT

- Semes

- <event>, <action>, <physiological action> ...

- Variables

- core: “eater,” “eaten thing”

- periphery: “location,” “manner,” “time”...

This notation includes some redundancy: “location,” for instance, may be understood as a consequence of the fact that the schema describes an <event>; but this detail will be ignored, since it is not relevant for our linguistic, and basically descriptive, purposes.

2.1.3 Core and Periphery

As seen, variables are distinguished into core and periphery, that is, the opposition between core and peripheral variables is linguistically significant. The importance of this dichotomy, and the evidence for it, will be explained later in the book (Sect. 10.2); for the moment, suffice it to say that core variables are those that individualize this particular schema as opposed to other schemata of action, such as DRINK or SCRATCH, whereas peripheral variables apply to a greater range of other schemata—for instance, “location” is present in all schemata having to do with events.

2.2 Cognitive Representations (CRs)

Following Talmy, I call the schema complex that constitutes the interpretation of a sentence its cognitive representation (CR)[5]:

A sentence (or other portion of discourse) [evokes] in the listener a particular kind of experiential complex, here termed a cognitive representation or CR. The grammatical and lexical subsystems in a sentence seem generally to specify different portions of a CR.

[Talmy 2000: 21]

As far as our descriptive aims are concerned, the CR of a sentence includes, among other elements, a main schema (usually, but not always, evoked by the main verb) with its variables bound by other schemata. Thus, in a relatively simple sentence like

1. [4]

The child ate the cookies.

we have the schema EAT, which has as its (core) variables the “eater” and the “eaten thing.” The corresponding CR contains the internal meaning of the schema EAT, described by Framenet as

[...] putting the Ingestibles in the mouth for delivery to the digestive system.

[Framenet, entry Ingestion]

Besides, the two core variables are bound by other schemata: CHILD binds the “eater” and COOKIE binds the “eaten thing.” Further details referring to definiteness, tense, and plural are added by reference to specific morphemes; leaving these aside, we get the following CR:

1. [5]

2.3 Closure

2.3.1 Well-Formedness of CRs

A CR, like any cognitive structure, is subject to well-formedness conditions: it is supposed to make sense in terms of world knowledge, and it must portray a unified and coherent view of an event, or state. For instance, the sequence,

1. [6]

∗ The cookies ate the child.

although grammatically well-formed, is unacceptable because it results in an ill-formed CR, since cookies cannot eat. And the sequence

1. [7]

∗ The child arrived the cookies.

is unacceptable because the NP the cookies, considering its thematic potential, can find no adequate variable to bind in the schema evoked by the verb arrive. ARRIVE is thus described in Framenet:

An object Theme moves in the direction of a Goal. The Goal may be expressed or it may be understood from context, but it is always implied by the verb itself.

[Framenet, entry Arriving][6]

In [7] the subject may be, regularly, the Theme; but the remaining NP, the cookies, cannot be the Goal,[7] and consequently it will lack an ETR. This means that the sentence does not achieve closure, since it includes elements which find no place in a possible CR. Closure is the state of a CR that has all its elements integrated into a unified picture of an event, a state, and so on; it is a requirement for well-formedness.

Suppose the sentence were

1. [8]

The child arrived in New York.

Now closure is possible, since ARRIVE includes a Goal, and the phrase in New York has this role in its thematic potential. A basic hypothesis of this book is that the integration of in New York into a well-formed CR in [8] depends only on the thematic potential of the phrase, plus the closure requirement; no explicit valential marking of this phrase is necessary, since cognitive mechanisms already in place will do the job. This hypothesis is developed below in Chaps. 7–10.

Closure is but one aspect of a more general phenomenon, the constant search for well-formed forms, or Gestalts, that characterizes human cognition. We are meaning-searching creatures, and have a strong drive to recognize previously stored or generated entities that enable the comprehension of new stimuli. This happens at all levels, as has been long recognized. For instance, Troubetzkoy wrote in the 1930s that

The phoneme should not be considered as building blocks out of which individual words are assembled. Rather, each word is a phonic entity, a Gestalt, and is also recognized as such by the hearer, just as an acquaintance is recognized on the street by his entire appearance. [...] As a Gestalt, each word always contains something more than the sum of its constituents (or phonemes), namely, the principle of unity that holds the phoneme sequence together and lends individuality to a word. Yet in contrast with the individual phonemes it is not possible to localize this principle of unity within the word entity.

[Troubetzkoy 1939/1970: 47]

Here we have the manifestation of the phenomenon at the phonological level. Referring to word recognition in reading, Frank Smith describes essentially the same phenomenon:

[...] nonvisual information is information we already have in our brain that is relevant to the language [...] together with some additional bits of knowledge concerned with specific things about writing such as the way spelling patterns are formed.

[Smith 1978: 40]

Smith insists on the importance of accumulating a visual lexicon so that words can be recognized at a glance, not deciphered letter by letter; only thus can fluent reading be acquired. A reader of English has in her visual lexicon the image of most words of the language, and can read them without necessarily identifying their constituent parts. This accounts for the quick and easy way English speakers read texts in their language, and for the difficulty they meet in developing fluent reading in Russian, even when they are reasonably proficient in the spoken language: even if you can easily read the name Stravinsky, recognizing the image “Стравинский” will take much longer, until it is assimilated in the visual lexicon. This is, I think, just an example of a Gestalt, applied to the graphic representations used in written texts. Smith leaves this pretty clear (without using the term Gestalt) when he defines nonvisual information needed for understanding texts as

the knowledge we have stored behind the eyes that enables the brain to make sense of the visual information that comes through the eyes while reading.

[Smith 1978: 56]

This realization has some interesting consequences. First, many constraints on possible sentences are the result of cognitive filtering, since cognitive representations are supposed to make sense. This covers, among other things, what is often called “selectional restrictions”: if I cannot (under normal circumstances) speak of sleeping green ideas, this has not to do with language structure—although it was, for a time, treated as a syntactic restriction, as noted by Trask:

Astoundingly, these restrictions were for a few years in the mid-1960s regarded as syntactic facts to be expressed in grammars; most theories of grammar no longer attempt this.

[Trask 1992: 249]

Trask calls selectional restrictions “semantic” (ibid.: 248), but we can avoid even that: the impossibility of sleeping green ideas comes from world knowledge, and reflects the nonlinguistic facts that ideas have no color, and they do not sleep, which is an activity (or inactivity) restricted to animate beings. In other words, this sequence leads to the construction of an ill-formed cognitive representation, which causes the sequence to be marked as unacceptable.[8] Equivalent solutions are common in the recent literature (e.g., in Culicover and Jackendoff 2005: 62).

This kind of schematic filtering is responsible for the nonambiguity of phrases like with my sister (Company), with a 10-pound hammer (Instrument), and with some care (Manner) where, as will be seen in Chap. 9, the semantic role is assigned by reference to the schema evoked by the NP that follows the preposition. The process is not linguistic, but cognitive, since what makes any of these examples acceptable is the possibility of leading to a well-formed cognitive representation. It may also be that many cases of so-called strict subcategorization, treated originally as syntactic constraints, can be reduced to cognitive terms.

This kind of analysis, if correct, would mean that the building of a constituent tree is largely a cognitive process. I do not think, however, that it can be totally so analyzed, since it includes some rules that have no semantic or cognitive import, like for instance the requirement that articles precede NP heads, or that the subject precede the verb phrase, and so on. Here, as so often, the facts are complex and call for extensive and detailed research.

2.3.2 Complex Stimuli

Both Troubetzkoy and Smith refer to ready-made templates, which have to be recognized as such. But our ability to categorize stimuli goes beyond that, and enables us to recognize objects that, strictly speaking, are novel to our experience. In particular, we recognize sentences, as opposed to random word sequences, as previously known objects. Of course, in such cases recognition involves a pretty complex process of analysis and parsing—for instance, sentence [5] is composed of an NP, plus a verb, plus a prepositional phrase, and, at a more abstract level, a subject plus a predicate. That is, when one comes to the processing of sentences, previously stored units must be considered in another view: in addition to ready-made templates (as I guess Gestalts are usually understood), in most cases what is stored is not the perceived sequence itself, but rather a set of rules that allow the generation of the concrete signal. Thus, syntactic sequences are analyzed in terms of the possible ways they can be structured, and this entails, I think, some sort of simultaneous, global access to the whole language knowledge system; only thus can the right analysis be identified for new sequences.

Then, understanding language depends on the use of two main kinds of previous knowledge: templates (Gestalts), which are stored as such in the memory; and complex structures, built on the spot on the basis of a sensorially perceived signal, plus a set of lexical and grammatical rules that allow its interpretation in terms of a linguistic structure. The result is some kind of complex Gestalt, not directly stored, but accessible through active work by the memory. This complex Gestalt is not merely a formal structure, but is associated with certain semantic associations, such as Agent, Company, and the like. Another way to express this is to say that we are able to recognize constructions, which correspond to a schematic structuring, and semantic enrichment, of formal sequences of words. Constructions, as is known, involve not only syntactic structures but also certain semantic elements, in particular semantic roles and ETRs associated with the constituents of the syntactic structure.

2.3.3 Dealing with Incomplete Information

One aspect of our ability to recognize complex stimuli is the possibility of filling in for missing information. Gregory (1966), referring to the recognition of visual objects, notes that

If the brain were not continually on the look-out for objects, the cartoonist would have a hard time. But, in fact, all he has to do is present a few lines to the eye and we see a face, complete with an expression. [...] Sometimes we see objects which are not there: faces-in-the-fire, or the Man in the Moon. [...] The seeing of objects involves many sources of information beyond those meeting the eye when we look at an object. It generally involves knowledge of the object derived from previous experience, and this experience is not limited to vision but may include the other senses [...]

[Gregory 1966: 10]

Suppose we have a sketchy image of a face, with a round object in the position one would expect an eye; the object might, in principle, be understood as a wheel, but this would not make sense in the context of a face—it is then interpreted as an eye, even if in isolation it would look rather like a wheel. Only thus can the complete image fit some expected Gestalt, namely, a face. The recognition of objects derived from previous experience also includes other kinds of knowledge not directly dependent on the senses, such as the possible structures in the syntax of the language. And, in particular, it includes the bits that may lack for a CR to become well-formed and achieve closure. Among the objects we are “continually on the look-out for,” we may list complete and well-formed CRs.

Now let us consider the following sentence:

1. [9]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

The subject is assigned the role Agent, by a prototype rule for which there is sufficient evidence (see Sect. 3.2). What are we to do with the sun? This constituent cannot be analyzed as a Patient, at least in its traditional definition of the “entity that undergoes a change of state”; actually, it is hard to find a semantic role that fits this ETR (the “worshipped thing”), which seems to be restricted to a small set of verbs, very similar in meaning.

But the worshipping relation itself is not obscure. We know what it means for someone to worship something, we can picture the scene, and so on: that is, the schema WORSHIP is part of our cognitive equipment. It includes a “worshipper,” easily schematized as the Agent (defined as the “immediate causator of an event”), plus the “worshipped thing,” linguistically mysterious but very clear as far as its cognitive role is concerned.

This means that in spite of our doubts about what the semantic role of the sun is in [9], its ETR is not doubtful; consequently, there is no special difficulty in deriving a CR from sentence [9]—and deriving CRs from phonetic sequences is, after all, one of the aims of language. Suppose we simply leave the sun unassigned for semantic role:

1. [10]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

- Agent   Action

This is all the grammar of the language provides. But now we have an incomplete CR: there is a “worshipper” (the Agent), the action of “worshipping,” but no “worshipped thing,” which is the other variable of the schema WORSHIP. Furthermore, we have in the sentence a phrase, the sun, which is a likely candidate for expressing this ETR; if they are not put into relation, we will have not only an incomplete CR but also an unattached schema. The connection is then automatically made, and we have as a result

1. [11]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

- Agent   Action “worshipped thing”

which yields a complete and well-formed CR that constitutes the meaning of the sentence as we understand it.

Note that no special machinery is necessary in order to have this process happen: the relation between the sun (or the corresponding schema) and the CR expressed by the sentence is part of the schema WORSHIP. There is no need to mark the verb, worship, as having a complement with the ETR “worshipped thing,” or any eventual semantic role that elaborates into this ETR: it is enough to recognize (as we must) that whoever worships must worship something. All we have to do is leave the final NP unmarked, and general processes will take care of the construction of a correct CR for the sentence. If we choose to mark the object of worship with some semantic role, this will only replicate information already present in the schema that constitutes the cognitive face of the verb. Closure, one of the basic mechanisms involved in this process, refers to the well-formedness of cognitive, not linguistic, structures. CRs must be well-formed according to rules that we cannot list here, but certainly exist. One of these rules states that you cannot worship in the absence of a “worshipped thing” and another that the sun is something that can be worshipped—these pieces of information are present in the respective schemata.

As for the subject, assigned the role Agent, it cannot be equally left blank; if it is, then there will be no way to know that the Incas are the “worshippers,” and the sun the “worshipped thing”—the schema includes these two ETRs but does not give information about the event of worshipping, nor about its syntactic coding[9]; this is the grammar’s job. We must then admit that the subject in [9] is assigned the semantic role Agent, which eventually elaborates into the “worshipper.”

The details of the process are no doubt complex, and cannot be fully described here, but the general picture is intuitively clear. It makes use of information coming from the phonetic sequence; its syntactic parsing and analysis; the identification of parts thereof as lexical items; the association of lexical items and phrases with their respective thematic potential; and the association of the same with their internal meaning, which is represented in the respective schema. Besides, the system not only searches for previously stored Gestalts, but has also access to several sets of rules which define possible sentences, phrases, and also possible semantic associations.[10] The aim is to accept utterances that pass all quality controls, and derive from them well-formed CRs.

We have seen that, in some cases, no grammatical, that is valential, marking is needed for the assignment of the correct ETR of a constituent: it happens so to speak spontaneously, as an automatic consequence of general cognitive requirements on the CR, plus pieces of world knowledge such as the schema evoked by the main verb. What is important here is to observe that the job is done, even if one of the complements never gets a semantic role assigned by grammatical means. Most of this book is devoted to arguments supporting this conclusion, and to examples of its functioning. The exemplification has to do with a wide variety of grammatical phenomena, such as the meaning of prepositions, the thematic relations assigned to verb complements, the thematic potential of lexical items and of syntactic constructions, thematic prototypes, and the definition of particular semantic roles.

2.4 Summary

The processing of a sentence like

- [9] The Incas worshipped the sun.

involves the action of a complex and heterogeneous set of devices, which enable the hearer to recognize lexical items, syntactic structures, and thematic relations. Thematic relations can be semantic roles, which are ultimately elaborated into ETRs; or just ETRs, directly accessed without the intermediation of semantic roles. Only part of these devices is properly linguistic; one can say that the following associations are part of the English language:

1. (a)

The Incas is identified as the subject of the sentence;

2. (b)

The schematic role Agent is assigned to the subject;

3. (c)

The verb, worship, is associated with the schema WORSHIP,

besides the recognition of the other lexical items and their association with their schemata.

Now, the rules of the language (according to our hypothesis) assign no thematic relation, in particular no semantic role, to the constituent the sun; and they say nothing about the cognitive well-formedness of the resulting CR. Yet these tasks must be completed as well, and we saw that they are, on the basis of information contained in the several schemata evoked by constituents of the sentence, in particular the one evoked by the verb. These mechanisms, however, are not part of the English language, but rather of our knowledge of the world; and a strict distinction must be kept in analysis between these two orders of factors in the interpretation of sentences. In the case of [9], these nonlinguistic factors include

1. (d)

the semantic role Agent, assigned to the subject the Incas, is elaborated into the “worshipping entity” (“worshipper”);

2. (e)

whoever worships, worships something—that is, the schema WORSHIP contains a variable labeled “worshipped thing”; and

3. (f)

the object, the sun, is assigned the ETR “worshipped thing” by default, since it does not receive any semantic role from the grammar,

and also more general conditions, such as

1. (g)

the sun is an adequate object of worship; and

2. (h)

the Incas were persons, and therefore could worship deities.

This hypothesis leads to several important considerations, including a reassessment of the limits between language and world knowledge, and an answer to the question, What are the limits of a natural language?

2.5 Limits of a Language

A significant part of the controversies in linguistics in recent decades has revolved, often implicitly, around the question of the limits of a language. That is, in order to build a conceptual structure (the cognitive representation) on the basis of a sensorially perceptible signal—say a complete sentence—to what extent do we use our general knowledge of the world, and to what extent do we have recourse to the lexicogrammatical knowledge of a particular language? That both components are essential in the process is consensual; what is to be sought is how much of the mechanism can be plausibly assigned to general world knowledge, and how much depends on the structure of the language we use.[11]

As is well known, some linguists question the possibility of distinguishing these two kinds of knowledge. I take this to be a still unsolved empirical question; the arguments and data given in this book may conceivably bring in some little evidence to help solve it, but I have no intention of discussing the question here. One thing, however, is clear: some bits of knowledge are strictly linguistic, in the sense that they belong to particular languages. Thus, no amount of world knowledge can help describe phenomena like: the gender of nouns in Portuguese (mesa “table” is feminine, sofá “sofa” is masculine); the fact that English this and that agree in number with the following noun; the predominantly sentence-initial position of the subject in English; the grammatical identity, in Portuguese, of animate and inanimate Agents. On the other hand, knowing that a dog is animate and a door is not does not depend on the language one speaks. One can also question whether the fact that the adjective must follow the noun in the Portuguese phrase um relógio japonês “a Japanese watch,” as opposed to um relógio lindo ~ um lindo relógio, both “a beautiful watch,” may or not have a basis on world knowledge. As it happens, it does, at least in part: adjectives denoting national or regional origin are always postposed to the NP head. Although the denotational properties of the adjectives have to do with world knowledge, the way the semantic difference between adjectives like japonês and lindo is coded is part of the Portuguese language. These examples show that the question of the limits of a language as against world knowledge is empirical, and must be discussed in terms of the analysis of details of language and knowledge structure.

The question of delimiting the role of the language is pervasive, and conditions even strictly descriptive work. During work on the Valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese verbs, when looking for a convenient notation to present data in an organized way, constant doubt arose about how to represent the semantic role of a constituent, in particular what degree of elaboration would be the most convenient for descriptive purposes—in other words, what should be attributed to general world knowledge and what to the structure of the language one is analyzing. Thus, there is some controversy about the semantic role of the subject in sentences like

1. [12]

Paul opened the door.

1. [13]

The wind opened the door.

There are two ways to analyze these facts: some linguists distinguish two roles for the subject: Agent in [12], Causator in [13], giving as reason that in [13] the immediate initiator of the event is inanimate, and the event itself cannot be called an “action.”[12] But there is another way to analyze the difference: suppose we define the Agent as the immediate initiator of an event, and assign this role to the subject in both sentences. Then we can say that the meaning difference arises from our knowledge of what is the wind, as against a person. Our world knowledge suffices to inform that the “opener” is animate in [12], inanimate in [13]; and that there is no “action” in [13], if we understand an action as something willfully performed by a living being. Besides, in Portuguese—and as far as I know in English as well—no grammatical difference applies to this cognitive distinction. These crucial pieces of information do not derive from grammatical structure, but from aspects of our knowledge of the world—aspects that exist independently from the fact that sentences [12] and [13] are in English.

These two solutions to the problem of the semantic relation between the subject and the verb in [12] and [13] differ in that one of them gives greater weight to linguistic factors, and the other transfers it to world knowledge (variously called “cognition,” “pragmatics,” etc.). It is one guiding principle in our descriptive work that the second solution, where applicable, is always to be preferred; this is ultimately the same position as that found in Culicover and Jackendoff’s (2005) seminal book, but enlarged to encompass world knowledge and contextual factors. The main motivation is that world knowledge is necessary anyway, and no additional machinery need be devised in order to explain meaning differences like the one between the thematic relations of the subject in [12] and [13]. Linguistic structure becomes then a residue, defined as that part of the message that cannot be derived from world knowledge—but it is a very large, complex and important residue, as any researcher well knows. Determining the limits of linguistic structure as against cognitive information is far from a trivial problem, and calls for methodological reflexion as well as much empirical work. One of the aims of the present book is to contribute in a small way to a better understanding of the limits of natural languages.

2.6 Simplicity of the Analysis

A point which can perhaps find objection by some linguists is that I am not primarily concerned with finding the simplest, most elegant solution for the problems under study. Instead, I take into consideration many indications that the linguistic system is very complex and contains a surprising amount of redundancy, in special more than one way to achieve the same result; in such cases I do not refrain from stating all this complexity. A particularly relevant example is the several, and very diverse, devices used by speakers in order to assign thematic relations to sentence constituents. This complexity brings to mind a remark made by Marvin Minsky, when referring to the workings of the human mind:

[...] it can be a mistake to focus too much on searching for basic principles. More likely, the brain is not based on any such scheme but is, instead, a great jury-rigged combination of many gadgets to do different things, with additional gadgets to correct their deficiencies, and yet more accessories to intercept their various bugs and undesirable interactions – in short, a great mess of assorted mechanisms that barely manage to get the job done.

[Minsky, apud Brockman 1995]

I may not go as far as Minsky in my judgment of the language mechanism, but his basic point is correct: our research suggests that a language user usually has at his disposal a variety of resources, which compete as solutions for the same problems, and which are used according to circumstances. This, I suspect, goes against the tenets of some linguistic theories.

References

1. Brockman, J. (1995). The third culture. New York: Touchstone.

2. Cançado, M. (2012). Manual de semântica [A handbook of semantics]. São Paulo: Contexto.

3. Castelfranchi, C., & Parisi, D. (1980). Linguaggio, conoscenze e scopi [Language, knowledge and scopes]. Bologna: Il Mulino.

4. Chao, Y. R. (1997). Making sense out of nonsense. The Sesquipedalian, VII, 32.

5. Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.

6. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7. Fillmore, C. J. (2003). Topics in lexical semantics. In Form and meaning in language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

8. Framenet (data). Retrieved from Framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu

9. Frawley, W. (1992). Linguistic semantics. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

10. Gregory, R. L. (1966). Eye and brain: The psychology of seeing. New York: McGraw-Hill.

11. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

12. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

13. Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge: MIT Press.

14. Rumelhart, D. E. (1976). Understanding and summarizing brief stories. In D. Laberge & S. J. Samuels (Eds.), Basic processes in reading: Perception and comprehension. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

15. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts plans goals and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

16. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17. Smith, F. (1978). Understanding reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

18. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.

19. Trask, R. L. (1992). A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.

20. Troubetzkoy, N. S. (1970). Principes de phonologie. Paris: Klincksieck. (Original work published 1939).

Footnotes

1

They correspond to some of the qualia relations proposed by Pustejovsky (1995).

2

The arrows indicate variables, and the lines show binding relationships.

3

Actually, there may be comparatively rare cases where they are incorporated into the lexical item of the verb; see Sect. 6.2, item 6.

4

Called CSRs in Perini (2015).

5

The CR is called rete di conoscenze “knowledge net” by Castelfranchi and Parisi (1980), scene by Schlesinger (1995), and mental landscape by Perini (2015).

6

Note the reference to the “verb,” although Framenet purports to describe frames, that is, schemata.

7

An NP can express the Goal, but only with a designated group of verbs, like reach in they reached the North Pole.

8

The original sentence, in Chomsky (1957), is colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Of course, in the appropriate context (such as fantasy, or poetry) Chomsky’s sentence can be acceptable. The context must provide nonfactual features which end up authorizing the use of the deviant sentence; once this is done, the sentence is felicitous, since there is nothing linguistically wrong with it. Chao (1997) did just that, so that the sentence makes sense in the context he created.

9

Actually, it can, for this particular sentence, since it would be implausible for the sun to worship the Incas; but in Jim pinched Sam the two ETRs are equally clear, and there is no way to assign them properly on purely cognitive grounds.

10

As for possible words, in languages like Portuguese rules are used in a limited way, since composition is not very rich; that is, in Portuguese words are usually checked against ready-made templates. But in languages like ancient Greek and German rules for word formation have a more important role.

11

Culicover and Jackendoff’s (2005) “simpler syntax” principle can be viewed as one attempt to approach the problem.

12

For instance, Frawley (1992: 203); Cançado (2012: 107).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_3

3. Semantic Role Elaboration

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Elaborate relationsElaborationHyponymic tracksSemantic role

3.1 Introduction

We have seen that the aim of the interpretation of a sentence is the construction of a cognitive representation (CR), and that a CR is partially made up of ETRs, not of semantic roles, which are grammatical abstractions. We also saw (and will see in more detail) that semantic roles, in spite of their abstract character, are necessary in linguistic description. We must now detail the way these two levels of analysis are related so that a language user can recognize a semantic role starting from a perceived ETR, and code an intended ETR as a semantic role. This process is called elaboration and will be dealt with in the present chapter.

3.2 Schematic and Elaborate Relations

The concept of elaboration refers to the expression of a level of schematicity. Langacker gives the following explanation:

[...] relative is schematic with respect to aunt, and rodent with respect to large brown rat. A schematic characterization is instantiated by any number of more specific ones, each serving to elaborate its coarse-grained specifications.

[Langacker 2008: 55–56; his emphasis][1]

In this chapter I examine the elaboration process that allows for the identification of relations subsumed under more schematic ones, so that a language user can identify a particular ETR as an elaboration of a particular semantic role. The process occurs for instance in the interpretation of the semantic relation “eater,” recognized as an elaboration of Agent; or when we analyze the subject of both eat and write as an Agent, in spite of the clear difference between these two relations—respectively, “eater” and “writer.” Instantiation occurs when we bind one of these relations, as when we identify the “writer” as William in William wrote many plays.

Semantic relations between a verb and its complements must be considered at several levels of schematicity, the more schematic levels being often relevant for grammatical description, and the more elaborate levels being necessary in order to effect the connection of lexical items and grammatical structures with the final understanding of the sentence, that is, the cognitive representation constructed by the receiver. Yet, for the purposes of our discussion, I will refer to only two degrees of elaboration: relatively schematic relations, relevant for the statement of grammatical rules, and relatively elaborate relations, much closer to the real understanding of the message by the receiver. In the first category we have semantic roles such as Patient, Agent, Instrument, and Location; in the second we have elaborate thematic relations (ETRs) such as “sliced thing,” “slicer,” “with a knife,” and “in the kitchen.” An ETR like “sliced thing” is an elaboration of the role Patient; no rule of the language refers to the “sliced thing,” “eaten thing,” and so on, but some may refer to the Patient. I believe Jackendoff has much the same opposition in mind when he writes that

“argument structure” can be thought of as an abbreviation for the part of conceptual structure that is “visible” to the syntax.

[Jackendoff 1990: 48]

The same is also found very clearly in the following passages[2]:

My analysis of various phenomena of English syntax shows that cases can do a lot of explanatory work if they are conceived of in a different way, namely, not as categories in cognitive space, but rather as linguistic constructs that are defined partly in terms of cognitive concepts.

[Schlesinger 1995: 1]

One alternative would be to distinguish between a semantic level and a cognitive or conceptual one. Grammar, on this view, consists in a mapping from the cognitive level to the formal syntactic one via the semantic level. Cases belong to the semantic level, and they are of course defined in terms of cognitive categories, but they are not primitive cognitive concepts [...]

[Schlesinger 1995: 4]

Semantic roles are part of argument structure; ETRs are part of the cognitive representation, that is, the resulting understanding of the utterance, which is the final outcome of the interpretation process. Semantic roles, as well as argument structure, are linguistic constructs, ETRs are not: ETRs are aspects of our understanding of a message. Let me insist on this distinction: semantic roles are grammatical relations, belong to a closed-class system, are language-specific, and exist in a relatively small number; as such, they are subject to the conceptual restrictions definable as “relativistic, topological, qualitative, or approximative” (Talmy 2000: 28). ETRs are cognitive relations having to do with world knowledge, exist in indeterminate numbers (that is, belong to an open-class system), and can be, additionally, “absolute, Euclidean, quantitative, or precisional” [ibid.]. For instance, the semantic role Agent has a schematic reference to the “immediate initiator of an event,” without specification about the nature of the event in question; it is elaborated into the “reader,” “writer,” “eater,” “kicker,” and so on, which are precisional expressions of the schematic relation first established by the role Agent.

We thus achieve a connection between conceptual structure and linguistic structure; to use Schlesinger’s (1995) words, “a mapping from the cognitive level to the formal syntactic one via the semantic level.” Being language-specific, semantic roles can vary from language to language (although there are doubtlessly universal tendencies), whereas ETRs are, ideally, part of our cognition and thus largely language-independent.[3]

The distinction between ETRs and semantic roles is essential for the analysis that is developed in this book; and, although to my knowledge it has not been systematically used as a basis for description, it shows up in the literature, although usually in a partial way. A particularly interesting comment is found in Jackendoff (1990: 47 ff), where he observes that

[...] there are many kinds of arguments for which there is no traditional name.

[Jackendoff 1990: 47]

We may understand from this that there are many ETRs that find no place as elaborations of the roles found in the traditional lists. Jackendoff goes on to say that

[in John passed the house] The direct object of the transitive pass thus is understood as the argument of this Path-function; it is neither Source nor Goal nor Theme in the usual sense.

[Jackendoff 1990: 47]

The distinction between semantic roles and ETRs is present here, in its basic elements. In order to arrive at an operational conception of thematic relations, we should add a few ingredients, namely, (a) the recognition that when we speak of such relations as “Path-function” we are referring to the corresponding schema; (b) a criterion for the “extraction” of indices in the conceptual structure of the verb, that is, the definition of semantic roles (this is the Criterion of Necessity, given in Sect. 3.4.1); and (c) the recognition that all eligible constituents in a sentence are assigned an ETR, some through the intermediation of a semantic role, and some directly (that is, by assignment by default, explained in Sect. 7.1).

In John climbed the mountain

[...] it is not the mountain that is Goal, but the top of the mountain.

[Jackendoff 1990: 47]

I would rather say that the sentence asserts just that John climbed the mountain, but the cognitive representation that results from integration between linguistic and extralinguistic information adds that it is the top of the mountain that is the (not necessarily attained) “goal.” If we had John climbed on the table, we must understand that he ended up on the table top; here, any other interpretation would be implausible, since, unlike a mountain, a table has no subparts that may be climbed on. An even better example would be John shaved quickly, where we must understand that John’s beard is involved, not his whole body, or some unspecified part thereof. That is not what the sentence says, but that is what one understands, because the cognitive representation does not depend only on information from grammatical sources. These examples show that the task of the linguistic signal (here, the sentence) is to provide a skeleton structure of meaning, which is enriched on the basis of other information, coming from the immediate context and from world knowledge.[4]

Now take the sentence

1. [1]

The boy kicked the apple.

Here the usual analysis includes the information that the boy is the Agent. And in

1. [2]

The boy ate the apple.

the analysis is the same, that is, the boy is also the Agent here. This can be considered a consensus among linguists.

The relations, however, are not identical. What the language user gets when she hears each of these sentences—and which is part of the data from experience, on which linguistic analysis must be based—is something else: in [1] we have a kicking action, with the boy pictured as someone who uses his foot to hit the apple; but in [2] the boy uses his mouth, teeth, and so on, in order to eat the apple. That is, the user does not perceive an Agent directly; her interpretation, which enables her to construct the cognitive representation described by the sentence, is composed of much more elaborate relations, and may include sensorial images showing not the Agent,[5] but the “kicker,” the “eater,” and so on. These elaborate relations exist in very large, perhaps unlimited, number, since they have to do with knowledge of the world, rather than of a particular language. But this does not mean that the traditional analysis which sees an Agent both in [1] and in [2] must be invalidated. There is definite evidence, given below and in more detail in Chap. 10, that schematic relations such as Agent are necessary in language description, so that in order to carry out the basic task of linguistics of relating forms and meanings we need both schematic relations (Agent) and elaborate relations (“kicker,” “eater”). To say the same in other words, our language bunches together the “kicker” and the “eater” into one more schematic relation, the Agent; only the latter is used for grammatical purposes.[6]

In order to examine this evidence, let us start with the (incorrect) hypothesis that linguistic analysis can do without schematic thematic relations and can use them always at their maximum elaboration levels; after all, this is the level that can be observed in practice. According to this hypothesis, the boy would be the “kicker” in [1] and the “eater” in [2], and nothing more would have to be said about the thematic function of this phrase in these sentences.

A consequence of this decision is that, from the point of view that interests us, there is little similarity between sentences [1] and [2]. If we want to describe the properties of kick as opposed to eat, we must do that in totally different terms: kick co-occurs with a “kicker” subject, and eat with an “eater” subject: two distinct, not directly comparable, situations. And we will need a very large number of new relations, so that our analysis will refer to the “drinker,” “washer,” “writer,” “reader,” and so on, one for almost every verb. It is easy to see that this radically particularized analysis seriously hinders the study of verb valency, since it makes it impossible to subclassify verbs according to the semantic roles of their complements. For instance, according to this hypothesis the semantic role of the subject of kick is different from that of eat, and we cannot speak of these two verbs as components of the same valential class; this will apply to most verbs in the language.

However, analysis of the facts of the language suggests that these relations, although distinct, have something in common. Indications are very clear, and lead us to reject the hypothesis that bases the valency of verbs[7] on highly elaborate thematic relations. The first indication is that the relations mentioned above, “drinker,” “cleaner,” “writer,” “eater,” “kicker,” and so on, are all associated with the subject of the sentence. It is unlikely that speakers must learn the appropriate relation expressed by the subject independently for each verb; they more probably associate the subject with something that all these semantic relations have in common. Here we must have recourse to the opposition between elaborate and schematic concepts. The relations we perceive directly in these sentences are elaborate, and very closely describe the denoted events: the “kicker” evokes an immediate visual image, different from the “eater,” and so on. But all these relations have a common ingredient that distinguishes them for instance from the “kicked thing” (the apple in [1]), the “eaten thing” (the apple in [2]), and so on. A rough description of this ingredient can be “immediate causator of event”; it is what is commonly called the Agent.[8]

Now we can formulate a much more plausible rule: there is a strong tendency in the language to code the Agent (immediate causator of an event) as the subject. This is called a prototype rule, and can be notated as Agent<>VSubj; it is, of course, part of the Thematic Hierarchy found in the literature, and first proposed by Fillmore (1970).[9]

Relations like “kicker,” “eater,” and so on can be considered elaborations of the schematic relation Agent. This means that we need thematic relations of at least two levels of elaboration: semantic roles (Agent) and ETRs (“kicker,” “eater,” etc.). Semantic roles are necessary because there are grammatical rules that refer to them; and ETRs are necessary to describe the fact that we understand different actions in sentences like [1] and [2]. To use Jackendoff’s terms in the passage quoted above, semantic roles are part of “argument structure,” and ETRs are not “visible” to grammar.[10]

This is not universally recognized, however. Some authors seem to believe that it is enough to deal with ETRs:

It is generally assumed that a rigorous linguistic theory has to provide a definitive list of [semantic] roles, and that some element from that inventory should correctly describe each participant’s involvement in any verbal or clausal relationship; the failure to devise a satisfactory list has been a continuing source of concern. I do not believe, however, that a list of this sort is either necessary or achievable. An inventory of semantic roles can always be refined and articulated into more specific types on the basis of further data or a finer-grained analysis—at the extreme, every verb defines a distinct set of participant roles that reflect its own unique semantic properties (e.g., the subject of bite is a slightly different kind of agent from the subject of chew). Conversely, a role conception is arrived at by abstracting away from the peculiarities of individual examples. Since any kind of commonality provides the basis for a possible schema, and since schematization can be carried to any degree, we should not expect a fixed and limited inventory to accommodate all phenomena in every language.

I do not believe that semantic roles are first and foremost linguistic constructs, but rather pre-linguistic conceptions grounded in everyday experience.

[Langacker 1991a: 284–285]

This is an untenable position, in face of the available evidence from language use and acquisition. There are strong indications that semantic roles are linguistic relations, although rooted in particularized cognitive ETRs. Langacker identifies the problem, but does not reach a convenient solution.

As I see it, the problem with Langacker’s observation is that he does not discriminate between semantic roles and ETRs. He gives a correct and succinct definition when he states that

[schemas] are abstract templates obtained by reinforcing the commonality inherent in a set of instances.

[Langacker 2008: 23]

Semantic roles, which are schemata of a sort, fall under this definition; but the same does not apply to ETRs, since they are not abstract templates, but aspects of our perception of utterances.

Elaborate relations are derived from semantic roles conditioned on individual verb meanings, and also on contextual factors. For example, take the object NPs in the sentences

1. [3]

Strong coffee ruined his stomach.

2. [4]

Poor planning ruined our project.

We cannot say that we have here two different verbs ruin, similar only phonologically and morphologically, since semantic analogies are evident. On the other hand, the two sentences denote two very different events. But this difference can be derived quite naturally from information such as the nature of a project as against a stomach, added to the difference between coffee (something that is ingested, and can affect stomachs) and planning (something that affects projects in a different way). It is certainly possible to start from a unique definition of “ruin” and arrive, via information provided by the semantics of the subject plus the object, to the correct CRs expressed by these sentences.

In this particular case, we have a schematic definition for “ruin”—or rather for the schema RUIN—which is elaborated into notions like “damage an organ” or “make a project inviable,” according to the additional information provided by linguistic and extralinguistic context. Correspondingly, the ETRs attached to the object of ruin will start from a lexically determined semantic role (Patient), which is elaborated into “damaged organ” in [3], and “discontinued project” in [4].[11] The ETRs are not, of course, linguistic elements, but rather ingredients of our understanding of the sentence; but the starting point, semantic roles, are linguistic because they are components of grammatical and lexical rules. At this level, [3] and [4] have exactly the same semantic (thematic) analysis:

- Agent   Event   Patient

Returning to Langacker’s objection, we now see that the process of refining and articulating semantic roles “into more specific types on the basis of further data or a finer-grained analysis” is in fact a process of elaboration, which must start from some schematic indication of a linguistic sort. This indication must be linguistic because of cases like

1. [5]

Ellen pinched Jonathan.

where the only indication that Ellen did something to Jonathan, not the other way around, is the syntactic function of the respective constituents.

To summarize our conclusions so far: elaborate concepts correspond closely to our direct perceptions, whereas schematic concepts are much more abstract, and basically made up of sets of elaborate concepts. Thus, rigorously speaking one never really meets a dog: one meets Fido, or Preta, or Velvet, who are categorized as dogs in our usual cognitive system. In this particular case the system is practically universal, and similar for all persons, so that upon seeing, say, Fido, one can say I saw a dog, which will be accepted as true by everyone. Or suppose someone says he saw a star, on the basis of having seen a small point of light on the sky. For someone else, who has a different kind of knowledge about celestial bodies, it may be a planet, or even more elaborately, Mars. This is an effect of a fundamental condition on human cognition, very clearly expressed in the following passage:

As I look around at my world, I distinguish a multiplicity of meaningful objects [...] But neither these objects nor their interrelations are self-evident. A chair does not announce itself to me as a chair; I have to recognize it as such. Chairs are part of my theory. I recognize a chair when my brain decides that a chair is what I am looking at. [...] I can only make sense of the world in terms of what I know already.

[Smith 1978: 57]

In the particular case of linguistics, this situation sets up a methodological problem: if all we have is access to elaborate relations, such as “kicker,” “lover,” or “undergoer of violence,” is it adequate to speak of semantic roles like, respectively, Agent, Experiencer and Patient? Is it correct to call Agent the subject of Jim kicked the dog, Jim tore the document and Jim wrote a new book, when we know that the elaborate relations (ETRs) are different in each case? Here, as suggested in Smith’s text, we need a theory; and building this theory is the main task facing the linguist concerned with the thematic structure of sentences. At the end of the day, calling many different ETRs Agent is no more problematical than calling many different animals dogs.

In the present work I am concerned, at a first moment, with very concrete, directly accessible notions. I am convinced that we must begin with such notions, which are readily accessible to introspection, instead of looking for schematic roles, which are actually abstractions, and as such not easy to identify in many cases. This situation reminds one of Chomsky’s remark that

I never know how people are able to pick out thematic relations with such security, I can’t.

[Chomsky 1982, apud Schlesinger 1995: 28]

The difficulty arises when one tries to identify relations like Agent, Patient, Instrument and the like, because they do not appear as such, but rather as elaborations like “kicked,” “kicked entity,” and “with his left hand,” which are easy to identify, since they are part of the final meaning of the sentence. Now, since we also need schematic roles in analysis, we need to devise an elaboration system that will allow access to semantic roles in a more reliable way. For the moment being, I do not try to formally decompose the roles into features like change and affected,[12] although I may make use of such notions informally. This is not to deny that they may be useful; only, I feel that we should wait until we have a larger body of analyzed data before we start to systematically look for such features.

3.3 Building Tracks

Establishing the relation between a semantic role and one of its elaborations depends on the construction of a cognitive track leading from one to the other. Thus, if the speaker intends to express the information that Claudia bought a bicycle, he has to establish a cognitive track between the elaborate relation (ETR) “buyer,” applicable to Claudia, and the semantic role Agent. Only then can he code Claudia as the subject, on the basis of the general rule that associates Agents and subjects in general. The language has no rule directly connecting the subject with the relation “buyer,” or with any highly elaborate relation. Elaboration tracks map linguistic signals onto the conceptual structure built by the language user.

Drawing the track presupposes an analysis of the semantic components in the notion “buyer,” as well as the identification of one of these components as the “immediate causator of the event.” And here we depend on judgments which are very difficult to reduce to formal terms; these judgments are introspective, although not necessarily doubtful. Phenomena of introspection are not directly observable from outside, but they can be tested with some certainty. Suppose we submit the sentence

1. [6]

Claudia bought a bicycle.

to several speakers of English, and ask whether they understand that this sentence contains the assertion that Claudia was the immediate causator of a purchase event. It is likely that most will answer in the positive. If so, we can say that the track exists, and we can relate the “immediate causator of a purchase event” with the “immediate causator of an event” which is a hyperonym of the previous relation.[13] All this is still based on introspection, of course, but it is traditionally considered safe enough to function as the basis of logical relations.

This is currently recognized by methodologists. For instance,

Itkonen [1974/MAP] maintains that linguistic intuition must play a central role in linguistic methodology. This is viewed as a consequence of his thesis that the rules which linguists aim to discover and articulate (i.e. to explicate) exist only as components of the intuitive knowledge of competent users.

[Ringen 1977: 413]

This position is widely accepted and is consistent with the Chomskyan notion of “competence.” On the other hand, it may be argued that linguists are concerned with much more than this internalized knowledge, and should instead study its overt manifestations, in a corpus for instance. But corpus study cannot be a substitute for introspective judgments, given the highly incomplete and accidental character of corpora, and the fact that research of databases is itself crucially dependent on introspective judgments.[14]

Let us now examine more closely the construction of the track that leads from “buyer” to Agent, and vice versa. When someone hears and understands the sentence

- [6] Claudia bought a bicycle.

it becomes possible to construct, starting with the verb, a complex of information about Claudia’s role in the reported event. Even if we know nothing about Claudia, the sentence tells us that she is

1. (a)

the immediate causator of an event;

2. (b)

the immediate causator of a purchase event;

3. (c)

human, therefore animate (since nonhumans are unlikely to make purchases);

4. (d)

a volitional participant in the event (since the action of buying depends on conscious decision);

5. (e)

the owner of some money (the quantity of which is calibrated according to the object that is bought: a bicycle, an apartment, a yacht, a hotdog, .... But she cannot be totally without money and still buy something).

All this, and certainly more, is given by the interpretation of sentence [6] about the subject Claudia (or rather about its referent, Claudia). Now, for the sentence

1. [7]

Claudia ate an apple.

the information complex will have to be different. Claudia is

1. (a)

the immediate causator of an event;

2. (b)

the immediate causator of an eating event;

3. (c)

animate (but not necessarily human, since animals also eat);

4. (d)

a volitional participant in the event (since the action of eating depends on conscious decision).

On the other hand, [7] tells us nothing about Claudia’s purchasing power.[15]

Now, Claudia is the subject in both sentences; and we observe that this happens with a very high frequency whenever the semantic complex contains ingredient (a), “immediate causator of an event.” We see the same in the subject of eat and kick, and also write, read, paint, clean, open, and hundreds of other verbs. That is, ingredient (a) is relevant for grammatical purposes, since it is linked to a particular syntactic function, the subject, with most agentive verbs of the language. Ingredients (c) and (d) are not connected to any syntactic feature (in English at least); ingredients (b) in both examples refer to a small set of verbs each; and ingredient (e) in the interpretation of [6] is specific to buying-and-paying verbs. In other words, the language selects the ingredient “immediate causator of event” as relevant for its grammatical structure, while disregarding other ingredients that may eventually occur. Therefore, semantic complexes including ingredient (a) deserve a special designation, namely, Agent.[16]

Since ingredient (a) is a highly elaborate relation, it is accessible to the language user, and its presence in a sentence may be considered a verifiable fact: it is part of the information that is “[accessible] to consciousness, attention, or introspection,” to quote Talmy (2007). And once it has been associated with the more schematic relation Agent, we have the track we search, connecting cognitive and grammatical relations: whenever the ingredient “immediate causator of an event” is present, the respective constituent is coded as the subject,[17] regardless of other semantic ingredients that may be present.

A difficulty in building tracks is how to do it in a sufficiently objective manner. Apparently, this has not been attempted in a systematic way; one finds informal tracks sometimes in the literature, but in general they are not related to an explicit methodology. Passages like the following seem to be typical:

A [...] dimension of imagery is the “level of specificity” at which a situation is construed. For example [...]

(2)a. That player is tall.

b. That defensive player is over 6′ tall.

[...]

Each of these sentences can be regarded as schematic for the one that follows, which elaborates its specifications and confines their possible values to a narrower range.

[...] One of the component expressions [...] elaborates a schematic substructure within the other, as is typically the case in a grammatical construction.

[Langacker 1991b: 7]

The conventional units of the grammar furnish the speaker with the means for assessing the status of novel expressions vis-à-vis established norms and expectations. This is done in accordance with the following general principle:

(13) Unit [A] sanctions a nonunit structure (B) as well-formed with respect to [A] to the extent that [A] is judged schematic for (B).

In other words, a novel structure (B) is an acceptable extrapolation from established convention, as represented in [A], if (B) elaborates [A] and therefore potentially instantiates the category that [A] defines. The status of (B) as a nonunit structure instantiating category [A] can be symbolized as ([A]→(B)).

[Langacker 1991b: 118; his numbering and brackets][18]

As seen, the relations are taken as evident and intuitively perceptible, without argumentation: elaboration, entailing and hyponymy are understood as something the mind captures without the need for special operations. This is correct—after all, we must come to basic relations at some moment. Heliana Melo (p.c.) suggests that such relations derive from experience, which provides a basis for inferential processes: they are based on schematic operations “derived from inferencing processes over experiential periods.” That is, something we learn as part of the mental development that allows us to make sense out of the world we experience. It is exactly what I mean here, and it is not something that must be defined in more elementary terms.

3.4 Finding the Right Degree of Elaboration

3.4.1 Criteria

Now, schematicity (or its counterpart, elaboration) is a matter of degree, better thought of as a point in a continuum. If we consider

1. [8]

The boy insulted the teacher.

it may be argued that the boy has not the same semantic role found with the subject of [6] and [7], because in [8] the event has no visible consequences, and depends on judgment (is calling a teacher a politician an insult?). Here we need special criteria to orient us in the establishment of more schematic relations and tell us where to stop—that is, we must turn our attention to the way each language codes these relations.

In the case of the subject of [6], [7], and [8], the traditional solution is to bring them all under the label Agent. This is the correct solution, since these three relations (and many other ETRs) are represented identically in the grammar of the language. In order to bring this grammatical coherence under control, we may apply the following.

Criterion of Necessity[19]

Two semantic relations should be kept distinct as two independent semantic roles when they are coded by a different set of syntactic functions and/or prepositions.

For instance, Goal and Source are distinct because they are systematically marked by different prepositions: Jim came to Rio/Jim came from Rio.[20] But there is no need to distinguish the Agent from the “inanimate causator” because they are identically coded in the language: Jim opened the door/the wind opened the door. In the case of Jim came to/from Rio world knowledge cannot help us make the distinction, since a person can come to or from a place; but in the wind opened the door the “inanimate” character of the subject derives from our knowledge of what the wind is, which authorizes us to postulate the same semantic role in both cases.[21]

This criterion expresses something already perceived by some authors; for instance, Schlesinger proposes that “a conceptual distinction is to be admitted as a case if and only if it subserves the statement of some linguistic regularity” (1995: 25), which says about the same as I said above with my criterion, if we assume (as seems correct) that his “conceptual distinction” is what we call ETR, and his “case” what we call semantic role. Schlesinger goes on to say that

Linguistic relevance is language-specific. A linguistically relevant distinction in one language may be devoid of any effect on syntactic rules in another language.

[Schlesinger 1995: 26]

which also applies to semantic roles, as opposed to ETRs (see below).

Besides the Criterion of Necessity, we also need a Criterion of Semantic Similarity, which can be understood as an evaluation of the possibility of building tracks between a semantic role and the different elaborate relations that instantiate it. For example, we can relate “eater” and “kicker” as possible elaborations of Agent; but we cannot relate “eater” and “eaten thing” as elaborations of the same more schematic role. The Criterion of Semantic Similarity is important because a semantic role is a schema, and a schema, by definition, must have cognitive unity; something very similar is stated in the following passage:

A network [that is, a cognitive representation/MAP] is a set of items of knowledge such that starting from any of them it is possible to arrive at any other item of knowledge in the set, by going from item to item, or from a node to any other node.

[Castelfranchi and Parisi 1980: 122][22]

In terms of our model, we may say then that the ETRs composing a semantic role must be derivable by means of an acceptable hyponymic track from a more schematic relation, which is then taken as defining the semantic role. For instance, if we define the Patient (as we will in Chap. 11) as the “entity that undergoes a change of state,” then we may include the “entity that undergoes a change in physical state” as one of the elaborations of this role, but not the “entity that is touched superficially”—according to this definition, we have a Patient in Carl tore the passport, but not in Carl kissed the baby.

These two criteria tell us how far schematization can be carried: if we defined the syntactic coding in terms of “kicker,” we would have to repeat the same rules for “eater,” and so on. With the semantic role Agent we reach the maximum generality possible in this case.

Now suppose we try to conflate Agent and Patient into one role, based on

1. [9]

The boy jumped. [the boy = Agent]

2. [10]

The drawer opened. [the drawer = Patient]

Here the coding is the same. But there are cases in which the Patient is the object, as in

1. [11]

I opened the drawer. [the drawer = Patient]

and there is no parallel example with Agent (considered as excluding the Patient): in fact, the Agent can never be the direct object of a sentence. Therefore, Agent and Patient must be kept separate.

A corollary of the Criterion of Necessity is that it prevents uncomfortable situations like, for instance, in

1. [12]

The girl pinched the boy.

where we have both a “pincher” and a “pinched thing.” Suppose we conflate these two ETRs into one role, defined as “participant in an action.” If so, however, there will be no way to distinguish them in [12], since both will be labeled identically, and there will be no way to tell the role of each of them in the scene described. This is obviously incorrect and shows that we need two semantic roles here.

We have then a way to find the right point between highly elaborate relations and highly schematic ones, the point where thematic relations are maximally significant for the description of language structure; that is, these criteria allow the postulation of semantic roles at an adequate level of generalization for the purposes of linguistic analysis. Some more cognitively oriented proposals seem to be quite free of such constraints, and are therefore open to criticism as being arbitrary or ad hoc; part of the problem may be that they are not devised in view of a descriptive objective, which is here provided by a concern with language structure.

There is analogy here with the opposition between phonetic and phonological units, only the latter having linguistic relevance, but only the former being immediately accessible to perception. But, syntax being by nature rather more complex, there are grounds for some doubt about the status of thematic relations in certain cases; one example is the alternation of prepositions like in, on, near, and so on, which are all markers of Location, but denote different ETRs. Since here we have after all a difference in grammatical means, it would seem as if we had to discriminate between semantic roles like Inside, On top of, Close to, respectively marked by those three prepositions. In spite of this indication, however, I prefer to keep all three prepositions as marks of one and the same semantic role, Location, because apart from the preposition the behavior of constituents with each of them is identical. For one thing, no verb valency discriminates among them, that is, there is no verb that accepts in but not on as the introducer of its Location complement—I have in mind especially verbs that require a Location complement, like Portuguese morar “live, reside.”

3.4.2 An Example: Agent vs. Cause[23]

An example of the need to apply the Criterion of Necessity in delimiting the semantic roles in a particular language is the following: some authors distinguish the Agent (defined as always an animate, volitional, being) from the Cause, which is defined as inanimate and nonvolitional.[24] For instance,

Agent: the trigger of some action, able to function with control.

[...]

Cause: the trigger of an action, without control.

[Cançado 2012: 113][25]

According to this analysis, we would have an Agent in

1. [13]

Charlie opened the door.

and a Cause in

1. [14]

The wind opened the door.

There is no question that these are different relations, that is, different ETRs; but it remains to be shown that they are coded differently in this particular language. Here I hold that the semantic role Agent is not defined as a volitional causator, that is, we have Agent in both [13] and [14]; the difference has to do with the different ways this semantic role is elaborated in each of them.

In order to conflate these two ETRs (volitional and nonvolitional causator) into one semantic role, we must show that they function identically for all constructions of the language. There is at least one construction where they seem to be in opposition[26]:

1. [15]

∗ The door opened with Charlie.

2. [16]

The door opened with the wind.

A way to capture this fact would be to postulate two semantic roles, say Agent (coded as the subject of [13]), and Cause (subject in [14] and prepositional phrase in [16]). According to this analysis, the construction illustrated in [16] includes a Patient (the door) and a Cause (with the wind), but no Agent.

But there is an alternative, which to me seems preferable. We can show that with the wind in [16] has a different semantic role from the wind in [14], which would free us to call the latter Agent. And there is in effect evidence that the semantic roles are different in these two cases: the wind in [12] is an Agent, but with the wind in [16] is an Instrument. If this analysis is correct, we will have an explanation for the unacceptability of [15], based on the semantic inadequacy of Charlie as the Instrument for opening the door.

First of all, the preposition with systematically occurs with verbs marking the role of Instrument; as a matter of fact, with is the most frequent Instrument marker:

1. [17]

The door opened with a kick.

2. [18]

The door only opened with a crowbar.

Second, Instrument occurs in the same sentence with an Agent, as in

1. [19]

The thief opened the door with a crowbar.

If we cannot say

1. [20]

∗ Charlie opened the door with the wind.

this is because of the strangeness of a person manipulating the wind. But we have

1. [21]

Charlie dried the clothes with the afternoon wind.

2. [22]

The captain brought the boat safely into the bay with a favorable wind.

It is even possible to add an Instrument to [14]:

1. [23]

The wind opened the door with a violent gust.

which shows that the wind here is not an Instrument. This entails that [23] is not thematically synonymous with

1. [24]

A violent gust of wind opened the door.

These sentences describe the same event, it is true; the resulting cognitive representations are very similar. Nevertheless, this representation is expressed in different manners: if in [23] we understand that the gust is of wind, it is because of what we know of such situations; the sentence does not say that the gust is of wind. Similarly, in [23] the wind opened the door, and in [24] a gust of wind opened the door: we have here two grammatically different ways to evoke the same scenario.

Furthermore, it has already been observed that the ergative construction, which has a subject Patient, does not accept the addition of an Agent: the ergative is in fact one of the resources available in the language for Agent omission. If [16] has an Agent, it will be analyzable as an ergative with an Agent, which is an exception to explain:

- [16] The door opened with the wind.

These arguments show that with NP in the sentences examined have the semantic role Instrument, not Agent. Consequently, these sentences are not counterexamples to the hypothesis that English identifies the “volitional trigger of the event” with the “nonvolitional trigger of the event”[27] as a single semantic role.

Apart from these cases, there is additional evidence that the syntactic coding of the Agent and the presumed Cause is the same. For one thing, the Cause, if adopted, would be subject to the generalization of never being coded as a nonsubject NP (“direct object”)—a constraint that is well known to apply to the Agent. Furthermore, it would also be subject to the prototype rule that codes it as the subject with almost all verbs, another syntactic characteristic of constituents bearing the role Agent. I conclude that the subject of [13] is an Agent, and the same for the subject of [14]; and that, in English, “volitional” is not one of the features defining the semantic role Agent. The difference one perceives in the relations assigned to the subject in [13] and [14] comes from elaboration, which is based on what we know of Charlie (a person) and of the wind. In this particular case, the right degree of elaboration which is relevant for the description of the language includes only one thematic relation for both cases, namely the semantic role Agent; there is no need for a grammatical opposition between the Agent and the Cause.

3.5 Multiple Semantic Roles

In previous works I have used multiple semantic roles in certain cases; for instance, in

1. [25]

O cachorro arrastou para debaixo da cama.

- “The dog crawled under the bed.”

we understand not only an action, but also motion of the dog. What do we have here: an Agent or a Theme? In previous works, and in the Valency dictionary, we opted for using both, thus making use of multiple roles for the same constituent[28]:

- VSubj > Agent + Theme   V   para NP > Goal

We have now a better analysis: suppose we assign the subject of [25] only one thematic relation—say, Agent—and derive the remaining one(s) by elaboration. This depends on the schema evoked by the verb, here CRAWL: this schema includes not only an “agent,” which immediately initiates the event, but also a “moving entity,” the object that moves in a particular manner; also, both are always assigned to the same entity, here the dog.[29] The grammatical analysis of [25], after the relevant rules apply, corresponds to

- VSubj > Agent   V   para NP > Goal

As seen, multiple roles are not called for in this case, and it may well be that we do not need them in the whole description. Other sentences where the same solution works are

1. [26]

Michel entrou na sala.

- “Michel came into the living room.”

1. [27]

Michel confessou seu crime.

- “Michel confessed to his crime.”

1. [28]

Michel se suicidou.

- “Michel committed suicide.”

The subjects in these sentences are, respectively,

- in [26], “agent” + “moving entity”;

- in [27], “agent” + “confessing entity”;

- in [28], “agent” + “dying entity.”

In all cases the schema provides an “agent” (“immediate causator of event”), and the prototype rule can assign the role Agent to the subject. The additional ETR is added by elaboration, on the basis of the meaning that is computed for the sentence; for instance, in [28] it is necessary to understand that the “agent” and the “dying entity” are the same, otherwise we would have no suicide—this must of course be registered in the schema SUICIDE. With other verbs we may have a necessary difference between the same two entities, and this is coded for instance as murder.[30] And in [27] the “agent” is also the “emitter,” that is, the origin of a message—this depends on the semantics of confessar “confess,” and ultimately on the schema this verb evokes. We can thus arrive at a complete characterization of the ETRs expressed in each case with a minimum use of grammatical means, avoiding redundant information.

In these cases, the primary semantic role to be assigned to the subject is Agent, result of the application of a prototype rule. All other ETRs are derived by elaboration, from features of the schema. Accordingly, in this book I have reversed my previous use and refrained from using multiple semantic roles in the grammatical representation of sentences.

References

1. Cançado, M. (2003). Um estatuto teórico para os papéis temáticos [A theoretical status for thematic roles]. In A. L. Müller, E. Negrão, & M. J. Foltran (Eds.), Semântica Formal [Formal semantics]. São Paulo: Contexto.

2. Cançado, M. (2012). Manual de semântica. [A handbook of semantics]. São Paulo: Contexto.

3. Castelfranchi, C., & Parisi, D. (1980). Linguaggio, conoscenze e scopi [Language, knowledge and scopes]. Bologna: Il Mulino.

4. Chomsky, N. (1982). The generative enterprise. A discussion with Riny Huybregts and Henk van Riemsdijk. Dordrecht: Foris Publications.

5. Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67(3), 547–619.

6. Fillmore, C. J. (1970). The grammar of hitting and breaking. In R. A. Jacobs & P. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar. Ginn & Company. Reprinted in Fillmore (2003).

7. Frawley, W. (1992). Linguistic semantics. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.

8. Götz-Votteler, K. (2007). Describing semantic valency. In T. Herbst & K. Götz-Votteler (Eds.), Valency: Theoretical, descriptive and cognitive issues. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

9. Itkonen, E. (1974). Linguistics and metascience. Kokemäki: Societas Philosophica et Phaenomenologica Finlandiae.

10. Jackendoff, R. S. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge: MIT Press.

11. Langacker, R. W. (1991a). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Vol. II. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

12. Langacker, R. W. (1991b). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

13. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14. Launey, M. (1992). Introducción a la lengua y a la literatura náhuatl [Introduction to Nahuatl language and literature]. México: UNAM.

15. Perini, M. A., & Othero, G. Á. (2011). Córpus, introspecção e o objeto da descrição gramatical [Corpus, introspection and the object of grammatical description] Signo, Universidade de Santa Cruz do Sul, RS. 35(59), 2–12.

16. Perini, M.A. (2015). Describing verb valency: practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

17. Ringen, J. D. (1977). Review of Itkonen 1974. Language, 53(2), 412–413.

18. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

19. Smith, F. (1978). Understanding reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

20. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics: Vol. I. Concept structuring systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.

21. Talmy, L. (2007). Foreword. In M. González-Márquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

22. Trask, R. L. (1992). A dictionary of grammatical terms in linguistics. London: Routledge.

23. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Footnotes

1

Several terms are used to refer to this and analogous concepts: elaborate, specific, hyponymic. Here I follow Langacker, using elaborate, as opposed to schematic.

2

Where “cases” correspond to our semantic roles. Schlesinger also uses “notions,” or “conceptual distinctions” to refer to our ETRs (cf. Schlesinger 1995: 18–19).

3

I take Wierzbicka’s “primes” (cf. Wierzbicka 1996: 10 ff) to correspond, roughly, to ETRs. Some linguists may question the nonlinguistic nature of ETRs—and not only those that adopt the so-called Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. I do not consider this controversy here.

4

This entails belief in a literal meaning, distinct from the final interpretation; I discuss this problem in Sect. 4.1 below.

5

By the way, how does one represent an Agent visually?

6

As seen above, Schlesinger (1995: 4) says that semantic roles (his “cases”) “belong to the semantic level, and they are of course defined in terms of cognitive categories, but they are not primitive cognitive concepts [...].” His primitive concepts correspond to our ETRs.

7

I keep referring to verbs, but the same applies to the valencies of other classes, such as nominals and adverbs.

8

In English it correlates in many (not all) cases with the telltale suffix -er, added to a verbal basis. The definition of Agent given here describes the way this semantic role functions in Portuguese. Unlike Langacker’s definition (1991a, b: 210), as well as Trask’s (1992: 11), it does not include the condition of being volitional. I argue for this point in some detail in Sect. 3.4.2 below.

9

This prototype rule is very efficient: a survey of 133 diatheses that include the Agent occurring in the Valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese shows that it works in all cases but two (98.49%). If we count the percentage of verbs having at least one diathesis with Agent, we get much the same result: for the letter A in the Dictionary, 98.68% of all verbs have the Agent coded as the subject (75 vs. 1). Things are doubtlessly similar in English.

10

In Chap. 10 I list several additional cases in which semantic roles are needed in order to capture generalizations in the language.

11

Framenet defines ruin as related to the frame Destroying, thus described: “A Destroyer [...] or Cause [...] affects the Patient negatively so that the Patient no longer exists.” Our examples show that, for RUIN, we may substitute no longer functions properly for no longer exists.

12

As done by Dowty (1991), Schlesinger (1995), Cançado (2003), and others.

13

Or, otherwise said, the first relation describes one of the types of the second.

14

Cf. Perini and Othero 2011, and Sect. 4.8 below.

15

Of course, I refer here to a culturally defined default notion of a purchase. There are many possible variants, which arise in unusual circumstances, or in fables, for instance. These cases are to be analyzed by reference to the “normal” idea of what it is for a person to buy or eat something.

16

The reasoning in this paragraph is approximately similar to the one that leads to the analysis of semantic roles in “properties,” cf. Dowty (1991), and, for Portuguese, Cançado (2003). But there are differences: see Sect. 4.4 below.

17

Prototypically; there are some exceptions (less than 2% of the constructions).

18

I use “⊃”, instead of “→”, as a mark of elaboration. What Langacker calls a nonunit is, I believe, a structure not yet established as a recognized unit; once it is recognized, it becomes a unit.

19

This statement replaces the one in Perini (2015: 77), which some people found obscure.

20

Not merely because Goal and Source imply different directions of motion; Launey (1992) gives some examples from Nahuatl, a language where these two relations are not grammatically distinct, although of course the semantic difference can be expressed by using locational phrases.

21

See complete argument in the next section.

22

My translation, here and in all quotations not originally in English.

23

This section is partly taken from Sect. 4.7.1 in Perini (2015).

24

Defining the Agent as volitional seems to be quite widespread: see Trask (1992: 11); Frawley (1992: 203); now, other authors, like Götz-Votteler (2007: 42) admit of nonvolitional Agents. The best definition may vary according to language, of course.

25

My translation, here and in all quotes taken from works not in English.

26

I owe this observation to Luana Amaral (p.c.); her examples are in Portuguese, but the argument works for English as well.

27

Or, equivalently, “controlling” vs. “noncontrolling trigger of the event.”

28

The symbol “>” stands for “codes” (e.g., VSubj > Theme = “the subject codes the role Theme”).

29

In Framenet, CRAWL is subsumed under Self_motion.

30

One may kill oneself but not, I think, murder oneself.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_4

4. Notes on Methodology

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Empirical evidenceHyponymic tracksIntrospectionLiteral meaning

4.1 Literal Meaning

The analysis here proposed, which includes the effect of elaboration starting from a basic meaning—in particular, ETRs elaborated from semantic roles—supposes the acceptance of a literal meaning, independent of contextual factors, besides a final meaning, or CR, which only is directly observable. Since not all linguists are of this persuasion, I make a digression from the subject and include some observations that may be relevant to guide empirical research on these matters.

4.1.1 What Is “Literal Meaning”?

The word “meaning” covers a wide gamut of phenomena, and its use in the literature is not as consistent as desirable. In grammatical analysis “meaning” means “literal meaning”: we deal with literal meaning when establishing semantic roles and constructional meaning. But “literal meaning” is a notion that calls for some explanation.

The notion of literal meaning, although it is used in practice by most linguists, is somewhat controversial in the literature. The controversy arises from the observation that sentences and other units can be understood in different ways according to context. For instance, the sentence

1. [1]

I forgot your name.

can be understood as information about the content of the speaker’s memory, but also as a request for the addressee to tell her name. From the observation of such facts some authors have come to the conclusion that linguistic structures have no meaning independent of their occurrence in contexts. This is incorrect, as I hope to show in this section. I concentrate on the meanings of lexical items, but the same arguments apply to the meaning of larger units, such as phrases and sentences.

To make my position clear from the beginning, I hold that words and other units have literal meanings, and that these meanings are coded in the language user’s memory. This does not mean that they are rigidly bound to specific referents; there is a certain amount of flexibility, otherwise words would be of little use in normal circumstances. Nor does it mean that each word has only one meaning: this varies greatly from case to case, from phoneme, which has basically only one meaning, to head, which has several. And it does not mean that context is irrelevant for the CR we get from utterances; but it does mean that there is a set of readings associated with each lexical item, and that this association is part of our knowledge of language, stored in our memory prior to the production and understanding of actual utterances.

4.1.2 Discussion of the Problem in the Literature

All this must be made explicit in advance because one finds some skepticism about these points in the literature. For example, Langacker (2008) argues against the idea that

[...] linguistic meanings are seen as transcendent, existing independently of minds and human endeavor.

[Langacker 2008: 28]

and here he is right, since meanings must exist somewhere, and where else than in the mind? But he goes on to state that

[...] an individual mind is not the right place to look for meanings. Instead, meanings are seen as emerging dynamically in discourse and social interaction. [...] Rather than being fixed and predetermined, [meanings] are actively negotiated by interlocutors on the basis of the physical, linguistic, social, and cultural context.

[Langacker 2008: 28]

and here I must take issue with his position: as we shall see, Langacker’s statement is valid for cognitive representations, but not for literal meanings.

In order to explain how words convey meanings, we need at least a starting point, because after all we do not attach the same meaning to cat and violin. There is ample evidence that lexical items are associated with meanings, and this can only happen in the speaker’s individual memory. An example is given by Lakoff (2004), who reports that

When I teach the study of framing at Berkeley, in Cognitive Science 101, the first thing I do is give my students an exercise. The exercise is: Don’t think of an elephant! Whatever you do, do not think of an elephant. I’ve never found a student who is able to do this. Every word, like elephant, evokes a frame, which can be an image or other kinds of knowledge: elephants are large, have floppy ears and a trunk, are associated with circuses, and so on.

[Lakoff 2004: 3]

We cannot explain this phenomenon unless we assume that the word elephant is associated in the subjects’ minds with a particular meaning; and, furthermore, that the association is stable and essentially the same for all speakers, otherwise this word would be useless for communication. I take this evidence as showing that the meaning of lexical items is indeed “fixed and predetermined,” at least to some degree.

As for linguistic context, mentioned by Langacker as one of the areas where speaker-hearer negotiation takes place, its contribution to interpretation crucially depends on at least some items having predetermined meanings. Otherwise, we would have the strange situation of a chain of items, none of which is previously associated with a meaning, which in some way interact so as to generate meaning. That is, the meaning of I would depend on the meaning of forgot, and vice versa, and so on for all words in sentence [1]. How can this process result in the construction of meaning for the entire sentence?

Some researchers seem to resist the notion of literal meaning because for them any meaning is necessarily tied to context. Thus, Schank (1981) writes that

Dealing only with isolated sentences was probably the root of many of the problems involved with the theories proposed by transformationalists. People do not understand sentences in a null context. Why then did our theories try to deal with sentences out of context? The answer was obviously that this was thought to be a simplification that would facilitate research.

[Schank 1981: 114–115]

I agree only in part. It is certainly true that even sentences that make up an utterance by themselves must be understood in context; but this does not necessarily entail that studying isolated sentences is devoid of interest. The final understanding of an utterance (what is here called the cognitive representation, CR) is the result of a very complex set of factors, including context and world knowledge. Now, one of these factors is provided by sentence structure, plus lexical information; otherwise it would not be possible to distinguish between [2] and [3], and use them to build correct cognitive representations:

1. [2]

Jane pinched the boy.

2. [3]

The boy pinched Jane.

No contextual or pragmatic information can account for the meaning difference between these two sentences: the crucial features have to do, first, with the syntactic functions of Jane and the boy in each sentence, and, then, with the valency of the verb pinch.[1] It does, therefore, make sense to study the grammatical structure of these sentences in isolation, since in any context [2] will mean that Jane did something, as against [3], where the boy is the Agent. This generalizes to a host of other grammatical and lexical features.

On the other hand, I agree with Schank’s statement that dealing only with isolated sentences will lead to problems, if we are interested in sentence and discourse comprehension. Work on isolated sentences without any regard to their function in integrated discourse was, and is, done by linguists of many persuasions. But, as said, we are faced with a complex phenomenon, and lexicogrammatical information is only one of its ingredients. Our raw data are a product of all these ingredients, and one of the initial problems in research is to tell them apart to the point where the study of only one of them—say, literal meaning—becomes possible. Sentences out of context contain relevant information about aspects of cognitive representation (besides more formal information about language structure), and the study of isolated sentences is a necessary step towards the study of language comprehension.

In a case like I forgot your name the hearer can start by computing the literal meaning of the sentence; this has to do with the state of the memory of the speaker, an information that may be judged irrelevant in a particular context. The receptor then makes use of other (nonlinguistic) information to arrive at a final understanding having to do with a request to tell his name. But literal meaning is one of the necessary starting points in computing the mental landscape, and it can, and must, be studied by itself.

Returning to Schank’s passage, I agree that the study of isolated sentences cannot, by itself, explain the basic phenomenon whose study is the aim of linguistics, namely the connection made by speakers between vocal sounds (or written marks) and cognitive representations. But this only applies to the exclusive study of isolated sentences; they are needed in order to make explicit literal meaning, without which the whole phenomenon cannot be accounted for. If generativists, and other linguists, are to be blamed for something, it is only for not paying due attention to the complexity of the phenomenon, not for concentrating their studies on isolated sentences.[2]

Rumelhart (1979) seems to adopt a position of some skepticism towards the need for positing literal meanings:

To a linguist interested in form-meaning pairs, or to a philosopher interested in truth conditions, this distinction might be crucial. [....] As a psychologist I find myself primarily interested in the mechanisms whereby meanings are conveyed. Whatever role “literal meanings” [...] might play in the comprehension of language [...] psychological theory must concern itself with conveyed meanings.

[Rumelhart 1979: 71]

In this passage he seems to admit the possibility that literal meanings may be necessary in linguistic analysis, but apparently not in psychological studies. But if we assume a real-life attitude toward linguistic analysis, there is no way we can do without any of these two perspectives: whenever someone understands a sentence (or a text), this crucially depends on linguistic and nonlinguistic processing—and linguistic processing depends on the availability of literal meanings. It is true that only the CR (“conveyed meaning”) can be taken as a concrete, observable phenomenon, whereas literal meaning is a result of theory—but this does not mean that it can be disregarded, since it is a necessary step in the computation of final meaning. After all, [1] can mean simply that I have forgotten your name. Rumelhart also says that both in figurative and literal meanings

the interpretation seems to depend on knowledge well beyond definitions of the terms involved. There are no rules whereby lexical meanings can be combined to generate conveyed meanings.

[Rumelhart 1979: 76]

I suspect Rumelhart has final meanings, that is, cognitive representations, in mind, and does not pay due attention to other factors which are crucial in their generation. Merely combining lexical meanings cannot yield CRs, but there are rules that define their combinations, so that literal meanings are the product of lexical meanings, plus rules that assemble them into larger units—one example is verb valency, one of whose tasks is precisely assembling lexical meanings into sentence (and phrase) meanings. Rumelhart’s statement can be accepted as true only if it refers to final meanings, not to literal ones: final meanings are generated by means of several kinds of factors, one of which is literal meaning.

Most linguists and psychologists agree, or even assume without discussion, that literal meanings are necessary (cf. Clark and Lucy 1975; Sadock 1979; Dascal 1987; Moura 2012). Dascal gives some amusing examples, from Fónagy (1982), where jokes can only be understood if the receiver has present in his mind both the literal and the final meanings, and concludes that

Though there are other mechanisms involved in joke understanding, the devices exemplified above account for a large number of the most effective jokes, and they certainly require a distinction between a conventionalized, more or less compositional, more or less context-free reading of an expression, and a reading that is conveyed in a more indirect way, though eventually grasped more immediately.

[Dascal 1987: 271]

and goes on to conclude that

It may be true that, as claimed by Rumelhart (1979: 80), the child, when acquiring language, understands in the same way the metaphoric and the literal. But it is no less true that the child learns, at some moment in its linguistic career, to distinguish between them, and from that moment onwards the two are interpreted in ways that are essentially distinct.

[Dascal 1987: 280]

I think there are good reasons to keep the traditional distinction between literal and final meaning as valid for the purposes of grammatical description. I believe then that literal meaning is a necessary step in any kind of “negotiation” between the interlocutors. A sentence like

- [1] I forgot your name.

can be filtered through context and end up meaning something like “please tell me your name”; but it cannot mean “please open the door,” as can

1. [4]

Can you reach that doorknob?

[1] and [4] start from different points, and these points are provided by a previous semantic processing which includes the literal meaning of the sentence—the part of its meaning that does not depend on extralinguistic context.[3] These linguistic factors are previously coded in the memory of speakers, either as lexical items or as rules and similar operations. This portion does not depend on any kind of negotiation: the associations are imposed by language structure, and elephant must mean a particular species of animal for all speakers. The same can be said for details of constructional meaning, such as the requirement that if the elephant is the subject of an active sentence whose verb is jump, it must be understood as the Agent of the denoted action.

For another example having to do with the illocutionary force of sentences, take two sentences like

1. [5]

Can you keep silent?

2. [6]

Did you sleep 8 h last night?

The first can be understood as a command to keep silent; the second cannot convey a command at all. This has to do with their final interpretation (CR). Now, if we turn to literal meaning, they are parallel, in that both can mean a request for information—and this correlates with the presence of a particular intonational contour, marked in writing by the question mark. This interpretation is available for both sentences, and is easily derived through the use of general rules of the language. This shows, to my mind, an asymmetry between the two kinds of interpretation, since only the final interpretation (when markedly different from the literal one) is dependent on contextual factors, and cannot be directly correlated with morphosyntactic features of the sentence.

4.1.3 From Literal Meaning to Cognitive Representation

Now, a question that arises is how, exactly, do we go from the literal to the final meaning of an utterance—for example, how a hearer can understand the sentence

- [1] I forgot your name.

as meaning “please tell me your name.”

I cannot offer a detailed answer to this question, but I think some preliminary speculation might be useful. First, the final meaning of [1] must depend on its literal meaning, on one hand, and also on other factors having to do mainly with the situation in which the sentence is uttered. Suppose the process goes like this: first, we compute from [1] the literal meaning, that is, “your name has dropped out of my memory”; this will be sufficient if we are talking about my memory limitations. But suppose someone says [1] in the context of a conversation about other topics. The hearer may (implicitly) reason like this:

1. (a)

He is giving me information about the content of his memory;

2. (b)

This has nothing to do with the current topic;

3. (c)

Therefore I am supposed to understand his sentence in some other way;

4. (d)

We have just been introduced, and in fact I do not remember his name;

until the final meaning is reached, that is,

(z) He is asking me to tell him my name.

This is of course a highly informal picture of the process; but it illustrates how elements of the extralinguistic context can be used in order to understand a sentence that otherwise might sound irrelevant for the current conversation. This can be viewed as an application of Grice’s (1975) Maxim of Quality, which prevents us to simply assume that our interlocutor is mad and talking nonsense. What matters here is that there is a track from the literal meaning all the way to the final meaning; the track is still to be traced in its details, but it must exist. It is not a simple track, though; it involves the active negotiation carried on by interlocutors “on the basis of the physical, linguistic, social, and cultural context” mentioned by Langacker (2008) in the passage quoted above.

But the process must start from literal meaning; and in certain limiting cases, it stops there, as when one understands

1. [7]

It is raining.

as meaning simply that it is raining, not that, say, “we must cancel our picnic.” At present there is no list of all factors that can participate in this process. It is to be expected that, in principle, any kind of knowledge qualifies, and that the process is not purely linguistic: it is part of our constant effort to make sense of the world.

Step (b) in the progression, that is, “this has nothing to do with the current topic” is particularly important because it illustrates a point where the hearer detects a break in the adequacy of literal meaning. This sets him on the search for other roads that will allow the building of a more sensible and coherent mental landscape. I suspect that this perception of a break in adequacy is at the root of the understanding of metaphors. Suppose someone says that

1. [8]

George became a hippo.

Why is this sentence necessarily understood as metaphorical? Precisely because the hearer detects a basic inadequacy (the “break” mentioned above): no man becomes a hippo in real life. The hearer must therefore find a way to attach a reasonable meaning to this sentence: perhaps George became too fat, for instance. Of course (as pointed out by Lakoff and Johnson 1980), this happens very often, although I would never go as far as holding that we live by metaphors.[4]

Returning to our main theme, notice how even in a case like [8] the first step must be the computation of literal meaning: it is from the recognition of its pragmatic lack of adequacy that the meaning-searching process is launched.

4.1.4 Literal Meaning and Semantic Roles

A particularly important example of how one comes to find the meaning of a construction is the processing of semantic roles. The starting point is the observation that semantic roles are not directly observable. That is, upon hearing the sentence

1. [9]

The girl ate my porridge.

one does not understand the girl as being the Agent, which is a rather schematic notion; we understand her to be the “eater,” and therefore with a different cognitive relation to the schema evoked by the verb than in

1. [10]

The girl stole my porridge.

where we have a “stealer” instead. On the other hand, these two relations (ETRs) are treated as one in the grammar of English—they, along with many others, have a common semantic feature, the “immediate initiator of an event,” and they are coded in similar ways in the constructions of the language. Therefore, it makes sense to give them a collective label, Agent—not an ETR anymore, but rather a semantic role.

Now one may ask, Which feature is part of the literal meaning of [9]: Agent or “eater”? I think both are; here we have an elaboration process that applies obligatorily, since one never understands a schematic Agent, but rather an elaborate “eater” and so on. A semantic role is a hyperonym of a set of ETRs: if a constituent is an “eater,” it is necessarily an Agent. We are not dealing with a dislocation of the meaning to another cognitive domain, but with a relation of elaboration, connecting a schematic notion at one end and a highly specific one at the other. That is, the girl in [9] is literally the Agent and just as literally the “eater.” Compare with a case like

1. [11]

The students kicked my theories aside.

understood as “the students rejected my theories.” The situation here is different: we cannot describe “kick aside” as a hyperonym of “reject,” or vice versa; here we have, as it were, a lateral translation of meaning, from one semantic field to another, that is, from one complex of schemata to another. But the relation between Agent and “eater” keeps the elaboration within one semantic field, describable as the “immediate initiator of a [...] event,” where the gap is filled in by more elaborate notions like “eating,” “jumping,” “scratching,” “rejecting,” and so on. To use more traditional terminology, we can speak of a metaphor in the case of [11], but not in the case of [10]. I conclude that the semantic representation of [10] with the girl as the “eater” is still part of the literal meaning of the sentence. On the other hand, understanding [11] as “the students rejected my theories” is not literal, but metaphoric, if we do not recognize kick aside as a previously coded alternative to reject in the language. Note that only in the former case (that is, elaboration) is the relation linguistically coded (here, by the suffix -er); metaphor is an extragrammatical phenomenon, and is not systematically marked by grammatical means.

4.2 Fuzzy and Discrete Distinctions

The distinctions between ETRs may be fuzzy—they describe distinctions our mind makes in, or perhaps rather imposes on, the perceived world. These distinctions are not always clear-cut, and in any case they are too numerous to be included in an exhaustive set of categories. But this does not have to apply to semantic roles, which by all available evidence are discrete categories, sharply distinguished from each other. In other words, the linguistic end of the elaboration process is made up of discrete relations and units, whereas the cognitive end is often made up of continuous categories, which may overlap and fade into each other in various, still largely unknown, ways. Consequently, one may claim that it is possible to build a lexicogrammatical description on the basis of discrete units and relations; the fact that these units and relations are not neatly distinct at the observational level is no evidence against this claim.

This is one of the important differences between semantic roles and ETRs; and failing to take it into account may lead to inadequate positions. For instance, we saw that Langacker (1991a) is skeptical about the possibility of defining semantic roles, and would limit himself to what are essentially our ETRs. Yet when Langacker has to use these relations in actual analyses, what we find is the more traditional type-roles (Agent, Instrument, Patient, and the like); see, for instance, Langacker (1991b: 216 ff, 2008: 355). The latter passage is particularly interesting because there Langacker deals with thematic hierarchies, which cannot be expressed except by using type roles:

An important dimension of clausal organization is thus the role of nominal referents with respect to the profiled process. At issue here are grammatical roles (like agent, patient, instrument, etc.) and how these map onto grammatical roles (notably subject and object).

[Langacker 2008: 355]

If we were to deal with “pre-linguistic conceptions grounded in everyday experience,”[5] we would not speak of agents, but rather of eaters, kickers, writers, biters and chewers. And expressing the (correct) generalization that all these tend to be coded as subjects would be an almost endless task, since Langacker’s assertion that “at the extreme, every verb defines a distinct set of participant roles that reflect its own unique semantic properties”[6] is true, but only of ETRs, not of semantic roles.

Consequently, the search for a list of semantic roles is a useful and feasible task. Without necessarily hoping that a clear, limited list will emerge in the near future, it is possible to devise a partial list that integrates the several relations used in the description of lexicogrammatical rules and principles.

4.3 Empirical Status of Elaborations

Faced with derivations such as the ones given in Sect. 3.3, one must ask, How can those relations be empirically tested? If testing proves to be impossible, the whole system will be open to serious objections, as being little more than speculation. On the other hand, it must be recognized that the relevant observations are based on introspection; there is no hope of finding formal operations and tests to validate them.

Serious as these difficulties are, they are not insurmountable. Introspective facts can be tested, as shown by a long tradition in psycholinguistics, for instance. Here we can resort to consultation with several speakers; unanimity or near-unanimity should be taken as good evidence for the point under test. For instance, we can ask subjects whether they see any difference between the situations described in

1. [12]

Magda married the teacher.

2. [13]

The teacher married Magda.

If, as is probable, subjects consistently fail to detect any difference, this can be understood as evidence for the identity of semantic roles between the two NPs.[7] Compare applying the same test to sentences

1. [14]

Magda saw/called/loves the teacher.

2. [15]

The teacher saw/called/loves Magda.

where the answer will certainly be that they describe different situations.

These experiments have not yet been carried out; but they can be, and the results may be sufficiently clear as to grant these relations the empirical validity they are usually assumed to have. In certain cases, no experiments seem to be needed. For instance, the fact that in

1. [16]

The boy kicked the cat.

the boy refers to the entity that immediately causes the denoted event should be evident in itself to any user of the language; this can be tested, but in such cases formal testing seems superfluous. This is the case of several logical relations, traditionally taken for granted, such as hyponymy vs. hyperonymy, entailment, and presupposition. Access to all these relations is crucially dependent on introspection, and yet they have been used as hard facts for centuries.

Resorting to introspection is standard procedure when dealing with hyponymic relations (also variously referred to as inheritance, subtyping, or is-a relations). Thus, we find in the Framenet handbook:

[...] all L[exical]U[nit]s of a frame have a semantics which is best described as a subtype of the semantics of the frame. [...] one may thus consider LU membership in a frame to be an identical relationship to Inheritance from a frame.

[...] Inheritance, our most formally defined relation, is an exact match for an ontologically defined relation, namely subtyping or “is-a” [...]

[Ruppenhofer et al. 2006: 127]

That is, these relations are taken to be evident enough, and dispense with elaborate definition.

Testing with subjects as a methodology is typically used in experimental semantics. For instance, Hartshorne and Snedeker (2012) studied the effect of Implicit Causality bias on the recovering of pronoun reference. Subjects were shown sentences of the form

1. [17]

Sally frightens Mary because she is a dax.

where the nonsense word dax is used in order to neutralize contextual effect. Subjects were asked Who do you think is a dax? and

The participant indicated his/her choice by clicking one of the names with the mouse.

[Hartshorne and Snedeker 2012: 8]

Hartshorne and Snedeker used 1365 subjects, which no doubt gives their results a high degree of reliability. But, as can be clearly seen by the procedure, the eventual results reflect subjects’ introspection just the same.

4.4 Entailment and Semantic Roles

A proposal of Dowty’s (1991) seems concerned with the problem of making clear the theoretical status of semantic roles:

From the semantic point of view, the most general notion of thematic role (type) is a set of entailments of a group of predicates with respect to one of the arguments of each.

[Dowty 1991: 552; his emphasis]

This is probably a good point of departure towards a more precise definition of semantic roles, but it needs improvement by specifying which entailments are relevant for thematic purposes. Returning to one of our earlier examples (Sect. 3.3), we saw that from the sentence

1. [18]

Claudia bought a bicycle.

we get the information that Claudia is

1. (a)

the immediate causator of an event;

2. (b)

the immediate causator of a purchase event;

3. (c)

human, therefore animate (since nonhumans are unlikely to make purchases);

4. (d)

a volitional participant in the event (since the action of buying depends on conscious decision);

5. (e)

the owner of some money (the quantity of which is calibrated according to the object that is bought: a bicycle, an apartment, a yacht, a hotdog... But she cannot be totally without money).

All these pieces of information are entailed, with varying degrees of certainty, by the truth of [18]. Now, Dowty’s definition refers to a set of entailments; but not all entailments are relevant for thematic analysis. As we saw, the status Agent of the subject depends only on information (a), the others being irrelevant for grammatical purposes: it is (a) that is common to all Agents. We can then say that a language selects part of the possible entailments allowed by a predicate, and takes this part as relevant for valency purposes, making it the basis of a semantic role. We should expect some variation among languages, each of them selecting different entailments, but also, no doubt, very definite universal tendencies—for instance, I find it highly unlikely that a language select (b) or (e) as the definitional basis of a semantic role. The choice of the relevant entailment is, then, result of a linguistic process of selection, not a logical operation such as the formulation of the entailments themselves. The specification of which of the several possible entailments is grammatically relevant is, then, part of the grammar of the language in question: the definition of the Agent as the “immediate causator of an event” is part of the structure of English.

This was already seen:

[...] not all entailed participants would normally be considered arguments. [...] Thus, because there is no close match between entailed participants and what are normally considered arguments, we do not adopt the entailment-based definition of argument.

[Haspelmath and Hartmann 2015: 46]

Actually, entailed participants sometimes do not appear at all. Port assaltar “mug” entails that something is stolen, yet this stolen element cannot be expressed with assaltar (it can with roubar “steal”).

4.5 Hyponymic Tracks

Starting from the considerations made so far in this text, let us now summarize the aspects we are concerned with in sentence interpretation. A receptor, upon hearing a sentence like

1. [19]

Jim kicked the dog.

and after identifying kicked as a verb, evokes a schema, KICK, which he knows is related to that verb. This schema has two core variables, namely “kicker” and “kicked thing”; but there is a problem, which is which? The dog might have kicked Jim, or vice versa; how can the receptor find the right assignments? And, for that matter, how did the speaker code them in the first place?

We cannot establish a direct connection between “kicker” and the syntactic function subject, of course—this rule would not be very useful, and we still would have to state parallel rules for “eater,” “writer,” “pincher,” and a few thousand more cases. We must then search for the way the language found to bunch all these notions together, in order to code them in the same way. As we know, English and other languages have come up with the relation Agent, defined as the “immediate causator of an event”; and the rule in question singles out the subject as the prototypical way to code the Agent.

Returning to our receptor hearing sentence [19]: from his knowledge of the language, he knows that the Agent is the subject. But the problem is still not solved, because the schema KICK does not contain an Agent—only a “kicker.” The question is, then, how to relate the elaborate relation “kicker” with the schematic relation Agent; once this is done, the receptor can conclude that the subject, being the Agent, is the “kicker.” Therefore, Jim kicked the dog, not the other way around.

The problem is then to recognize the “kicker” as an elaboration of the Agent. Since an exhaustive listing of all possible elaborations of Agent is impractical, the connection must be carried out by other means. Here we must have recourse to a hypothesis which seems well supported:

An elaboration of a semantic role is hyponymically related to that role.

That is, a “kicker” is viewed as one kind of an Agent, defined as the “immediate initiator of an event”: in [19], Jim is the immediate initiator of the kicking event, and therefore is the Agent. With a less concrete verb, console, we have the “consoling person,” which can be taken as a hyponym of the “immediate initiator of the consoling event,” which on its turn is also an elaboration of the Agent.

These hyponymy relations are accessible to introspection, but cannot be otherwise shown to be exact; here we have to rely on intuitive judgments, and the only way to validate them is to compare the judgments of many speakers. If our subjects agree with an elaboration track, then we have reason to accept it as correct. This is standard procedure when dealing with hyponymic relations, which are taken to be evident enough, and do not require elaborate definition.

4.6 Internal Meaning of the Verb

One important factor that contributes to elaboration is what we may call the internal meaning of the verb: the set of its semes.[8] For our purposes, it may be equated with the relevant part of the schema which the verb evokes. This view replaces, as a more systematic alternative, traditional designations such as “verb of action,” “verb of state,” and so on, and goes beyond them by providing details: create and destroy are both “verbs of action,”[9] but one of them has to do with beginning of existence, the other with end of existence. This provides a rather delicate analysis of the situation described, that is, one that is much closer to the cognitive representation intended by the emitter and understood by the receptor.

Defining internal meanings is convenient because it makes it easier to check the analysis against data. As we have seen, language users have direct access only to ETRs, not to comparatively schematic relations such as Agent or Patient. But the production of ETRs depends on features of the internal meaning of the verb—that is, of the schema. The verb kick evokes a schema that informs the presence of an entity making use of the feet to contact (with some force) another entity. This kind of information is essential for comprehension, and also for the analysis of the semantics of the sentence; and it can be tested with a high degree of reliability.

In this respect equative and other reciprocal schemata are particularly interesting, because they refer to entities that have the same relation to each other, while the nature of the relation varies from schema to schema. For instance, in

1. [20]

The blond lady is my sister.

the verb is evokes a schema that contains two such variables; and it denotes identity of reference.[10] Correspondingly, one understands [20] as meaning that the blond lady and my sister are the same person. Now, the semantic structure of

1. [21]

The blond lady resembles my sister.

is, as far as the variables are concerned, identical with [20]. But the verb resemble evokes a schema denoting only apparent, nonfactual identity of reference. Valentially, both sentences are identical, but the internal meaning of each verb causes the difference between the resulting cognitive representations.

Elaboration depends on many factors, including nonlinguistic ones; the complete map of such factors is still to be drawn. For the moment being, let us note that the examples given above illustrate the way features of the internal meaning of verbs condition the elaboration of thematic relations.

4.7 Earlier Treatment of Elaboration Phenomena

Elaboration phenomena have not escaped notice, but they remained mysterious as long as purely grammatical solutions were tried. They are often attributed to some vague process involving “figured” or “metaphorical” speech. Thus, Gross (1975) observed that

Some verbs can be used in several ways while keeping a part of their meaning in their different uses.

[Gross 1975: 146]

as for example in

1. [22]

Paul remplit le verre de ce vin.

- “Paul fills the glass with this wine.”

1. [23]

Paul remplit Marie d’admiration.

- “Paul fills Mary with admiration.”[11]

where according to Gross the verb in the first sentence is taken in its “proper” sense, and in the second in its “figured” sense.

He also observes that the syntax is the same:

In a great number of examples global syntactic structure is the same for both uses: same number of complements and same prepositions, same relations between complements or between verbs and complements. Properties such as plural subject are kept:

∗(L’étudiant + l’idée) afflue [∗the student / the idea floods in]

(Les étudiants + les idées) affluent [the students / the ideas flood in]

[Gross 1975: 146; my glosses/MAP]

Gross fails to offer an explanation for these facts, and limits himself to recording them, commenting that no transformational treatment seems possible. But when we speak of the “figured sense” of an item, we are committed to describe the possible limits of this figuration, because of course not every substitution is acceptable. Thus, although we can use remplir (or fill) in a context like [22], we cannot use just any “filling” verb in it:

1. [24]

∗ Paul poured his admiration into Marie.

on the model of

1. [25]

Paul poured the wine into the glass.

Besides, if we multiply the examples we will see that there is a continuum, from “fill the glass with wine” through “fill the house with his screams,” “fill his book with irrelevant information,” and so on. There are limits, as [24] shows, but they are comparatively wide, and deserve study.[12]

It should by now be evident that we are dealing with the results of an elaboration process—starting with a schematic notion of FILL, probably defined in physical terms (“occupy all spaces in a container with something”). This schematic notion is responsible for the fact, observed by Gross, that a verb keeps part of its meaning in all of its “figured” uses, and that the syntax remains constant. This is because there is no linguistic difference between sentences [22] and [23]: they have the same lexical items, and represent the same construction of the verb remplir “fill,” with the same syntax and the same semantic roles.

4.8 On the Use of Introspection in Linguistic Analysis

This book is concerned with thematic relations, some of which have been discussed in recent literature.[13] But, since the notion is understood in somewhat varied ways among authors, I would like to summarize here the basic motivation for postulating an opposition between semantic roles and elaborate thematic relations (ETRs).

The aim of linguistic analysis is to make explicit the relation between the mental representation of sounds (acoustic images, in Saussure’s terminology) and meanings. That this is the central concern of linguistics seems uncontroversial, but it has some necessary consequences which are not always followed to their outcome. One of these is that the semantic end of the axis must correspond, as closely as possible, to the speakers’ introspective judgments, which are part of a cognitive representation or scene very rich in details, including sensorial ones. Thus, upon hearing the sentence

1. [26]

Your dog bit little Tommy.

one constructs a cognitive representation including the image of the dog using his teeth, coming in contact with little Tommy and (presumably) hurting him to some degree.

Of course, this cannot be done with linguistic information only—it crucially depends on cognitive factors such as previously stored world knowledge, as well as logical operations like inferences. On the other hand, linguistic information is also needed, if only to determine who bit whom, the time of occurrence of the event, and so on. If we limit ourselves to linguistically represented relations, we will say that your dog is the Agent, and little Tommy is the Patient, but this is not sufficient: it is only a starting point in the building of the CR.

We cannot simply dismiss the nonlinguistic elements and their effects, because our data are not semantic roles like Agent and Patient but rather ETRs like “biter” and “bit thing,” or even their sensorial correlates, synthesized in our memory. If we really want to relate two sets of data, phonetic and cognitive, as is the aim of linguistic research, we must take into account the process all the way down to the ETRs (and other details which we disregard here). The ultimate aim of the description is not to identify and assign semantic roles, but to come to details of the cognitive representation, including ETRs. The cognitive representation is part of our raw data, and is accessible by introspection.

Let me emphasize this: one end of the continuum we are supposed to study is accessible sensorially (phonetic or graphic sequences); the other end, just as necessary, is accessible only by introspection. Another important point is that the number of existing ETRs is extremely high, and we may also expect their limits to be frequently fuzzy. This does not mean that language structure includes these numerous and ill-defined relations; each language makes a very definite—and discrete—choice of relations which are relevant for its rules. We may recall here Jackendoff’s dictum that

“argument structure” can be thought of as an abbreviation for the part of conceptual structure that is “visible” to the syntax.

[Jackendoff 1990: 48]

It is then perfectly legitimate to analyze the subject in [26] as having the role Agent, and the same for the subject in

1. [27]

Your dog licked little Tommy.

But the process that takes interpretation from the Agent in these sentences to the ETRs that make up part of the resulting cognitive representation must be explicitly stated, because Agents are not part of the data—they are the result of theorization, unlike the “licker” or the “biter,” which are part of the final understanding of these sentences, namely their CR. If we want to set linguistic analysis on empirical bases, then, we should take ETRs—not semantic roles—as part of our raw data. Semantic roles are also necessary, but they are theoretical constructs, not part of the evidence.

Some linguists resist the notion that introspective data can, and must, be used in linguistic description. It is a fact that introspective judgments are not always clear. But, first, this does not necessarily mean that we must, or can, do without them; data in science are often obscure and difficult to observe, which does not stop astronomers from formulating hypotheses about distant planets, or geologists from speculating about the internal composition of the earth. And, second, there is acceptably clear introspective data in sufficient quantity and quality to serve as a foundation for linguistic hypotheses. A sentence may be acceptable to speakers that have never heard it, and this can be tested and confirmed, or not, without difficulty. The meaning of a sentence—a fundamental element in linguistic analysis—can be accessed only by introspection; and, again, it can be tested. It is easy enough to gather results that definitely corroborate many meaning features: upon hearing [27] we all agree that the dog used his tongue, not his teeth; the dog licked Tommy, not the other way around; and so on.

But the main objection against the emphasis on exclusive examination of overt features lies in the nature of observational data. What is, after all, observation? How can we get information about meaning if not by understanding utterances? And how can we get information about the form of utterances unless by examining them and coming to a conclusion, say, that in this utterance your dog comes before licked, which in turn comes before little Tommy? In other words, observational data derive from the observation of what? The answer is that all observation has an introspective component, and cannot be reduced to purely “concrete” elements. As for a corpus, it is the record of utterances emitted by speakers on the basis of (among other factors) their language knowledge, an ultimately mental phenomenon. No linguist I know of really tries to analyze the data in a corpus as they are—many features are systematically disregarded, such as hesitations, repetitions, pauses, stammering, changes of plan in the middle of a sentence, and so on. On which basis does the linguist disregard such elements, if not on the basis of his language knowledge, accessed by introspection?

It is true that some linguists are tolerant towards the use of poorly observed data, or data which is inherently difficult to observe; this tells us something about these linguists’ work habits, not about linguistic methodology. The analysis must come down to ETRs, because only they can be “observed”; an assertion like “sentence [27] has a subject” is theoretical, and must be ultimately grounded on observation. A theory stands or falls by its power to derive real data from the analyses it proposes.

Not even phonetics escapes the need for introspection as a necessary tool, at least in order to establish segmentation and the limits of each phonetic unit; Postal observes that

[...] every linguist realizes that a discrete, segmented, correct phonetic representation is an absolute prerequisite to any work in phonology [...] Yet is has been known for decades that neither articulation nor the acoustic signal has the discrete, segmental properties which phonetic representations manifest.

[Postal 1968: 6]

Track-building depends on mental operations that do not necessarily have overt manifestations. Some authors have attempted to find such overt elements in order to free us from too much reliance on introspection; examples are Blanche-Benveniste et al. (1984) and Straňáková-Lopatková et al. (Internet); as far as I can judge, these proposals simply do not work.[14] I doubt that there is a way to deal with semantic units and relations without recourse to introspection: we know that the word cat refers to a certain species of animal because we know it, period. No amount of distributional analysis will tell us that. The same situation obtains for a relation like the “immediate causator of an event”—it is something we capture through our knowledge of the language and of the world.

Faulhaber (2011: 13, 23) tries to avoid the need to define semantic roles by introspection and devises a procedure to do so by formal means:

If a certain complement type is typically an alternative to another complement type (irrespective of the meaning of the verb), i.e., if it regularly commutes with it but not in combination with a specific verb, this restriction might throw light on possible semantic properties of that complement type.

[Faulhaber 2011: 23]

Faulhaber accepts this as decisive for the identification of semantic features. But, to my mind, she misses the point; I believe that meaning is something that can be conveniently accessed only by introspection. Attempts to access meaning by other ways seem unpromising. A classical example is the concept proposed by Bloomfield that

the meaning of a linguistic form [is] the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response which it calls forth in the hearer.

[Bloomfield 1933: 139]

Another example is the identification criterion for the semantic feature [HUMAN] used in the French valency dictionary DICOVALENCE, derived from a proposal by Blanche-Benveniste et al. (1984):

If paradigm P1 conforms to the expression ‘le, me, te, ∗ceci’ [...], the referent unites with the feature [+HUMAN]; if P1 conforms to ‘le, ∗me, ∗te, ceci, celui-ci’, the referent unites with the set [-HUMAN, +CONCRETE] [...]

[apud van den Eynde and Mertens 2003: 85][15]

It is easier—and probably much safer—to define an item as [+HUMAN] when it refers to a person. This distinguishes, for instance, girl from rabbit and frying-pan, and can be tested with speakers, who will certainly agree among them that only girl denotes a person, and deserves the feature [+HUMAN]. And, in addition, the tests proposed in DICOVALENCE also depend on introspective judgments: how else can one know whether a particular form corresponds to le, me, te but not to ceci?

Talmy (2007) examines the problem more closely, and comes to the conclusion that the use of introspection is inevitable. He observes that

The methodology of introspection [...] has been central in the development of cognitive linguistics and continues as its main methodology [...]

[Talmy 2007: XII]

This is a consensus among most linguists, if not explicitly, at least as a background for their work in practice. While this is certainly no news, it is good to see it clearly recognized. Talmy notes that all attempts to develop nonintrospective methodologies have been motivated by the limitations that are inherent to introspection, and should be viewed as a complement, not as an alternative, to its use. One reason why recourse to introspection is necessary is that

introspection has the advantage over other methodologies in seemingly being the only one able to access [meaning] directly.

[Talmy 2007: XII]

We must conclude that meaning can be accessed in a direct and effective manner only through introspection, and the sooner we accept this fact the better it will be for the interests of linguistic analysis. This is in agreement with Talmy’s position, which includes a very interesting analysis of the weak and strong points in the use of introspection. As he says,

Of the most accessible categories – ones that are strong, clear, and stable as objects of attention in isolation – the foremost is meaning: the conceptual content associated with linguistic representations. Meaning is a consciousness phenomenon and, if it is to be taken on as a target of research, introspection – itself a process occurring in consciousness – is the relevant instrumentality able to reach its venue.

[Talmy 2007: XII–XIII]

Meaning is most accessible with open-class items, like nouns, which often relate in a very evident and clear way to objects in the world. Consequently, determining whether a noun has the feature [+HUMAN] is not a problem to be approached by indirect means.

References

Blanche-Benveniste, C., Deulofeu, J., Stéfanini, J., & van den Eynde, K. (1984). Pronom et syntaxe. L’approche pronominale et son application au français [Pronoun and syntax. The pronominal approach and its application to French]. Paris: SELAF.

Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. London: Allen and Unwin.

Cançado, M. (2003). Um estatuto teórico para os papéis temáticos [A theoretical status for thematic roles]. In A. L. Müller, E. Negrão, & M. J. Foltran (Eds.), Semântica Formal [Formal semantics]. São Paulo: Contexto.

Clark, H. H., & Lucy, P. (1975). Understanding what is meant from what is said: A study in conversationally conveyed requests. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 56–72.

Dascal, M. (1987). Defending literal meaning. Cognitive Science, 11, 259–281.

Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67, 3.

Faulhaber, S. (2011). Verb valency patterns. A challenge for semantic-based accounts. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Fónagy, I. (1982). ‘He is only joking’. Joke, metaphor and language development. In F. Kiefer (Ed.), Hungarian linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics 3—Speech acts. New York: Academic.

Gross, M. (1975). Méthodes en syntaxe. Paris: Hermann.

Hartshorne, J. K., & Snedeker, J. (2012). Verb argument structure predicts implicit causality: The advantages of finer-grained semantics. Language and Cognitive Processes, iFirst, 1–35.

Haspelmath, M., & Hartmann, I. (2015). Comparing verbal valency across languages. In A. Malchukov & B. Comrie (Eds.), Valency classes in the world’s languages. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

Jackendoff, R. S. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! White River Junction: Chelsea Green.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Langacker, R. W. (1991a). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Vol. II. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Langacker, R. W. (1991b). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Levin, B., & Hovav, M. R. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moura, H. (2012). Frames e alternâncias sintáticas: como o metafórico depende do literal [Frames and syntactic alternations: How metaphorical depends on literal]. In H. Moura et al. (Eds.), Cognição, léxico e gramática. Florianópolis: Editora Insular.

Norrick, N. R. (1981). Semiotic principles in semantic theory. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Perek, F. (2015). Argument structure in usage-based construction grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

Postal, P. M. (1968). Aspects of phonological theory. New York: Harper & Row.

Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Rumelhart, D. E. (1979). Some problems with the notion of literal meanings. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 71–82). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ruppenhofer, J., et al. (2006). Framenet II: Extended theory and practice. Retrieved from Framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu.

Sadock, J. M. (1979). Figurative speech and linguistics. In A. Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schank, R. C. (1981). Language and memory. In D. A. Norman (Ed.), Perspectives in cognitive science. Norwood: Ablex.

Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Straňáková-Lopatková, M., Reznckova, V., & Zabokrtský, Z. (internet). Valency Lexicon for Czech: From verbs to nouns. Prague: Center for Computational Linguistics, Charles University. Retrieved from http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz

Talmy, L. (2007). Foreword. In M. González-Márquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

van den Eynde, K., & Mertens, P. (2003). La valence: l’approche pronominale et son application au lexique verbal [Valency: The pronominal approach and its application to the verb lexicon]. In French language studies (Vol. 13, pp. 63–104). Cambridge.

Footnotes

1

Or, more plausibly, with the prototype rule associating the subject with the Agent.

2

And certainly not for a mere desire to simplify research.

3

There are nonlinguistic factors involved in the generation of literal meaning, but they do not depend on the circumstances of the speech act. For instance, see the role of world knowledge in the nonambiguity of constituents of the form with NP, mentioned in Sect. 2.3.1.

4

An example of previously coded cognitive relation is the use of give me a hand, which is an idiom, and learned as such, and not a metaphor. It may have been a metaphor once, but this is of no interest for the study of the understanding process as it functions synchronically.

5

Langacker (1991a: 284–285).

6

Langacker (1991a: 285).

7

Of course, the two sentences are not totally equivalent in functional terms: for instance, one is a statement about Magda, the other about the teacher. But this is not relevant for our purposes here, which have to do with thematic relations.

8

The notion of seme was introduced in Sect. 2.1.1.

9

Or, more exactly, they evoke schemata of action.

10

This verb can also evoke other schemata, as in the blond lady is nice. Here we are concerned with its use with a schema that refers to identity.

11

Gross’s examples, my glosses and numbering.

12

One of the few authors to really attempt to set limits to this kind of elaboration is Norrick (1981), but most of the work is still to be done. Pustejovsky’s (1995) qualia may also be seen as an approach to the question; but Norrick’s book is much more complete, with a wealth of examples.

13

Dowty (1991); Schlesinger (1995); Cançado (2003); Perek (2015); and many more. Levin and Hovav (2005, chapter 2) provide a very useful survey of works on the subject.

14

For criticism of these proposals see Perini (2015, 4.4.4.2 and Appendix 5).

15

“P1” corresponds to the direct object.

Part IIValency

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_5

5. Valency

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

AlternationDiathesisSimpler syntaxSubjectValencyValential subject

5.1 Diatheses

5.1.1 What Is a Diathesis

In this chapter I approach the analysis of verb valency, which is at the root of most of the theoretical and practical positions held in the present book. The topic was already dealt with in a previous book (Perini 2015); here I summarize its main points, and add several new important considerations which resulted from research on the topic in the last 5 years. Before proceeding, I define what is understood by diathesis, a word that will appear frequently in this text.

For our descriptive purposes, there are two kinds of differences among constructions, according to whether they are verb-governed or not. For instance, a negative sentence is a construction, distinct from its corresponding positive. But any sentence can be negated, regardless of the verb that occurs in it; consequently, the negative construction does not subcategorize verbs. And, since valencies are one of the aspects according to which verbs are classified, the occurrence in the negative construction is irrelevant for this aim: all verbs are equal in that respect.

On the other hand, we have the transitive construction, composed of an Agent subject, a verb, and a Patient object, realized for instance as

1. [1]

Jim opened the door.

This construction is only compatible with a subset of the verbs of the language: open, eat, write, cut, and clean occur in this construction, but not be, love, or fall. This means that the transitive construction splits the set of all verbs into two subclasses: those that do and those that do not occur in it. We call this construction a diathesis.

5.1.2 Valency

Each verb is, then, associated with a set of diatheses, and the set of all diatheses a verb occurs in is its valency. The Valency dictionary of Brazilian Portuguese verbs records each verb with its valency, that is, a list of the diatheses in which it occurs.

Having these aims in mind, when building the Dictionary we initially sought a way to represent the diatheses, through the use of syntactic structures coupled at the relevant points with semantic roles. The original idea was to avoid theoretical discussion about units and relations, keeping close to traditional analysis, so that the data presented could be as noncontroversial as possible, and consequently useful for a wide range of linguists of several theoretical positions. This was, and is, our main objective in the Dictionary: to present a database of verbs and the constructions they occur in (that is, their valency), notated in a systematic way that allows comparison between them and the eventual postulation of verb classes on grammatical grounds. But we found it inevitable to discuss certain theoretical questions, notably the delimitation and definition of thematic relations. These points were approached from a descriptive viewpoint, although of course the solutions given to them have theoretical import; the result is the beginnings of a partial theory, applying to thematic relations, and very strictly based on observed data of the language. But no special effort was made to integrate the solutions found into a more general view of language—not for lack of interest in the problem, but because we feel it is too early to attempt overarching generalizations on the matter.

Therefore, the Dictionary does not propose a new theory, nor does it totally endorse any of the current theories; and whenever a new concept must be used it is defined in the most concrete way possible. On the other hand, our work on the project has been profoundly influenced by Jackendoff’s recent ideas,[1] and can be considered an application of some aspects of his Parallel Architecture model. The project makes use of a notation for constructions which, when compared with Jackendoff’s, is simplified, and tailored to the specific needs of valency description. I hope it is easy enough to understand for most readers.

5.2 Simpler Syntax

Ever since the first stages of the survey it became evident that too many theoretical points in the traditional analysis[2] required discussion. For one thing, we found that the syntactic structure of sentences, when considered from the point of view of valency analysis, could be reduced to a very simple form, mainly because many “syntactic” oppositions are in fact oppositions of semantic roles, which find their natural placing in the semantic component of the analysis. For instance, we found no reason to distinguish the “adverbial adjunct” from the “indirect object”: they are syntactically identical, and what difference there is rooted in the semantic roles they can express. Also, we found no reason, apart from semantic roles, to distinguish the direct object in Jim comeu a pizza “Jim ate the pizza” from the predicative complement in Jim é aquele cara alto “Jim is that tall guy”: in our notation, both are analyzed simply as nonsubject NPs.[3] We consequently had to enter into some discussion of the syntactic structure of sentences, arriving at a much simpler syntax than commonly held.

Since this is an important point, I summarize below the argument developed in Perini (2015: 37–52) which supports the use of a simpler syntax than usually found in the literature. I would like to stress that, here as in many other points, my conclusions are valid only as far as the description of valency is concerned.

When describing the syntax of the sentence, one abstract function seems to be necessary, namely, the subject. We cannot simply analyze it as an NP; it must be functionally distinguished in order to allow the description of the following phenomena:

1. (a)

Verbal agreement;

2. (b)

The distribution of pronoun forms like me “me,” as opposed to eu “I”; and

3. (c)

The assignment of semantic roles to the NPs in the sentence.

Verbal agreement (however it is to be analyzed) singles out the subject among other NPs in the sentence, and must therefore make reference to it. Subject vs. object pronouns (respectively, eu “I” vs. me “me,” etc.) also depend on the syntactic function of the NP, providing an additional reason to analyze one of the NPs as the subject.

As for the assignment of semantic roles, a feature of the language is that one of the semantic roles in the sentence may be elaborated by an NP present in the sentence and, redundantly, by the person-number suffix of the verb.

The NP that bears the same semantic role as the person-number suffix is what we call the subject. This is actually the same factor as verbal agreement; but all that concerns us now is that it requires one of the NPs to have a distinctive syntactic function, called subject. In Portuguese, which allows subjectless sentences quite freely, that feature is pretty evident; thus, in eu cheguei “I arrived” the entity bearing the role Theme (the person who arrived) is indicated twice: by the subject, eu “I,” and by the ending of the verb, -ei. In this case, the subject can be omitted, so that just cheguei is a synonym of eu cheguei, without the redundant information.

The subject can be identified by purely formal means; an approximation to the identifying criterion is the following:

Subject Identification Rule

Preliminary condition: the subject is an NP compatible in person and number with the person-number suffix of the verb.

(i) If the sentence contains only one NP that satisfies the condition, this NP is the subject.

(ii) If the sentence contains more than one NP, the subject is the NP that most immediately precedes the verb.

(iii) If the sentence contains a clitic pronoun ( me, te, nos, se
) the subject is the NP immediately preceding the clitic; that is, clitics do not count for the application of sub-rule (ii).
[4]

This rule must be complemented in order to account for some phenomena that appear in complex sentences; for our purposes, the above statement is sufficient. We conclude then that the syntactic structure underlying[5] a sentence like

1. [2]

Pedro comeu a pizza.

- “Pedro ate the pizza.”

is simply

- Subj   V   NP

to which thematic relations will be assigned following rules that are stated later in this book. Note that the object is merely a nonsubject NP; this is enough to direct the action of the assignment mechanism. Now, a sentence like

1. [3]

Pedro é aquele cara alto.

- “Pedro is that tall guy.”

realizes exactly the same syntactic structure as [2]. The difference between [2] and [3] is not in syntax, but in the semantic roles each complement receives: in [2] the subject is Agent, and the “other” NP is the Patient; in [3] both the subject and the other NP are elements whose coreference is asserted.[6] The difference in roles is governed by the valency of the verb: comer “eat” vs. ser “be.” This analysis works without the need for a syntactic distinction between nonsubject NPs, so that complements found in the traditional literature as (direct) objects, predicatives, and appositions appear in the formula simply as NPs.

Another traditional feature that is not included in the syntactic representation is the difference between the several adverbial adjuncts and complements. Traditional nomenclature itself leaves it clear that the real difference has to do with semantic roles: adverbial complements of location, time, cause, manner, and so on.

When we come to prepositional phrases, we find the same picture once more: they are differentiated by the semantic role each one bears, not by their syntactic function. Thus, in

1. [4]

Pedro correu para a cozinha.

- “Pedro ran to the kitchen.”

the prepositional phrase would be, by traditional analysis, an adverbial adjunct of location. But this label does not help explaining how a language user could come to that role starting from the constituent structure. The role is obviously derived from the presence of the preposition para “to,” which is a marker of location (more precisely, Goal). That the preposition is crucial here is shown by the difference in meaning between [4] and

1. [5]

Pedro correu da cozinha.

- “Pedro ran from the kitchen.”

where the role is different (Source), and this must be attributed to the different preposition, not to a difference in abstract syntactic function.

Since our aim is to describe the system whereby a user relates the formal structure to its interpretation, we cannot avoid mentioning the particular preposition that occurs in the syntactic structure, since it is the only indication of the semantic role assigned to that phrase. The notation must then mention the actual preposition present in the sentence, so that [4] represents the syntactic structure

- Subj   V   para NP

with the preposition included. Different roles will appear with different prepositions, like (to take English examples) from, through and around, and these prepositions must appear in the formula as well; [4] and [5], then, represent different formal structures. Using the individual preposition in the statement of constructions has two advantages: first, it provides a very accurate approximation to the relation which is understood by the language user; and, second, it allows us to do away entirely with the “syntactic” function adverbial (or circumstantial) adjunct.

As far as the analysis of valency is concerned, then, syntax is in effect simple. It includes the following markers: one function, subject; and the following categorial symbols: NP; individual prepositions; possibly also adverbial phrase, AdvP (restricted to those without a preposition, like today or here); and adjective phrase, AdjP. We may need some more categories, but to date these have been sufficient for describing the syntactic face of constructions.[7]

Actually, I suspect that even the syntactic opposition between AdvP and AdjP may be eventually reduced to the thematic potential of individual constructions. Thus, the word depressa “quickly” can denote a Manner, attached for instance to an event, as in

1. [6]

A gerente fez as contas depressa.

- “The manager did the accounts quickly.”

Now, the word magro “thin” restricts the reference of a thing, as in

1. [7]

Um rapaz magro te procurou.

- “A thin young man looked for you.”

And the word alto “tall/loud” can both restrict the reference of a thing, as in

1. [8]

Um rapaz alto te procurou.

- “A tall young man looked for you.”

and denote a Manner, as in

1. [9]

Ela nunca fala alto.

- “She never speaks loud.”

Note that in [8] alto is part of the NP um rapaz alto “a tall young man,” and in [9] the same word adds Manner to the event denoted by the sentence, not being part of an NP. If we do not find magro “thin” with the role Manner, it is for semantic reasons: this word has a more limited thematic potential than alto. Something still to be ascertained is whether we can generalize this analysis for all cases of the so-called “adverbial” and “adjective” complements. If we can, then this distinction will be excluded from the syntax, which will become still simpler; the difference will be analyzed in semantic terms only.

Complexity, on the other hand, is not lacking; only, it tends to center on the relations between formal elements and their meaning (symbolic relations), as well as on meaning itself. In order to deal with this dimension of analysis, we had to establish a rigorous distinction between meaning features that are grammatically relevant and features that are clearly perceived by language users, but result from the interaction between linguistic semantics and world knowledge or context. This leads to a closer study of the elaboration process,[8] which relates these two levels of meaning. This important point, explained and discussed in Chap. 3, constitutes a basic point of our analysis and is one of the central themes of the present book.

Valency is defined as the set of diatheses in which each verb can occur. A diathesis is notated as a sequence of categorial symbols, plus the subject, if present; and each eligible constituent is ultimately associated with an ETR, either through elaboration of a semantic role or through assignment by default. This results in formulas like

- VSubj > Agent   V   NP > Patient

which is the diathesis underlying [2]—but not [3], of course, because here the syntax is the same, but the semantic roles are not.

5.3 Valential Subject

Before proceeding, I must explain a detail of the notation: why use “VSubj” (spelled out as valential subject), instead of just “Subj”? The answer is that VSubj stands for three morphosyntactic configurations:

1. (a)

a subject NP and a person-number suffix:

1. [10]

Nós saímos.

- We left.

1. (b)

a person-number suffix, without subject NP:

1. [11]

Saímos.

- (We) left.

1. (c)

a subject NP, without the suffix

1. [12]

Nós saindo, vocês podem ir dormir.

- We leaving, you can go to sleep.

- “(When) we leave, you can go to sleep.”

All three examples contain a VSubj, although one of them does not have a subject NP. The subject-only situation occurs when the verb is in a noninflected form, such as the gerund: this situation only occurs in subordinate clauses.[9] In English the suffix does not occur without the subject, except in anaphoric context; but Portuguese is a pro-drop language, and in certain situations we can have just the verb, as in [11].

The reason for not distinguishing these three configurations is that there is no verb that accepts one of them without accepting all of them—that is, the difference between the three is irrelevant for valency purposes. This does not mean that the presence of the subject NP and/or the suffix is free; but it depends on grammatical or discourse factors, not lexical ones. Therefore, sentences [10], [11] and (the subordinate in) [12] above elaborate the single diathesis.[10]

1. [13]

VSubj > Theme   V

If we did include the distinction in the diathesis, we would have, for all verbs, three versions of every construction, one with the subject NP and the suffix, another with the suffix only, a third one with the subject NP only—and identical in everything else. The difference between these three constructions would, of course, fail to subclassify the verbs, since all verbs would occur in all three. This is the reason for using the abbreviation “VSubj,” covering all three situations.

5.4 Emitter vs. Receptor

I shall now briefly mention a factor that is not usually taken into account, but is nevertheless important for our analysis: the difference in tasks between emitter and receptor.[11] The main point here is that emission requires more thematic information than reception. In a sentence like

1. [14]

O rapaz cuspiu sangue.

- “The young man spat blood.”

the receptor does not really need any thematic information: once the schema SPIT is evoked, he knows that it involves two core variables, the “spitter” and the “spat thing.” The former is always an animate being, therefore it must be o rapaz “the young man,” and sangue “blood” will be the “spat thing” by default; the converse interpretation is filtered out for reasons of cognitive ill-formedness. But the emitter needs thematic information, from the valency of the verb or, if it is the case, from a prototype rule; otherwise, he will not know which participant is to be coded as the subject, and which as the object. If no thematic information whatsoever is available, one may say sangue cuspiu o rapaz “blood spat the young man,” intending the subject to be understood as the “spat thing” and the object as the “spitter.” And in

1. [15]

Eu gosto de ameixa.

- “I like [of] plums.”

for the receptor the assignments are evident, since plums do not “like” people; but the emitter needs the information that the Stimulus here is introduced by a preposition (de). A sequence like

1. [16]

∗ Eu gosto ameixa.[12]

although it is unacceptable, can be understood without difficulty, but is not produced: the requirement of a preposition (de) before the final complement of this verb is crucial for production, not for reception. This shows that the receptor is, to a limited extent, also free from the necessity of knowing syntax (for instance, the requirement of de in [15]), while the emitter must build his sentence according to the syntactic rules of the language.

Linguistic analysis stricto sensu does not take sides on this issue: it must represent all information present in the language user’s mind, to be employed as needed. This probably means that we should base the analysis on the emitter’s point of view, which is necessarily more complex and complete. Therefore, although [16] is understandable (even if not exactly acceptable), the correct way to notate the diathesis is

1. [17]

VSubj > Experiencer   V   de NP > Stimulus

which the receptor can use, but the emitter must use. Even an acceptable sentence like [14] depends on thematic information for its production; here, probably, the role of the subject (Agent) is assigned by means of the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, and the object can receive its role by default. This dual nature of language knowledge helps explain the fact that a receptor can understand utterances with relatively little knowledge of linguistic structure—as happens with learners and nonnative speakers. Such speakers show deficient productive performance, but perform much better at reception; this follows from the fact that production is more demanding on language knowledge than is reception. The receptor can, if needed, make use of the complete information contained in the verb’s valency (and other assignment mechanisms), but the emitter depends on it, which means that the complete information must be included in a description of the language as a whole. The receptor has at her disposal several resources, such as role assignments in the diathesis, assignments by default, and world knowledge (“plums do not like or dislike people”), but the emitter cannot use these to the same extent. The conclusion, then, is that we should keep notating diatheses in their most informative form, including semantic roles; this may be understood as representing the language user’s global competence.

5.5 Alternations

It is usual to associate diatheses in groups of “alternations”; thus, Levin (1993) gives for verbs like break the causative–inchoative alternation, which describes a relationship between the diatheses exemplified in

1. [18]

Janet broke the cup. (causative, here called transitive)

2. [19]

The cup broke. (inchoative, here called ergative)

These associations are not considered here, or in the Valency Dictionary; rather, diatheses are simply listed for each verb. I thus take each construction as an independent unit, following Goldberg’s idea that

it is profitable to look beyond alternations and to consider each surface pattern on its own terms.

[Goldberg 2006: 19]

This is consistent with the descriptive point of view adopted in the present work, since it avoids positing abstract relationships between different surface structures. But it does not entail total rejection of such relationships, which may be grammatically relevant. For instance, there surely are entailments of existence, of the form “if a verb occurs in construction A, then it necessarily (or prototypically) occurs in construction B.” There are also systematic semantic relations between certain pairs of constructions, as for instance the relation between P and CAUSE(P) holding between ergatives and transitives, and these semantic relations are part of the language user’s competence. Such implications may be sufficiently strong to form the base for learning strategies, and as such deserve to be stated in a complete description. But they must be stated in terms of observed occurrences, not as the result of theoretical principles; if so, alternations, properly defined, will eventually be part of a complete description of the grammar of a language.

But in the first stage of the description it is more prudent to avoid postulating alternations, because they depend on descriptive observations which are not yet available. That is, before stating that two constructions are in alternation we must study the symbolic characteristics of each of them, as well as eventual entailments of existence. Only then can we risk more ambitious statements, as for instance that the constructions in [18] and [19] are in an “alternation” relation. For the moment being, our analysis will dispense with the notion of “alternation,” or any other relationship between surface structures. Accordingly, the notation used in this work makes no use of parentheses to indicate optional constituents: instead of AB(C), we simply list two constructions, AB and ABC. Again, this is a descriptive resource, which may be eventually replaced by a more compact notation; but this depends on the explication of the factors that govern the optional occurrence of constituents. The research so far suggests that these factors are numerous and poorly known (cf. Loredo Neta 2014 for a preliminary investigation).

References

1. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

2. Goldberg, A. (2006). Constructions at work. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3. Jackendoff, R. S. (2010). Meaning and the lexicon: The parallel architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

4. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Vol. I: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

5. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar: Vol. II. Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

6. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7. Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

8. Loredo Neta, M. (2014). Objeto direto: condições de omissão no português do Brasil [Direct object: Conditions of omission in Brazilian Portuguese]. Doctoral thesis, UFMG, Belo Horizonte.

9. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

Footnotes

1

As expounded in Culicover and Jackendoff (2005) and Jackendoff (2010).

2

By “traditional” I mean the linguistic work in the recent decades in general, not only the so-called “traditional grammar.”

3

This analysis works for spoken Brazilian Portuguese; it may be different for other languages.

4

The clitic pronouns current in the spoken language are: me “me,” te “you (object),” nos “us,” and se, which is the third person reflexive. Some dialects also have lhe, often used as an alternative form of te.

5

Here “underlies” has no transformational connotation; it is just short for “is the syntactic/symbolic analysis of.”

6

In the Dictionary this is expressed by assigning both the role αRef (alpha-referential). In Chap. 13 an alternative analysis for these cases is proposed.

7

There are some additional elements, such as the negative particle; but these are not bearers of thematic relations, and can be ignored for our purposes.

8

Two terms in a symbolic relation define what is called a sign in Saussure’s terminology. The concepts and terms symbolic and elaboration (elaborate vs. schematic) are taken from Langacker (1987, 1991, 2008). As for the term schematic, it has an unfortunate connection with the word schema, and after all elaborate relations are also present in schemata. Perhaps it might be better to speak of hyperonymic relations, as opposed to elaborate ones, but schematic seems to be in general use, and will be used here as well.

9

Perhaps also in imperatives.

10

Theme is the semantic role of the element undergoing motion. In sentence [12], [13] applies only to the subordinate clause.

11

I thank Lúcia Fulgêncio for insisting on the importance of this factor.

12

Something like ∗I am fond plums.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_6

6. The Limits of Valency

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Cognitive assignmentElaborate thematic relationsLimits of a languageSemantic role assignment

6.1 Traditional Conception of Valency

The usual conception of valency found in the literature links all cases of semantic role assignment to the properties of verbs. It is commonly held that a verb determines the number and form of its complements, and assigns to each of them a semantic role: this is usually taken to be a fair summary of the process, and underlies the elaboration of valency dictionaries. The idea is that, once the valency of a verb is stated, the syntactic form and semantic roles of its complements are accounted for; and that they are determined on the basis of the valential properties of the verb. One usually starts from the idea that valency is “the number of actants a verb is susceptible to govern” (Tesnière 1959, p. 670), and one finds sometimes hints at the existence of further factors, as when Levin and Hovav ask,

To what extent are the semantic determinants of argument realization lexical and to what extent can some of them be shown to be nonlexical?

[Levin and Hovav 2005, p. 3][1]

Yet I am not aware of systematic attempts to determine the several possible factors responsible for the thematic relations associated with each constituent in a sentence.

We might define “valency” in purely verbal terms, and state that all other ETR-bearing elements are extravalential. But this position disregards the basic aim of our analysis which is, I hold, to describe the relations between morphosyntactic sequences and the elements present in a schema or schema complex. Even nonvalential elements, meaning those that do not appear in the diathesis, are part of the cognitive representation. For instance, the sentence

1. [1]

Mary ate a cookie very quickly yesterday in the classroom.

implies the understanding that Mary is the “eater,” and the cookie the “eaten thing”; but also that the reported event took place quickly, in a certain period of time (yesterday) and in a certain location (the classroom). The fact that only some of these pieces of information are core makes no difference at this point, since they are all expressed by syntactic units, and they are all to be integrated into the same cognitive representation: for instance, yesterday locates in time the event of Mary eating the cookies, not any other event.

But yesterday gets its ETR (an elaboration of “time”) by virtue of the thematic properties of the word itself, and has nothing to do with the properties of the verb—only with the much more schematic property that eat denotes an event, and events are locatable in time. Since we are concerned here with the elements that lead to the construction of the cognitive representation, we must take the ETR associated with yesterday into account, just as the ETRs “eater” and “eaten thing”; the fact that the latter are derived from grammatically relevant semantic roles and the former is autonomous is not relevant for the presence of each of these meaning ingredients in the semantics of the sentence, or for the ways they appear in the cognitive representation. Consequently, making explicit the ways all complements get their ETRs is part of our descriptive task.

6.2 Mechanisms of Assignment

In another book (Perini 2015), I develop the assignment system in its entirety, and come to the conclusion that the thematic relation assignment system is much more complex than usually believed, and includes

1. 1.

Cases in which the semantic role is syntactically coded by reference to the valency of the main verb.

2. 2.

Cases in which the constituent depends, semantically, on more than one schema evoked by the main verb. These are semantically complex constructions, where a single clause must be analyzed semantically as a complex of propositions.

3. 3.

Cases in which the semantic role is determined by a preposition, independently of the verb of the sentence.

4. 4.

Cases in which the main verb is light, and semantic roles are syntactically coded, partly, on the basis of a nonverbal complement.

5. 5.

Cases in which semantic role coding results from a linking process, which associates certain thematic relations preferentially with certain syntactic functions.

6. 6.

Cases in which a semantic role is expressed by the internal meaning of the verb, without connection to a complement.

7. 7.

Cases in which a (nonprepositional) phrase has inherent semantic role, independently of the syntactic context.

8. 8.

Cases in which some complements receive their semantic roles—or rather their ETRs—by default, following a principle of giving preference to core ETRs over peripheral ones.

Items 1–5 and 7–8 are given in Perini (2015); item 6 is new to the list. I proceed to comment and exemplify each of them.

1. 1.

Cases in which the semantic role is syntactically coded by reference to the valency of the main verb.

This is the classical situation: idiosyncratic features of the verb determine the syntactic form and the semantic role of each complement. An example is

1. [2]

O vizinho apanhou da mulher.

- “The neighbor was hit by (his) wife.”

Here the subject is the Patient, and the Agent is coded as a prepositional phrase introduced by de.[2] Both codings are idiosyncratic properties of the verb apanhar “be hit,” and must appear in its valency.

1. 2.

Cases in which the constituent depends, semantically, on more than one schema evoked by the main verb. These are semantically complex constructions, where a single clause must be analyzed semantically as a complex of propositions.

This phenomenon was already reported by Jackendoff (1972), in connection with the valency of verbs like buy, sell, and trade. His example is

[...] the verb trade, which takes a direct object, an optional phrase with to, and an obligatory phrase with for.

(2.48) Esau traded his birthright (to Jacob) for a mess of pottage.

This sentence describes two related actions. The first is the change of hands of the birthright from Esau to Jacob. The direct object is Theme, the subject is Source, and the to-object is Goal. Also there is what I will call the secondary action, the changing of hands of the mess of pottage in the other direction. In this action, the for-phrase is Secondary Theme, the subject is Secondary Goal, and the to-phrase is Secondary Source.

[Jackendoff 1972, p. 35; his numbering]

When we come to an entry in the Valency Dictionary, the most convenient way to represent these facts is by distinguishing two parallel, simultaneous and interdependent events, each with its set of thematic relations; some constituents get two thematic relations, one for each event. For the sentence

1. [3]

A Carol vendeu uma moto para o Filipe por $10,000.

- “Carol sold a motorcycle to Filipe for $10,000.”

this is the way the Dictionary notes the underlying diathesis:

Syntax: VSubj

V

NP

para
NP

por
NP

Ev.1
Agent + Source

Theme

Recipient

Ev.2
Recipient

Source

Theme

Carol

sold

motorcycle

Filipe

$10,000

As seen, Event 1 denotes the transfer of the motorcycle from Carol to Filipe, and Event 2 denotes the transfer of the money in the opposite direction. If the sentence was

1. [4]

A Carol comprou uma moto do Filipe por $10,000.

- “Carol bought a motorcycle from Filipe for $10,000.”

the diathesis would be similar, but with two important differences: first, the preposition para “to” is replaced by de “from”; and, second, the distribution of the same semantic roles is different: Recipient and Source exchange places.

Syntax: VSubj

V

NP

de
NP

por
NP

Ev.1
Agent + Recipient

Theme

Source

Ev.2
Source

Recipient

Theme

Carol

bought

motorcycle

Filipe

$10,000

The distinction of the two events is necessary in order to allow all constituents to be assigned their respective semantic roles, according to the way these sentences are understood.

The order of the events as shown in the formula is significant; this becomes evident if we compare

1. [4]

A Carol comprou uma moto do Filipe por $10,000.

- “Carol bought a motorcycle from Filipe for $10,000.”

with

1. [5]

A Carol pagou $10,000 a Filipe por uma moto.

- “Carol paid $6,000 to Filipe for a motorcycle.”

Note that [4] and [5] describe the same exchange of the motorcycle and the money, the former going from Filipe to Carol, the latter going in the opposite direction. And yet these sentences are not synonymous: [4] clearly focuses on the transfer of possession of the motorcycle, while [5] focuses on the transfer of the money. This is recognized by Jackendoff in the above quote, when he distinguishes the secondary Theme from the primary one; here I prefer to speak of a primary event (Ev. 1) and secondary event (Ev. 2), since the distinction affects several roles at the same time.

Diatheses like the ones shown above can be called complex constructions. In spite of their complexity, they still fit into the classical conception of valency: a verb idiosyncratically determines the form and the roles of its complements.

1. 3.

Cases in which the semantic role is determined by a preposition, independently of the verb of the sentence.

This is still a case of valency, but differs in that it does not involve the verb, but rather a preposition. It is has long been known that many prepositions are predicators, that is, they determine the semantic role of their complements; thus, because introduces a complement of Cause, and from introduces a Source. We are still in the realm of valencies here, but with an important difference. The thematic relation denoted by phrases like because of you, after the party or in front of the church does not depend on verb valency: these phrases are added to a sentence whenever they are communicatively adequate, without any change in syntactic form. Their semantic roles are assigned by the preposition, which must then be considered as having a valency—for instance, because takes an NP as complement, and the sequence has the role Cause.

1. 4.

Cases in which the main verb is light, and semantic roles are syntactically coded, partly, on the basis of a nonverbal complement.

In sentences like

1. [6]

O jogador sofreu uma cirurgia.

- “The player underwent surgery.”

it has been observed that the event is denoted not by the verb, as usually happens, but by the object, here uma cirurgia “(a) surgery.” The verb here has a reduced role, and is in charge of defining the semantic role of the subject only. The features of light verbs—or, rather, of verbs in light constructions—can be defined in the following manner:

(a) The verb selects a constituent with the syntactic function of object,[3] whose semantic function has to do with the specification of the denoted event. This semantic function can be represented as a semantic role, called Event Specification (EvSpec).

(b) The symbolic function of the verb is limited to defining the semantic role of the subject.

(c) The semantics of the verb is impoverished in comparison with its full homonym (if any), and with full verbs in general.

[Perini 2015, p. 125]

We have valency here, because, first, only some verbs can appear in light constructions; and, second, the role of the subject depends on the verb: in [6] it is a Patient, but in

1. [7]

O jogador deu um pulo.

- “The player made a jump.”

it is an Agent. The valency of sofrer “undergo” in [6] can be stated by saying that the subject is Patient and the object is Event Specification.

1. 5.

Cases in which semantic role coding results from a linking process, which associates certain thematic relations preferentially with certain syntactic functions.

A sentence like

1. [8]

Laura comeu a pizza.

- “Laura ate the pizza.”

has a subject Agent; but this is not necessarily the consequence of a feature of the diathesis underlying it, because the role of the subject is not an idiosyncratic property of the verb, comer “eat.” Rather, one observes that whenever the verb denotes an action, the subject is the Agent in almost all cases—as seen in Sect. 3.2, about 98% of all constructions, and the same percentage of all verbs of action, follow this rule. Consequently, the role of the subject in [8] is not a valential feature, but the result of the application of a prototype rule, stated as Agent<>VSubj to be read as “the Agent is prototypically coded as the subject.” Exceptions, which are very few, are due to valential factors, and are marked by means of diatheses. As seen, valency is the expression of exceptions—but it should be said that they are very important exceptions in the structure of the language, and are not a marginal phenomenon; only, they split the verb list into many particular cases. Precise quantification is not available at the moment, but an interesting question is, How many, and which, verbs include at least one idiosyncratic feature in their valencies, and how many simply follow prototype rules in all of their occurrences?[4]

Here we find the first serious deviation from the alleged principle that thematic relation assignment is always a valential phenomenon: the subject of [8] is assigned the role Agent independently of the valency of comer “eat,” but according to a general rule that only takes into account one seme of the verb (“action”), plus the syntactic function of the constituent in question.

1. 6.

Cases in which a semantic role is expressed by the internal meaning of the verb, without connection to a complement.

It is usually implicitly understood that the functions assigned to the verb make up a distinct set from the ones assigned to the complements; thus, Patient has to do with a complement (a variable), Action is a feature of the verb (a seme). An example is

1. [9]

Meu avô pintou essa paisagem.

- “My grandfather painted this landscape.”

Besides the Agent (meu avô “my grandfather”) and the Patient (essa paisagem “this landscape”), we have here Action as a semantic function which is connected to the verb.

Some cases seem to escape this prototype: semantic roles that occur sometimes connected to the verb and sometimes to a complement. For instance,

1. [10]

Meu avô ainda vive.

- “My grandfather still lives.”

ADESSE gives Patient as the role of the subject in [10]; but I find it more intuitively adequate to say that [10] asserts a state attributed to my grandfather. A comparison with its synonym

1. [11]

Meu avô ainda está vivo.

- “My grandfather is still alive.”

suggests the possibility of analyzing [10] as an expression of Quality. As a first approximation, it may be

1. [12]

Meu avô     ainda    vive.

My grandfather   still    lives.

Qualified thing        Quality

with Quality included in the meaning of the verb. That is, we have here, in a way, the converse of what happens with light verbs, where the event is denoted by a complement: in [10] the verb is in charge of expressing one of the semantic roles (Quality) which in other sentences, like [11], is regularly assigned to a complement. The novelty here is the possibility that the verb convey a semantic role; this is one way to account for the thematic synonymy between [10] and [11].[5]

This phenomenon does not fit well into the usual conception of valency, yet it must be taken into account, as one of the mechanisms responsible for thematic relations associated with the constituents of a sentence.

1. 7.

Cases in which a (nonprepositional) phrase has inherent semantic role, independently of the syntactic context.

Some words, usually analyzed as adverbs, have semantic roles of their own, which do not depend on any assignment mechanism. Examples are cuidadosamente “carefully,” which can only bear the role Manner, and ontem “yesterday,” which is always Time. These units do not depend on the verb for their semantic role, being thematically transparent as part of their internal meaning. We have here another case where the presence of a thematic relation does not result from the valency of the head of the construction.

And, finally, we come to

1. 8.

Cases in which some complements receive their ETRs by direct reference to the evoked schema, following a principle of giving preference to core ETRs over peripheral ones.

a process I call assignment by default. This process also functions entirely without valency, and calls for some development and argumentation. One example was presented in Chap. 1:

1. [13]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

Assignment by default was first proposed in Perini (2015). Subsequent research on the topic has suggested that it may have a much wider application than realized at first. In Chaps. 7 to 13 I explore the possible use of assignment by default to account for observed ETRs, present a series of other sentences where I argue that assignment by default is the better solution in order to account for perceived ETRs, and come to the conclusion that it may perhaps be the main assignment mechanism at work in the language: according to this hypothesis, it applies whenever some limiting factor like the ones given above as items 1–7 does not apply.

6.3 Limits of a Language

All of the mechanisms listed above as 1–8 must eventually be researched as to the extent of their application. In some cases this seems comparatively simple—for instance, lexical items that have inherent thematic relations can be listed, and prepositions must be individually studied in order to describe the thematic potential of each. But factor 8—assignment by default—involves some new aspects that need looking into, and will be one of the main topics of the coming chapters. I will inquire about the extent of the application of assignment by default, and also about the ways ETRs are retrieved from schemata and attached to sentence complements.[6] This will require the examination of several cases where the traditional analysis of semantic roles must be questioned and reformulated. It is not to be expected that this discussion always result in definite answers, but I hope to at least point to promising directions for future research.

One thing we are looking for, in the long run, is the limits of valency—how far do we have to attribute the association between complements and thematic relations to valential, and other linguistic, factors, and how far are they due only to cognitive conditions, and subject only to cognitive well-formedness constraints. And this, once answered, will give us some indication about the limits of the language (say, English, or Portuguese), by stipulating, among a set of observed phenomena, which are due to the structure of the language and which are not. To give an example, we saw that the subject in

- [2] O vizinho apanhou da mulher.

- “The neighbor was hit by (his) wife.”

is the Patient because of a language-specific marking on the verb, apanhar, which, quite exceptionally for a verb of action, has a Patient subject. But the object of

- [13] The Incas worshipped the sun.

is the “worshipped thing” because it is the complement that lacks a semantic role, and must be filled in by default—which depends not on language structure, but on the requirement that no complements be left umarked, and the only available marking is one of the variables in the schema WORSHIP, namely the “worshipped thing.” Only in the first case, I claim, is the assignment to be attributed to a linguistic factor.

References

1. Jackendoff, R. S. (1972). Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.

2. Levin, B., & Hovav, M. R. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

4. Tesnière, L. (1959). Eléments de syntaxe structurale [Elements of structural syntax]. Paris: Klincksieck.

Footnotes

1

In practice, “argument realization” can be understood as an alternative designation for “semantic role coding.”

2

Da is the agglutination of de plus the definite article a.

3

I.e., a nonsubject NP.

4

Prototype rules are studied in more detail in Chap. 8.

5

Thematic synonymy obtains between sentences with the same constituents in the same semantic roles. Of course, this does not mean full synonymy, but is sufficient for our purposes.

6

Or rather, to their corresponding schemata.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_7

7. Assignment by Default

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Assignment by defaultCognitive filtersSchema variablesUnderstood relations

7.1 Assigning an ETR by Default

We have examined cases where constituents receive their thematic relations by one of several devices, out of a pretty heterogeneous set. As seen, the assignment of thematic relations to individual complements is a more complex mechanism than usually shown in the literature. In this chapter I intend to examine some aspects of assignment by default, including problems that arise from some specific situations. In a few cases I have a solution to suggest, but others are still to be researched.

Let us take again the case of

1. [1]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

The Incas is the Agent; but the semantic role of the sun is not clear. ADESSE gives Stimulus, but this seems inadequate, if we define the Stimulus as “the causator of a mental state” (Perini 2015). In the Incas believed in the Sun-god we do have a Stimulus, and an Experiencer too, but this does not apply to worship. Worship refers primarily to the performing of rites, and belief is present only by inference.[1]

How can we analyze this sentence so as to come to the correct ETRs that we perceive upon hearing it? Suppose we start with a purely syntactic construction, namely

1. [2]

VSubj   V   NP

The Agent is added by prototype rule to the subject, and need not appear in the formula. We complete the missing semantic role by default in the following way: the verb worship evokes the schema WORSHIP, which contains two core variables, the “worshipper” and the “worshipped thing.” The “worshipper” is identified as an elaboration of the Agent, by following the process sketched in Chap. 2, and the remaining ETR will be associated with the object, because of a condition that codes core ETRs preferentially, seen in Sect. 7.4.[2]

This process can account for many cases traditionally analyzed as Patient, as is the case with the object of [1]; and a possibility that comes to mind is that it might account for all cases of Patient. This would be convenient if true, because it is simpler and saves a semantic role (Patient) with all its occurrences in individual diatheses. But it will be seen that it is not feasible, and we need semantic roles in several cases; in particular, we need a Patient, defined as the “entity that undergoes a change of state” (this is detailed in Chap. 10).

The nuclear idea behind assignment by default is simple enough and, I hope, intuitive. It starts from the fact that every sentence evokes a set of schemata, and that one of these schemata may be considered the main peg on which the CR hangs. Thus, when one hears

1. [3]

Jimmy painted the wall.

one evokes the main schema PAINT, which is related to the verb form painted; this schema includes a set of variables. One cannot conceive of a painting event without necessarily including the concepts of a “painter” and a “painted entity” (plus several others, related for instance to time, location, and manner).

Sentence [3] has two NPs, and the NP is a form class that is not transparently marked for its thematic relation: an NP can express an Agent, a Patient and other relations, unlike yesterday, which is always Time, and here, always Location. On the other hand, many relations, such as Time, Location and Manner are never[3] coded as NPs. The language user is then faced with a problem to solve: the variables of the schema PAINT are to be integrated into a CR; which constituents of the sentence—each of which evokes, in its turn, a schema—correspond to which variables of the main schema? Answering this question is an important part of the understanding of the sentence.

The problem is solved through the connection of each variable with some constituent of the sentence—in other words, the assignment of each ETR to its corresponding constituent. In [3] we have two NPs, and two ETRs, one of which can be recognized as an elaboration of an Agent, the other of a Patient; cognitively, there is no way to decide which is which. But if we have the solution for one of them, we will automatically have the solution for the other, since we have two eligible constituents and two ETRs to assign; and, as we know, the language provides a prototype rule that assigns the role Agent (and consequently the ETR “painter”) to one of the terms of the sentence, namely, the subject:

- [3] Jimmy painted the wall

Agent

The problem is then solved, without the need for further grammatical rules: the wall (or rather the corresponding schema) is the “painted entity.” The first assignment is basically grammatical, and has to do with the rules of the English language; but the second is language-independent, at least in the measure that this schema is universal.[4] It is motivated by the need to complete the CR under construction, and does not result from the application of any rule of English. The language interferes only to the extent of limiting the thematic potential of NPs, so that the wall cannot be understood as a Location (as could under the wall).

7.2 Constraints on Assignment by Default

The result of the assignment mechanism is subject to a series of quality controls, ultimately based on the requirement that the generated cognitive representation must make sense in terms of our knowledge of the world. Thus, with a hammer in

1. [4]

They knocked down the wall with a hammer.

may be assigned the ETR “instrument” by force of a prototype rule connected to the preposition with. But in

1. [5]

∗Heavy clouds appeared in the sky with a hammer.

the result is unacceptable because, first, the verb (appear) does not have a constituent of the form with NP in any of its diatheses; and, second, if we take the phrase in any of its prototypical ETRs (“instrument,” “company,” “manner”), the resulting semantic structure will be filtered out as ill-formed.[5] This factor is also responsible for understanding with my friends as Company, with my new car as Instrument, in Paris as Location, in April 2009 as Time, and in two stages as something else. This is a cognitive filter which, although it cannot be called linguistic stricto sensu, is certainly one of the factors that determine acceptability, and must be considered in the analysis of data. And, as we know, it takes into account the semantics of the preposition and also of the following NP.

Semantic role or ETR assignment is conditioned by the thematic potential of the complement. Suppose we come to the point in the assignment process where the sentence

1. [6]

The public applauded the show in the park yesterday.

has already had its subject assigned a role (Agent). We must now connect the ETR “applauded thing” to one of the remaining constituents. One factor here is that in the park and yesterday are not eligible, because they do not have the potential to refer to things, which seems to be, with few exceptions, a privilege of NPs (cf. Liberato 1997). Prepositional phrases can be referential only when so stipulated in the verb’s diathesis, as in gosto dessa cerveja “I like this beer,” where dessa cerveja (=de + essa cerveja) refers to a thing. This results from the fact that gostar “like” has a diathesis where the “liked thing” (i.e., the Stimulus) is a prepositional phrase with de. This is an additional reason to choose the show as the “applauded thing.”

7.3 Constructional Meaning

A consequence of this analysis deserves mention. Goldberg (1995) puts some emphasis on meaning associated with the construction (constructional meaning); for instance,

The central sense of the ditransitive construction can be argued to be the sense involving successful transfer of an object to a recipient, with the referent of the subject agentively causing this transfer.

[Goldberg 1995, p. 33]

The approach argued for here reduces the role of constructional meaning, without eliminating it. To take a slightly simpler (transitive) structure, in

1. [7]

The boy broke the window.

we would originally have the subject specified as Agent and the object as Patient; in Goldberg’s terms, we might say that this construction involves successful change of state of an object by effect of an action performed by the Agent. In our current terms, most of this is transferred to the schema BREAK, which, once evoked by the verb form broke, takes up the task of bringing to mind the change of state and the presence of a “broken thing” (Patient) and a “breaker” (Agent). Note that this applies to the schema, independently of the construction it is associated with: the same meaning elements appear in the very different passive construction, and in the ergative (the window broke) part of the same meaning relations are present. The association of the Agent with the subject is the effect of a prototype rule, and the association of the Patient with the object comes by diathesis.[6] So far, we may say that the contribution of the construction to the semantics of the sentence is the identification of the syntactic occupants of the ETRs “breaker” (subject) and “broken thing” (object).

Now, in a case like

1. [8]

I thought of you.

the semantic role of the prepositional phrase (Stimulus) must be specified in the diathesis, since this phrase is not transparent (the preposition of is too polysemic, and marks the Stimulus only in a few cases), and there is no rule stipulating that of NP is prototypically the Stimulus.[7] Therefore, we need a diathesis like

1. [9]

VSubj>Experiencer   V   of NP>Stimulus

and here we can say that that the construction “means” the occurrence of an event (Stimulus) in the mind of an Experiencer. But the schema THINK says just that, and, again, the contribution of the construction is to specify which constituent is the Experiencer, and which is the Stimulus—that is, it contributes the link semantics-syntax, and makes it possible for the system to evoke the right cognitive representation.

Now take the sentences

1. [10]

She lies about her age.

1. [11]

She lies besides the dog.

The receptor must, as part of his task of interpreting these sentences, identify the right schema evoked by the verb form lies: in [10] the schema is SAY.UNTRUE.-THINGS, and in [11] it is POSITION.ONESELF.HORIZONTALLY. In order to explain the choice we may use schematic filters of the kind introduced in Sect. 7.5. Thus, in [10] the transparent phrase about her age (>Content of message) would not be adequate for integration into a sentence with lies meaning ‘positions herself horizontally’, since the corresponding schema has no room for a Content variable. Correspondingly, lies in [10] has only the reading ‘says untrue things’. As for [11], it is in fact ambiguous, because she might have told lies while sitting with her dog on a couch, but this reading is little to be expected, and would require contextual preparation. The easiest reading is the localistic one, which harmonizes more smoothly with the role of the preposition besides.

What is important here is that all these details can derive pretty normally from thematic relations, plus the conditioning action of several features of the context, both independently needed factors. I see no need to add a constructional meaning in order to explain the semantic possibilities of these sentences. At least part of what is sometimes understood as constructional meaning may be reduced to the fact that the sentence is the evoker of a cognitive representation—a complex schematic structure, whose main features are established by the schema evoked by the verb.

Now, in Goldberg’s examples,[8]

1. [12]

Mary showed her mother the photograph.

1. [13]

Mary showed the photograph to her mother.

the fact that these sentences denote an Agent’s action of showing a Patient (or “shown thing”) to a Recipient is adequately expressed by the ETRs that connect each phrase with the verb. And this comes directly from the schema the verb evokes, namely, SHOW.[9]

There are also cases of irreduceable constructional meaning; Goldberg mentions another feature of these sentences:

[12] implies that her mother actually saw the photograph, whereas for many speakers, no such implication is given in [13].

[Goldberg 1995, p. 33; my numbering]

I do not see how to reduce this to semantic roles, and Goldberg’s interpretation of this fact may be the best: we must attribute it in some way to the construction proper. This has to do apparently with a property of the construction as a whole; whether or not this property can be analyzed, generalized, or attributed to particular subparts of the construction remains to be seen.

A clear case of constructional meaning in morphology is the difference between prison/prisoner and jail/jailer: in the first case, the derivative in -er means the person in prison, in the second it means the keeper of the prison. The difference is due neither to the stems, which are synonymous (jail, prison), nor to the suffix, so that we have to attribute it to the meaning of the construction as a whole.[10]

7.4 Possible Problems

The analysis sketched in the previous sections leaves several problems still to be discussed. Most of them, I think, are of relatively ready solution; some others may be more difficult. I proceed to examine the ones that have arisen so far.

7.4.1 More Than One Vacant Slot

Assignment by default works univocally with sentences containing exactly one vacant constituent: this mechanism is not structurally constrained, and cannot choose between two or more constituents. All cases so far examined fall under this condition. Cases of two vacant constituents are predicted to be ambiguous: that is, whenever we have a sentence with three constituents, only one of which receives its role by lexicogrammatical means (prototype rule or valency marking), it is to be expected that any combination of ETRs with any of the remaining constituents will be acceptable.[11]

This mainly applies to NPs, since adverbial and prepositional phrases tend to be transparent, and get their roles by other means. But even when more than one NP is vacant, there are other factors that may eliminate ambiguity, such as thematic filters and general schematic conditions. Take the structure

- VSubj   V   NP   NP

where the subject is, say, the Agent, and no diathesis specifies the role of any of the two remaining constituents. The latter (both NPs) will have to receive their role by default; if the schema has only one remaining core variable, it will be assigned indifferently to the first or the second NP, but the result will be unacceptable because one NP will lack a role, which we know is not allowed. In order to get an acceptable result we need a schema with three core variables,[12] the Agent and two additional ones, to be distributed at random to the two NPs—in this case any assignment must yield acceptable results, and the sentence should be ambiguous. In fact, however, other factors intervene, and ambiguity rarely appears.

One possible case where this situation arises is

1. [14]

Anita considera Samuel o melhor jogador do time.

- “Anita considers Samuel the best player in the team.”

The subject is the Agent.[13] Now we may have a partially filled-in structure,

1. [15]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP   NP

with two vacant NPs, which will have to be both filled in by default. The verb, considerar “consider,” evokes the schema CONSIDER, which contains an “opiner,” and also a “qualified thing” and a “quality.”[14] NPs are thematically opaque; if we allow assignment by default, we may have the first unassigned NP as the “qualified thing” and the second as the “quality,” or vice versa. But the thematic potential filter will rule out the second solution, because Samuel cannot be understood as a quality; since the best player in the team can, assignment will work to generate

1. [16]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP>“qualified thing”   NP>“quality”

As seen, for this sentence the system accounts for the facts without problems. It remains to be checked whether all eventual cases of two unattached NPs can be handled in this manner.

Another possible solution for the case of [14] is to assign one of the NPs a role by diathesis, thus:

1. [17]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP   NP>Quality

The second nonsubject NP is always the Quality; sentence

1. [18]

?? Anita considera o melhor jogador do time Samuel.

- “Anita considers the best player in the team Samuel.”

is unacceptable because Samuel has no qualificative potential.[15] It may be observed that [17] is a more “constructional” solution than [15], since it attributes the role of the second NP to a feature of the construction.

The syntactic definition of the second vacant complement as an NP is not necessary; all the construction stipulates is that it be capable of expressing “quality,” as seen in

1. [19]

Anita considera Samuel charmoso.

- “Anita finds Samuel charming.”

where the “quality” is conveyed by an adjective phrase. This means that our diathesis, if it is to follow the model of [17], is

1. [20]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP   X>Quality

where “X” is a syntactically free constituent, thematically constrained to the ETR “quality.”

Another possible analysis is assignment by default for both constituents, that is,

1. [21]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP   X

I currently favor [20], with Quality assigned by diathesis, because it is better at explaining the fact that the qualificative phrase cannot appear in the first position (barring the effect of intonational contour, still to be studied), which appears clearly in

1. [22]

Anita considera o melhor jogador do time um idiota.

- “Anita considers the best player in the team an idiot.”

1. [23]

Anita considera um idiota o melhor jogador do time.

- “Anita considers an idiot the best player in the team.”

In these cases (in Portuguese and in English too, I think) the Quality is always assigned to the last constituent; that is, it is this constituent that expresses Anita’s judgment: in [22] o melhor jogador do time “the best player in the team” is referential, and um idiota “an idiot” is qualificative, and in [23] the opposite occurs. As things stand, I see no way to explain this in terms of schemata, and accordingly prefer to analyze these sentences as is in [20]. In this solution, it is interesting to note that the first nonsubject NP will be assigned an ETR by default, which is what happens in cases traditionally analyzed as containing a Patient; here we have an object (the NP immediately following the verb) being treated in a way that parallels sentences like the Incas worshipped the sun, and Jim touched the screen. There may be a generalization here, but I will not pursue the question, leaving it for future investigation.

This is how the analysis stands, as far as Portuguese is concerned. But English has another construction, which does not exist in Portuguese,[16] namely, ditransitive sentences like

1. [24]

Jim gave Martha a new bicycle.

Here we have two presumably vacant NPs, which could, in principle, be filled in by default. Yet this analysis will not work adequately, because as we know the Recipient must appear before the Theme. This argues for a grammatical solution, with at least one of these nonsubject NPs having a semantic role already present in the diathesis. For this English construction I see no other possible solution. Whether an analogous solution will work for Portuguese sentences like [22] and [23] will have to wait for further research.

7.4.2 Three Core ETRs

We have seen a case where a schema has three core ETRs: CONSIDER, with an Agent (eventually elaborated as the “opiner”), “qualified thing,” and “quality.” Lima et al.’s (ms) survey of Portuguese verbs, reported in Sect. 10.2.3, showed that this situation, while comparatively rare, occurs with some verbs. For instance, for assustar “frighten,” we get

- assustar
‘frighten’

- patient 93.7%

- agent 65.6%

- cause 25%

- manner 9.4%

- time 6.2%

- instrument 6.2%

As seen, in addition to the two main variables, “patient”[17] and “agent,” we have the “cause,” which has a specially high occurrence. Suppose it is also core, and suppose we want to code it. But the “cause” is never coded as an NP, which makes it impossible for the ambiguous situation to arise: the constituent that codes the Cause is normally a prepositional phrase with a specialized preposition, typically por causa de “because (of).” This suggests that such a situation (three core constituents, two of which to be filled in by default) is rare, perhaps nonexistent, and can be disregarded for our purposes; we may presume that the case of assustar “frighten,” which never occurs with three NPs, but rather with two NPs and a prepositional phrase, is typical.

That is, even with verbs like assustar “frighten” only one constituent is left after the assignment mechanisms have applied, which allows the assignment by default mechanism to operate without problem.

7.5 Transparency, Prototypes, and Schematic Filters

Cases of thematic transparency are very clear when categorical: for instance, the preposition because (of) unambiguously denotes the Cause, which is invariably the role of a phrase introduced by this preposition. The role in such cases can be easily detected even out of context, and no special prototype rule is needed: the definition of the preposition’s meaning is enough to account for the facts. But in some cases all we have is a particularly frequent role; for instance, on most often denotes a Location (on the street), but it can denote other roles, such as the Content in Darwin wrote on earthworms, Instrument as in she lives on a very small salary, and so on. I tend to believe that even in cases like on we may do the job by using independently motivated cognitive filtering devices.

For some prepositions a particular role may have to be specified in a diathesis of certain verbs—this is the case with

1. [25]

I think of you all the time.

Of is only exceptionally a mark of Content. This may be captured by including the information in one of the diatheses of the verb think, which is the determining factor accounting for this particular role; that is, the relevant diathesis of think will include the information that

- [...] of NP>Content

As seen, the role of the diathesis is to mark an exception, that is, a semantic role which is not normally conveyed by a complement of this form (the prototypical marker of Content is about). Yet the existence of a diathesis does not preclude other interpretations, based on other factors, although there seems to be some kind of preference for the diathetic role to arise. An English example may be

1. [26]

Roger was counting on the boat.

where he might be “counting” (1, 2, 3...) while on the boat, or setting his hopes on the boat; but the second reading is more immediate, either because it is the diathetic reading, or because the element on which one sets one’s hopes is a core variable in the schema.[18]

In these cases we have some sort of partial transparency: a prototype rule establishes a prototypical role for the preposition (em>Location), but this can be countered by a diathesis (em>Content, with pensar “think”). This situation occurs with several prepositions; we are in great need of descriptive studies to list all possible thematic relations each preposition can express.[19]

In many cases, of course, schematic filtering takes care of incorrect readings, as in

1. [27]

I count on you.

where the locative meaning is too unlikely to be taken into consideration. Or, to take another example, suppose the highly polysemous preposition in occurs in the phrase in two steps as in

1. [28]

The problem had to be approached in two steps.

Here we cannot attribute the thematic relation of the prepositional phrase to the verb, since this phrase occurs with the same meaning with a wide variety of verbs. A plausible explanation is that the most frequent reading “location” is disregarded because it would yield an ill-formed semantic structure, since two steps cannot be understood as a location. Also, although the prototypical role of on is locative, it will not arise if the sentence is

1. [29]

The mayor spoke on the new tunnel.

because one does not say on the tunnel in a locative sense, but rather in the tunnel. Therefore, on in this sentence is understood as marking the Content of the mayor’s speech. And in

1. [30]

The sheriff arrived on the crime scene.

on the crime scene will have to be “goal,” because “content” is incompatible with arrive, which is not a verb of saying. Another example is she lives on a very small salary as compared with she lives on the second floor, or he met all the directors as against he met all the requirements, where the effect of the NP meaning is evident in the selection of the thematic relation of the complement. Schematic filtering is also subject to the thematic potential established by the language: information such as “nonsubject NPs cannot be Agent,” and “the preposition from cannot convey Location” also condition thematic relation assignment. The final meaning—which, let me insist, is what we really have as data—is a product of this complex of factors.

What we have to conclude from all these examples is that the assignment of thematic relations (roles or ETRs) is not a purely grammatical phenomenon, but results from a set of factors, some grammatical (e.g., syntactic function), some lexical (thematic potential of prepositions), and some cognitive in a broad sense, having in common only their final aim of giving a contribution towards the construction of a well-formed cognitive representation. An important part of the linguist’s task is to make the distinction between relations which are the result of lexical or grammatical factors and relations resulting from general cognitive factors (i.e., world knowledge).

7.6 How the Assignment System Works

Let us summarize what we saw so far about the assignment system, and give some examples of its functioning.

7.6.1 By Default

The hypothesis we are considering binds grammatical analysis very closely to cognitive structures, namely, to schemata and schema complexes; among other things, it entails that many acceptable structures include a thematically empty slot, which is filled in without the intermediation of grammatical relations. For instance, we saw that

1. [31]

The Incas worshipped the sun.

after the prototype rule that assigns Agent to the subject has applied, is to be analyzed as an actualization of

1. [32]

VSubj > Agent   V   NP

with a role-less object, to be filled in by reference to the schema.

This brings into the analysis a huge, perhaps unlimited, number of relations, corresponding to part of the taxonomy of relations we have in our mental model of the world. But, first, the use of such relations is not uncontrolled, since direct connections (by default) only occur for relations that have no specific grammatical marking in the language: linguistic rules and lexical markings have, so to speak, priority when applying to a complement.[20] And, second, it does not entail increasing the complexity of the analysis beyond what is already necessary, since this vast taxonomy is already present in our cognition, and we are using it in order to relate it to linguistic structures. In other words, we are not creating new machinery, nor adding to the existing one; we merely make use of structures that are independently necessary for describing world knowledge.

When a person understands an utterance, what he is doing is relate the sensorially perceived sequence to the knowledge system in his memory. The aim of the process is to build a cognitive representation which is made up of cognitive entities and relations. It does not much matter which resources are brought into play: what matters is the result, and our mind is not choosy about the means to achieve it. The construction statement given in [32] represents a grammatical structure which, along with the lexical items that fill each of the slots, provides a minimum of information allowing the receiver to start building the cognitive representation. As far as cognitive representation building is concerned, there is no need to specify the semantic role of the object of the sentence; from the available information the receiver can follow these steps:

- Step 1

The verb is worshipped, which evokes the schema WORSHIP;

- Step 2
the schema WORSHIP includes two core variables, the “worshipper” and the “worshipped entity”;

- Step 3
the “worshipper” can be recognized as an elaboration of the Agent;

- Step 4
the subject is the Agent (as shown in the construction statement), and therefore the “worshipper”;

- Step 5
therefore, the Incas is the “worshipper”;

- Step 6
there is one core variable left, and one constituent still unattached; and since core variables must be attached if possible,[21] the sun is the “worshipped entity.”

This procedure allows the receiver to build the needed information starting from a minimal signal. It is not claimed that language users necessarily follow this most economical procedure; let us only admit that using these steps makes it possible to reach a simpler syntax and semantics—in short, a simpler grammar. The procedure depends on two orders of factors: information given by the lexicon and grammatical structure, plus world knowledge such as is necessarily present in the language user’s memory.

The structure given in [32] is limited to what the language distinguishes by grammatical means—what is “visible” to the grammar, to use Jackendoff’s words quoted in Sect. 3.2. The claim here is that the fact that the object designates the “worshipped entity” is not represented in the construction, but can be derived by following general principles, such as “core variables must be bound if at all possible,” plus world knowledge present in the schema, such as “worshipping involves a ‘worshipped entity.’”

We saw that assignment by default is only one of the mechanisms involved in the binding of schema variables. Contrary perhaps to popular belief, there are several such mechanisms, which have in common only the end product, so that all eligible complements are bound by schemata bearing particular ETRs; these mechanisms were described in Sect. 6.2 above. Here I shall be concerned in particular with assignment by default, number 8 in the list, and the one that requires a more lengthy and careful argumentation.

The assignment system has a definite aim, and the means to attain this aim do not much matter: the system approaches its task in an opportunistic manner, making use of whatever resources happen to be at hand. To my knowledge, no one has yet attempted to explicate this complex assignment mechanism in its entirety. But the literature contains some definite suggestions; for instance, the distinction between semantic roles and ETRs is clearly stated in the following passage:

Phonological features distill from the wide range of phonetic detail those aspects of sounds which are phonologically relevant. Semantic roles distill from the perhaps even wider range of semantic detail those facets of meaning which are grammatically relevant. The choice of features or roles is justified to the extent that they define equivalence classes which recur in rules of phonology and morphosyntax.

[Levin and Hovav 2005, p. 36]

All essential features of the distinction are mentioned in this paragraph, including the condition that for a set (an “equivalence class”) of ETRs to qualify as a semantic role it must have a unified and coherent grammatical behavior. All this follows quite naturally from phonological theory, actually, but its application to grammar is more difficult mainly because of the much wider range of the phenomena in question: including, in fact, a sizable part of our world knowledge. What is lacking is the decision to admit that, first, the system is remarkably heterogeneous; and, second, that direct connection with the evoked schemata is possible, and very frequent in practice.

Consequently, some fundamental assumptions cited by Croft (1991, p. 156) as implicit in semantic role analysis are to be rejected, namely,

(i) the semantic roles are taken to be semantically unanalyzable, (ii) the semantic roles are defined independently of the meaning of the verb, and (iii) the set of semantic roles is small in size.

[apud Levin and Hovav 2005, p. 35][22]

There are good reasons to call these assertions into question: semantic roles are analyzable as bunches of ETRs; and they are not defined independently of the meaning of the verb, but are an essential part of that meaning, if we consider that the meaning of a verb consists of the schema it evokes. As for their set being small in size, this may apply to semantic roles (certainly not to ETRs), but this is to be verified empirically, not taken as an assumption.

7.6.2 Blocking Action of Diatheses

Diatheses, which make up verb valencies, have a blocking action on other assignment mechanisms. This is an automatic effect of the fact that diatheses are marks of exceptions, that is, idiosyncratic properties of individual verbs. Thus, for instance, in order to put prototype rules to work, we must assume that their action is blocked by the existence of a diathesis that creates an incompatibility. An example may be sentences like

1. [33]

O vizinho apanhou da mulher.

- “The neighbor was hit by (his) wife.”

where, as we saw, the subject is the Patient, and the Agent is a prepositional phrase with de. This is quite exceptional, and must be marked in a diathesis, namely

- VSubj>Patient   V   de NP>Agent

The diathesis blocks the action of two prototype rules: the rule stipulating that the Agent is to be the subject, and the rule that states that the preposition de may mark the Possessor, as in

1. [34]

Esse carro branco é da Glorinha.

- “This white car is Glorinha’s [that is, it belongs to Glorinha].”

In [33], since the verb is apanhar “take a beating,” neither rule applies, and the exceptional thematic relations appear instead.

7.6.3 Unsupported Schematic Filter

Even the complex set of mechanisms proposed above may not exhaust the list of the resources available to the language user in order to assign thematic relations to the different complements of a sentence. Take for instance

1. [35]

The cat drank the milk.

This sentence can be processed by using the standard mechanisms: the subject gets its role through the action of the Agent<>VSubj prototype rule, and the object may get its ETR by default. But there is still another, purely pragmatic, resource, based on the knowledge that the milk could not possibly have drunk the cat. It works for this example, although not for all sentences with this structure; and it is a nonlinguistic mechanism. This resource may be marginal in modern English and Portuguese; but in the older written Portuguese language it was occasionally the only way to disambiguate some sentences. An example comes from Varnhagen (1854):

1. [36]

Essa exposição ou relatório publicou Cândido Mendes de Almeida.

This exposition or report published Cândido Mendes de Almeida.

- “Cândido Mendes de Almeida published this exposition or report.”

We only know that the Agent is Almeida because the opposite would yield an anomalous cognitive representation. Here we have a schematic filter, working without any support from the syntax.

7.6.4 Schematic Filling-In

A special kind of nonvalential variable binding occurs in sentences where a complement is omitted, as in

1. [37]

As crianças já comeram.

- “The children have already eaten.”

Here we have an Agent, normally represented as the subject; and a Patient, which is understood schematically, but not freely, since it must be understood as some kind of food, not as books, or computer programs. This is evidently derived from the fact that the corresponding variable in the schema—in this case, the “eaten thing,” present in the schema EAT—is not bound by another schema (say, PIZZA); it is left to be understood schematically. In [37], then, one does understand a Patient, but not a particular one. This does not require any additional grammatical or cognitive device; once the schema EAT is evoked, the corresponding variables are also evoked; if one of them is not filled in, it is to be understood just as it stands in the schema itself. This kind of schematic assignment occurs in almost all sentences, if we also take into account peripheral variables. In [37] not only is the Patient to be understood schematically, but also the Time, the Manner and the Location.

The phenomenon is then basically very simple. But it can involve grammatical factors, in cases where the linguistic expression incorporates an explicit marking of the schematic nature of an argument. An example is the occurrence of a schematic variable assigned to the subject, as in

1. [38]

Derrubaram a minha cerca.

- “(Someone) knocked down my fence.”

Here it is the Agent that is to be understood as (relatively) schematic, and this is signaled by the subjectless third person plural form of the verb. Furthermore, in [38] one must understand the Agent as being a human being—it could not be the wind, for instance; that is, the variable is understood at a less schematic level than the missing object in [37]. This phenomenon is studied in Moreira (2005), who describes the whole panoply of grammatical resources used in the language to determine the Agent.

In some cases the omitted object is understood in a more elaborate way; this happens in

1. [39]

O marido dela bebe.

- “Her husband drinks.”

Here the normal way to understand the Patient is “alcoholic beverage,” not water or Pepsi-Cola. This happens with a restricted set of verbs, such as beber “drink” (but not comer “eat”); and these sentences can also be regularly understood with a more schematic reference, as shown by Loredo Neta (2014) with sentences like

1. [40]

Muitos animais vêm aqui para beber.

- “Many animals come here to drink.”

where the Patient is understood schematically.

The possibility of leaving a core variable without expression, by omitting an object, seems to be in part a valential property of the verb, and in part the result of constraints based on the semantic role of the complement. Thus, comer “eat” can have an omitted object, but devorar “devour” cannot.

7.7 Summary

Part of what was seen in this chapter has been known, in one or another form, for some time. But assignment by default has not, to my knowledge, received the attention it deserves, nor have there been any attempts to describe it in any detail. Yet it is an important mechanism among those responsible for establishing the connection between formal sequences and cognitive representations; it may be, for all we know, the most frequent among them, the one that applies whenever no other mechanism blocks it.

Langacker expresses a general feeling when he writes that

It is generally assumed that a rigorous linguistic theory has to provide a definitive list of [semantic] roles, and that some element from that inventory should correctly describe each participant’s involvement in any verbal or clausal relationship; the failure to devise a satisfactory list has been a continuing source of concern.

[Langacker 1991, pp. 284–285]

Langacker goes on to express his belief that such a concern is unfounded, and prefers to limit his analysis to what we now call ETRs, effectively denying semantic roles any theoretical importance. I disagree, and propose that what is lacking here is, rather, a principled distinction between semantic roles and ETRs, both of which are necessary in linguistic description as instruments allowing the connection between form and meaning. If viewed in this way, it becomes possible to assign to all eligible sentence constituents a thematic relation (an ETR), and also, in many cases, a grammatically relevant semantic role.[23]

In Part III of this book I show a series of linguistic phenomena that require assignment by default, and discuss the interplay between ETRs and semantic roles. We will perhaps, by following the principles and procedures here proposed, finally arrive at a list of semantic roles for each particular language. On the other hand, a complete list of ETRs is not possible, since they are part of our knowledge of the world, and consequently not only too numerous, but also often defined in a fuzzy way, overlapping each other, and being improvised on the spot whenever a new stimulus presents itself. In any case, with this distinction the whole phenomenon becomes more clear and amenable, in its linguistic face, to a satisfactory analysis. This may cut the Gordian knot that has been one of the concerns of descriptive linguists.

References

1. Bennett, D. C. (1975). Spatial and temporal uses of English prepositions. London: Longman.

2. Bolinger, D. (1992). Adverbial nouns in English and Spanish. In E. L. Traili (Ed.) Scripta philologica: In honorem Juan M. Lope Blanch [Philological papers to honor Juan M. Lope Blanch]. Mexico: UNAM.

3. Croft, W. (1991). Syntactic categories and grammatical relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

4. Goldberg, A. (1995). Constructions—A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

5. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar—Vol. II, Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

6. Levin, B., & Hovav, M. R. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7. Liberato, Y. G. (1997). A estrutura do SN em português: uma abordagem cognitiva [The structure of the NP in Portuguese: a cognitive approach]. Doctoral thesis, UFMG.

8. Loredo Neta, M. (2014) Objeto direto: condições de omissão no português do Brasil [Direct object: Conditions of omission in Brazilian Portuguese]. Doctoral thesis, UFMG, Belo Horizonte.

9. Moreira, É. C. (2005). Indeterminação do agente no português oral do Brasil [Agent indetermination in spoken Brazilian Portuguese]. Master’s thesis, PUC Minas.

10. Oliveira, A. A. d (2009). Relações semântico-cognitivas no uso da preposição ‘em’ no português do Brasil [Semantic-cognitive relations in the use of the preposition ‘em’ in Brazilian Portuguese]. Doctoral thesis, UFMG, Belo Horizonte.

11. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

12. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

13. Tagnin, S. E. O. (2016). O jeito que a gente diz [The way we say it]. Barueri: DISAL.

14. Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2003). The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

15. Varnhagen, F. A. d. (1854). História geral do Brasil [A general history of Brazil]. São Paulo: Melhoramentos.

16. Wierzbicka, A. (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

17. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Footnotes

1

This is recognized in the corresponding entry in Framenet (worship, frame Rite). ADESSE, for adorar, gives Experimentador (Experiencer) and Estímulo (Stimulus), which is correct for this verb in its reading “love” but not for “worship.”

2

There may be other factors at work here: for instance, an NP cannot convey Location, Manner or Time, which are peripheral CRSs connected to the schema WORSHIP.

3

Read: almost never; but exceptions are few, and belong to clearly delimited sets. For instance, the NP a semana passada “last week” can convey Time; but the NP o século passado “last century” cannot, and requires a preposition in order to express Time: no século passado.

4

A question that is far from trivial, but will not be discussed here; it has been approached by some linguists—see, for instance, Wierzbicka (1988, 1996).

5

As is well known, no semantic deviance is entirely beyond rescue; I refer here to an immediate (“literal”) interpretation, without a special effort to understand the sentence in a metaphorical or poetic way.

6

Following the analysis adopted in Sect. 11.5.

7

The subject receives its role (Experiencer) by prototype rule; I find it unlikely that the same happens with the Stimulus.

8

Goldberg (1995, p. 33).

9

Framenet: “Cause_to_perceive”; “core participants: Agent, Phenomenon, Perceiver.”

10

Comment and examples from Tagnin (2016).

11

Ambiguity does not arise when both vacant constituents end up having the same role, as in the cases examined in Sects. 13.2–13.3.

12

NPs convey peripheral variables only in exceptional cases like cheguei o mês passado “I arrived last month,” where the last NP is the Time of arrival. This is one of the few cases where an NP is not thematically opaque. Bolinger (1992) studies similar phrases in English and Spanish.

13

It will be eventually elaborated into the “opiner.”

14

Framenet (entry Categorization) gives Cognizer, Item and Category.

15

There is a way to improve the acceptability of [18] by pronouncing o melhor jogador do time “the best player in the team” with a low and rapid intonational contour. This has still to be studied.

16

In the standard language; bur I have heard a corresponding construction used by substandard speakers from the Brazilian Northeast.

17

That is, in this case, “frightened entity”—possibly an Experiencer.

18

There is some evidence that exceptional readings tend to arise more promptly to mind, perhaps because they are learned as lexical material, without the intermediation of rules. Thus, Fulgêncio (p.c.) has observed that idioms are always more readily available than the grammatically generated interpretation of the same sequences.

19

Oliveira (2009) did this for the Portuguese preposition em, and Tyler and Evans (2003) for spatial prepositions in English. See also Bennett (1975).

20

It is easy to see that, if it were not so, linguistic mechanisms would become superfluous.

21

It may not be possible; core variables can be unexpressed, as in the girl is reading.

22

This is not necessarily Croft’s opinion; he only mentions these points as being widely accepted “in at least the earliest semantic role list approaches” [apud Levin and Hovav, 2005, p. 35].

23

This is basically in agreement with some authors, as for instance Levin and Hovav (2005) and Schlesinger (1995).

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_8

8. Thematic Potential

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1) Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Pragmatic conditioning of rolesSyntactic potentialThematic potential

8.1 Thematic Potential as a Constraint on Assignment

One of the factors that contribute to limit the action of thematic relation assignment is the thematic potential of linguistic units.

As a component of its meaning, each linguistic form has a thematic potential: the set of ETRs it can convey; this conditions the possibilities of application of the assigning mechanism.[1] Suppose we come to the point in the assignment process where the sentence

1. [1]

The public applauded the show in the park a while ago.

has already had its subject assigned a role (Agent). We must now connect the ETR “applauded thing,” present in the evoked schema, to one of the remaining constituents. One factor here is that in the park and a while ago are not eligible because they do not have the potential to refer to things, which seems to be, with few exceptions, a privilege of NPs (cf. Liberato 1997). Consequently, only the show, an NP, can be assigned the ETR “applauded thing.” In the park is excluded by virtue of its preposition: it may be understood as the Location of the event, since in-phrases have this potential; and a while ago will be the Time, because of the properties of the word ago.[2] As we can see, then, each component has a clearly limited thematic potential, which strictly controls its possibilities of being integrated into a CR.

The definition of thematic potential is not entirely straightforward. One problem is that the thematic potential of a form does not necessarily derive from its grammatical form. The phrase in the park seen above has as its thematic function the expression of Location. But this is not simply derived from the fact that the preposition is in, because the same item may mark phrases with other potentials: we have in the summer, which expresses the Time; in five minutes, Duration; in all likelihood, something like “degree of probability.” As seen, the thematic potential also depends on the semantics of the NP that follows the preposition. This should not be too surprising, if we consider that thematic potential is a cognitive property.

On the other hand, lexicogrammatical factors are also relevant. There are thematic relations that cannot be expressed by in-phrases: Cause, for instance, or Source. And, as is well known, an object (i.e., a nonsubject NP) can never express an Agent.[3] The thematic potential of a form derives, then, from grammatical and cognitive features of each of its constituents; and, furthermore, phrases like in the park and a while ago are constructions, and as such are entitled to a complex meaning of their own. Each linguistic unit—word or phrase—comes with its thematic potential, which governs its possibility of insertion in CRs.

Consequently, a task for future research is to chart the factors involved in each case, making a distinction between lexicogrammatical and cognitive factors; the resulting picture is likely to be very complex. The factors we can already identify include: syntactic function (nonsubject NPs cannot be Agents); form class (NPs cannot convey Cause); semantics of the prepositions (in cannot express Source). As for the semantics of individual lexical items (in London = Location, in 2009 = Time), it may probably have to be reduced to pragmatic factors, associated with the semantics of the preposition, when present; thus, after Hiroshima can be a location (after Hiroshima, the road turns left to the beach) or a point in time (after Hiroshima, nobody feels secure any more). The two possible ETRs derive from our knowledge that Hiroshima denotes both a location (a city) and an event (the 1945 bombing).

8.2 Complications

8.2.1 Pragmatic Control of Complex Potential

The power of thematic potential, however, is not absolute. Or rather, in some cases it is, but in other cases it can be countermanded for specific situations, which can be viewed as exceptions.

Some prepositions are thematically transparent, and can only convey one role; for instance, por causa de “because” can only express the Cause. Here knowing the potential is enough for using and interpreting a constituent, as in

1. [2]

Ela chorou por causa do namorado.

- “She cried because of her boyfriend.”

But in most cases there are complications. First, some prepositions have more than one possible semantic role; for instance, com, normally translated as ‘with’, can express the Company, the Instrument, or the Manner:

1. [3]

Ela viajou com o namorado.

- “She traveled with her boyfriend.”

2. [4]

Ela fechou a porta com o pé.

- “She closed the door with her foot.”

1. [5]

Ela fechou a porta com cuidado.

- “She closed the door with care.”

None of these sentences is ambiguous, for pragmatic reasons—for instance, one’s foot can be an Instrument, but not a Company or a Manner. Linguistically, the com-complements in these sentences are all ambiguous; and in some cases the ambiguity shows, as in

1. [6]

Meu amigo esquimó foi à cidade com quatro cachorros.

- “My Inuit friend went to town with four dogs.”

where our knowledge of the Inuit culture allows the complement to be interpreted as Instrument (the dogs pull a sledge) or Company. This only means that, like all other constructions, the interpretation of these complements is dependent on the action of cognitive filters, which can mark an interpretation as ill-formed for reasons of world knowledge.

The preposition in has Location as one of its prototypical roles; and some authors would analyze the ETRs “time” and “place” as possible elaborations of that role.[4] This is still to be discussed, but suppose it is correct—then we have to explain why in practically no case are both elaborations possible: in Europe is always “place,” in 2009 is invariably “time.” This is easily explained by means of cognitive filters of the type we have been dealing with.

In is not the only preposition that can convey Location in English: there are also on, at, under, over, and others. These items are not synonymous, of course; yet they behave in parallel ways as far as the grammar of the language is concerned. For instance, whenever a verb requires a Location complement, any of these five prepositions can introduce it; with reside, we have

1. [7]

The young man resided in Spain/on a hill/under a cliff/over a garage/at his parents’ home.

Of course, in some cases this does not work—but the asymmetry can be accounted for by cognitive filtering, as in

1. [8]

∗ The young man resided over Spain.

which is ill-formed for obvious reasons. We must then conclude that reside requires Location—not “inside placing,” “underneath placing,” and the like. And reside is not a unique case: a similar requirement is made by be (he was in Spain/on a hill/under a cliff, etc.), spend (I spent several months in Spain/on a hill...), be located and others; of course we do not want to repeat the same list of ETRs again and again in the valency of all these verbs.

8.2.2 Diathetic Roles

To return to the Portuguese data: the preposition com “with” also appears in association with semantic roles other than Instrument, Company, and Manner. Take the sentences

- [7] A polícia acabou a festa.

- “The police ended the party.”

- [8] A polícia acabou com a festa.

- “The police ended (with) the party.”

These sentences are synonymous, and (com) a festa “the party” is the Patient in both cases. If we consider that the thematic potential of com includes Company, Instrument and Manner, we have a problem here. Should we add Patient to the potential of com?

The answer is negative because the situations differ: com in the meaning of Company, Instrument and Manner occurs freely, even when another com-phrase is present:

1. [9]

Ela fechou a porta com o pé com cuidado.

- “She closed the door with her foot with care.”

1. [10]

A polícia acabou com a festa com gás lacrimogêneo.

- “The police ended (with) the party with tear gas.”

But com NP expresses the Patient only with a small list of verbs, among which acabar “end.” That is, the presence of com in [8] is due to the valency of the verb, and is an exceptional case; here the thematic potential of com is determined by the diathesis underlying the sentence. In other words, the tolerably clear thematic potential of the preposition com has exceptions, and these are recorded in the lexicon as part of some verbs’ valency. It must be understood, of course, that whenever such an exception exists, it neutralizes the thematic potential of the item.

There are many similar cases, with other prepositions. For instance, em “in” is normally a locative preposition, and expresses the Location or the Goal; but in

1. [11]

A Cecília pensou em você.

- “Cecília thought of [lit.: in] you.”

it introduces a Stimulus; this happens with the verb pensar “think” and is a feature of its valency.

Also, de “from” normally expresses the Source, but it introduces a Stimulus in

1. [12]

A Cecília gosta de você.

- “Cecília likes (of) you.”

This is an idiosyncratic feature of the valency of the verb gostar “like.”

A curious case of such idiosyncratic thematic behavior is de introducing both the Agent (with one verb, apanhar “be beaten”) and the Patient (with ganhar “defeat”):

1. [13]

O Botafogo apanhou do Atlético.

- “Botafogo was defeated by Atlético.”[5]

1. [14]

O Atlético ganhou do Botafogo.

- “Atlético defeated Botafogo.”

Not all prepositions appear in such idiosyncratic use: apparently, only de, em, com, a, and por. In such cases the role of the constituent is unpredictable, and must be recorded in the specific diathesis for the verb in question. Other prepositions have fixed or prototypical thematic potential, and must follow it, subject only to pragmatic constraints.

In cases like [8] and [11]–[14], the preposition can be considered to have no meaning at all, being just a syntactic requirement of certain verbs. This phenomenon is pretty common, as shown by the examples below:

1. [15]

Sara presenteou a família com um carro novo.

- “Sara presented (her) family with a new car.”

Here com um carro novo is the Theme (the thing being transferred); this occurs apparently only with the verb presentear “present (a gift).”

1. [16]

A turma se interessou pela matéria.

- “The class got interested in the subject.”

Here we have the preposition por,[6] exceptionally introducing the Stimulus. Again, this assignment is idiosyncratic, and depends not on the preposition but only on the diathesis of the verb.

Prepositions, then, can be transparent, when they can only convey one role (por causa de “because”); and when not transparent, they have a set of prototypical roles, which can be complemented with cases where a nonprototypical role is determined by a diathesis. In the latter case, we may perhaps analyze the presence of the preposition as a syntactic requirement, so that the preposition has, by itself, no meaning. Here, however, I will refer to the preposition in diathetic cases as conveying a semantic role, which is that of the whole phrase. As we saw above, diatheses have priority of application, so that in a sentence like [8] the meaning of the preposition com cannot arise.

8.3 Thematic Potential at Two Levels

Thematic potential, like thematic relations, can be defined at two levels: in terms of semantic roles and in terms of ETRs. That they can be defined at the semantic (that is, linguistic) level is evident enough: for instance, the role Company can be conveyed by the preposition com “with”; and the role Goal can be conveyed by de only in one diathesis of the single verb aproximar “come near.” Besides, prototype and other rules are necessarily stated in terms of semantic roles: the Agent is prototypically the subject; a nonsubject NP cannot be assigned the role Agent, and so on. From these observations we can determine, for each unit, whether or not, and even to what extent, it has a role in its thematic potential. The question to be considered now is whether we also need to state the thematic potential of linguistic units in terms of ETRs.

Actually, we are dealing with two related, but not identical, kinds of potential. A linguistic unit can be said to be able to convey a set of semantic roles; and certainly all units can convey a set of ETRs. But when we come to ETRs, we are dealing with elaborate relations, typically descriptive of a very specific situation: things like “eater,” “kicker,” or “sleeping entity.” As a result, a unit can often express a semantic role, but not all ETRs that elaborate it will be possible. For instance, although all NPs can be Patient, we have

1. [18]

Jim ate the pizza.

but not

1. [19]

∗ Jim ate the beer.

Sentence [19] is evidently ill-formed, and unacceptable; but this cannot be because of the linguistic thematic potential of beer, because this word can express a Patient as in

1. [20]

Jim drank the beer.

This difference does not refer to properties of the words eat, drink, beer, pizza, not to any features of the English language, but rather to the schemata evoked by these words, and the CR to be constructed out of them. The unacceptability of [19] comes from the knowledge that beer is a liquid, and one cannot eat a liquid. We then state that beer cannot be the “eaten thing,” and this is not a linguistic mark—although it also determines the conditions of acceptability of sentences. One can then say that beer can be the head of an NP, and that all NPs can have the role Patient. But since not all sentences with beer as Patient are acceptable, we must complement the statement about the thematic potential of this word with information about the schema it evokes.

Nonlinguistic thematic potential is not directly interesting to language description, in the sense that it does not appear in a lexicogrammatical description. But it must be acknowledged, and carefully distinguished from the linguistic variety: one must be able to tell the difference between acceptance facts that result from linguistic structure and those that do not. We are dealing here with the delicate borderline between language knowledge and world knowledge, and if our main interest is to describe a language, the location of the borderline must be kept in mind at all times. The real problem, in practice, is that observable data do not come with labels, yet they must be previously labeled as deriving from linguistic or from nonlinguistic factors. In this book I offer some guidelines that may help in this task.

8.4 Syntactic Potential

Thematic potential has its counterpart in syntax, and syntactic units differ as to the functions they can occupy; as a matter of fact, the set of syntactic functions is a major part of the definition of the class a unit belongs to. Thus, an NP can be defined as a syntactic unit (a construction) that can occupy the syntactic function of subject, and can also make up a constituent with a preposition. This is a comfortable definition, as there are practically no exceptions. Only a small handful of pronouns do not follow it strictly: English him can appear after a preposition, but is never a subject.

When we come to lexical items, complexity creeps in. Take the Portuguese words mesa “table,” velho “old,” and gástrico “gastric.” Traditional grammar analyzes the first two as nouns, the last as adjective. But, clearly, there are more than just two kinds of words here: mesa can be an NP head, but not a modifier; gástrico can be a modifier, not an NP head; and velho can be both:

1. [21]

[Aquele velho]NP telefonou.

head

- “That old (man) called.”

1. [22]

Conheci [um professor velho]NP.

head

- “I met an old teacher.”

This is not the place to explore this phenomenon; but we may observe that the best way to describe the syntactic behavior of these items is to associate each of them with a set of features which make up its syntactic potential. So far the features are “the property of occurring as an NP head” and “the property of occurring as a modifier.” But there are others; for instance, velho can occur as a modifier before the NP head, as in

1. [23]

Um amigo velho/um velho amigo

- “an old friend”

but gástrico can only occur after the head:

1. [24]

Uma doença gástrica/∗ uma gástrica doença

- “a gastric illness”

Here we have a new property, the one of “occurring in an NP before the head.”

Syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic potential are all aspects of functional potential. In fact, these are all aspects of the taxonomy of units according to the properties of each, which pervades all linguistic description, and constitutes a very large portion thereof.

References

1. Liberato, Y. G. (1997). A estrutura do SN em português: uma abordagem cognitiva [The structure of the NP in Portuguese: a cognitive approach]. Doctoral thesis, UFMG.

2. Pontes, E. (1992). Espaço e tempo na língua portuguesa [Space and time in the Portuguese language]. Campinas: Pontes.

Footnotes

1

This is part of what is usually called “selectional restrictions.”

2

A postposition, if such things exist in English.

3

This constraint is valid for Portuguese, and for English as well, and has no exceptions.

4

For instance, for Portuguese, Pontes (1992).

5

Do is the agglutination of the preposition de plus the definite article o.

6

Pela = por + the definite article a.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_9

9. Prototypes and Prototype Rules

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Preposition meaningPrototypePrototypical ruleSchematic filter

9.1 Definition

In this book I often talk of prototypes, a word that refers to more than one notion in the literature, and is usually recognized as important: prototype effects “permeate the very structure of language itself,” according to Taylor (1989, p. 175).

I tend to agree with this statement; but the notion of prototype is too often understood as a vaguely defined continuum, made up of “central” and “marginal” members, without criteria allowing the precise identification of the so-called degrees of prototypicality. Yet I think much can be done in order to improve this situation, and the prototype notion, at least in many cases, can be defined with sufficient precision. I try to show this in what follows, as far as our immediate aims are concerned.

In grammatical description one does not work with prototypes similar to Rosch (1973)) birds, colors, and bowls; apparently, neither does one deal with Wittgensteinian “cluster” concepts. For lexicogrammatical purposes, we can define prototypes in a more discrete and precise way, to the point of being able to quantify prototypicality. Consequently, in grammar one is not dealing with,

a cline of “typicality”, ranging from typical exemplars of the category (e.g. a robin is a “typical” bird) to atypical exemplars (e.g. a penguin is an “atypical” bird”).

[Jackendoff 2002, p. 353]

but rather with scales of typicality, each step being distinguished from the next in discrete ways. For instance, we saw that the preposition com “with” can express three prototypical roles, namely, Company, Instrument, and Manner. These roles are prototypical in the sense that the preposition can, in principle, convey any of them, without previous restrictions. There are restrictions, but they are governed by pragmatic conditions that are clear enough, and do not position themselves along a cline: in viajei com minha irmã “I traveled with my sister” com unambiguously introduces a Company, and in viajei com meu carro novo “I traveled with my new car” it introduces an Instrument. As seen, there is no continuum involved.

Similarly, one can say that the construction illustrated by

1. [1]

O cozinheiro esfriou o leite.

- “The cook cooled the milk.” (VSubj>Agent V NP>Patient)

is more prototypical than the one in

1. [2]

O leite esfriou.

- “The milk cooled.” (VSubj>Patient   V)

This can be reduced to a statistical fact: there are far more verbs that occur in the first construction than in the second. Esfriar “cool” occurs in both, but beber “drink” only occurs in the first one. This can be expressed in quantitative terms, clearly showing the relative importance (or prototypicality) of each construction in the grammar of Portuguese. Now, this discrete character does not necessarily extend to speakers’ judgments about the acceptability of sentences, which are notoriously variable; nor does it extend to lexical meaning, that is, the precise reference of words. I make accordingly no claims about these kinds of phenomena, and restrict the conception of prototype to grammatical facts, seen from a “structural” point of view.

Let us try to define with some precision what prototypes mean in the context of the present discussion; and, since there is no unanimity in the current definitions, I feel authorized to advance my own, which is admittedly tailor-made for the purposes of describing verbal valencies. As far as the description of verbal valencies is concerned, then,

A prototype is the association of a morphosyntactic element with a semantic role relation that occurs

1. (a)

with a majority of verbs, or

2. (b)

with a majority of verbs in a specified semantic class, or

3. (c)

in a majority of constructions that include a specified semantic role.[1]

A “morphosyntactic element” can be a syntactic function, or a particular relational item—typically, a preposition. We have then a prototype whenever it is possible to state that a particular role is most often coded as a particular morphosyntactic configuration. As seen, conditions (a) and (b) refer to occurrence in the lexicon, (c) refers to occurrence in the grammar.

This is of course a very restricted definition, and does not come close to covering all interesting cases of prototypes; but as far as verb valencies go, it provides a way to simplify the statement of the diatheses, thus coming closer to the ideal aim of a simpler syntax. To give some quick examples:

1. (a)

if a constituent—say, the preposition de “from” plus an NP—is found with a great majority of verbs as expressing Source, this authorizes us to consider it prototypically associated with that semantic role. In this case, we are not required to state the semantic role of a phrase of the form de NP, which will be automatically assigned Source. We only have to mark the semantic role of de NP in a construction in cases where it departs from the prototype;[2] and prototypes are expressed by means of prototype rules.

2. (b)

The prototype rule Agent<>VSubj applies to a great majority of verbs that include Agent.

3. (c)

The same prototype rule applies with a great majority of constructions that include Agent.

The definition is somewhat heterogeneous, and certainly provisional, but I cannot improve it by now, for lack of relevant research.

The notion of prototype goes well beyond the field of valency. We may think of lexical items which are prototypical for nonvalential reasons, as for instance such commonplace oppositions as that between regular and irregular verbs. Regular verbs are prototypical because they are morphologically identical to most verbs in a given group in the language—for instance, amar “love” is a prototypical verb of the first conjugation, which includes andar “walk,” estudar “study,” dançar “dance,” and hundreds of others. We are also dealing with prototypes when we refer to exceptions: an exception is nothing more than a nonprototypical case.

Prototypes are then defined in statistical terms, which allows for a wide variation of cases, and can be computed with precision. The extension of each case (item or symbolic relation) can be charted in the grammar or in the lexicon in detail. Take irregularity in verbs: first, we can establish the degree of prototypicality by listing the number of irregular forms each verb shows: thus, a verb like perder “lose” is less irregular (or more prototypical) than fazer “do”: among 32 verb forms current in the spoken language, perder has five irregular ones, whereas fazer has 15 irregular forms.[3] This charting can also be done in the lexicon: the verb produzir “produce” is irregular in just one form (produz, instead of expected ∗produze), and the same single irregularity appears with conduzir “lead,” deduzir “deduce,” induzir “induce,” reduzir “reduce,” and seduzir “seduce.”[4]

9.2 Lexical and Grammatical Extension

According to the definition given in the preceding section, prototypes may be defined with reference to the lexicon—that is, to the number of verbs a given symbolic association occurs with (items (a) and (b)). This is one way to understand the extension of a prototype. It can also be evaluated in terms of grammatical extension, by listing the percentage of constructions that include the relation in question—that is, instead of defining the extension of a prototype in the lexicon, one does it within the grammar (item (c)).

I tend to believe that lexical extension is more relevant, mainly because constructions differ widely in importance. For instance, we saw that besides constructions (diatheses) that occur in the valency of hundreds of verbs, like

1. [3]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP>Patient,

for example,

1. [4]

O menino comeu a pizza.

- “The boy ate the pizza.”

we have diathesis of much more restricted distribution, as

1. [5]

VSubj>Patient   V   de NP>Agent

which only works for one verb, apanhar “to take a beating,” as in

1. [6]

O vizinho apanha da mulher.

- “The neighbor takes beatings from his wife.”

That is, taking these two diatheses on an equal footing conceals an important dissymmetry between them. This is confirmed by the facts of language acquisition: whereas children tend to generalize [3] for verbs that do not admit it, the same does not happen in favor of [5], which remains in its proper place as an exception, and tends to be acquired late. Nevertheless, partly for lack of availability of data, I have often used prototypes defined in grammatical terms; but the fact remains that lexical surveys are urgently needed.

The prototype rule defined as Agent<>VSubj was originally devised on the basis of occurrences in a majority of constructions, not of verbs; yet, in this particular case, I believe it also covers the majority of verbs, since, first, the constructions that have a nonsubject Agent are exceptional; and, second, the passive construction, which is very widepread among verbs, is demonstrably a diathesis of the verb ser “be,” and the Agent that appears is governed not by this verb, but by the nominal participle that is itself a complement of ser. In other words, in a pizza foi comida pelas formigas “the pizza was eaten by the ants” there is no occurrence of the verb comer “eat”, but rather a derivationally related nominal, comida “eaten”.[5]

Finally, it must be mentioned that prototypical items and rules seem to be more readily available to language users. This shows in the research by Lima et al. (ms), reported in Sect. 10.2.3, where the sentences that were produced by the subjects overwhelmingly elaborate the most prototypical diatheses (whenever there is a choice, of course). This is still a point to investigate, and I will not pursue it here.

9.3 Application of Prototype Rules

Let us consider for a moment the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, and the way it applies. We know that its converse, VSubj<>Agent, is not as extensive, and may even not qualify for a prototype; indeed, although about 98% of all Agents are coded as subjects,[6] a much smaller percentage of subjects are assigned the Agent role. But we can use the prototype rule for interpretation, as when, referring to

1. [7]

Meu pai consolou a vítima com algumas palavras carinhosas.

- “My father comforted the victim with some kind words.”

we state that the subject (meu pai) is assigned the role Agent by a prototype rule (Agent<>VSubj). How can this function, if the rule is not reversible? We might expect the rule to work for coding Agents as subjects, not for interpreting subjects as Agents.[7]

The question may have to do with the distinction between the emitter and the receptor. In production there is no problem, because the speaker starts from the Agent and codes it as the subject, which is what the rule says. The problem, if any, is in the receptor’s task because he starts from the subject, and the rule says nothing about how subjects are to be assigned roles.

Yet this is a false problem. Suppose the receptor comes to the point where the schema evoked by the verb is brought into the cognitive representation under construction. In sentence [7] this schema contains a “consoling person,” which can be understood as an elaboration of the Agent. The speaker then learns that the sentence has a subject and an Agent, and this authorizes him to apply the prototype rule. Actually, by the way, sentences having a subject and an Agent, where they do not coincide, are extremely rare, and are suitably signaled in the lexicon as exceptions (e.g., apanhar). This explanation assumes that sentence interpretation is not a sequential, linear process; rather, it is global, so that information contained in the verb schema can affect interpretation of the subject, independently of the order in which the two stages occur. This hypothesis, or something close to it, has already been stated, as for instance in the following passage:

[...] there is agreement that some amount of information flows back towards the initial stages of processing; to account for the fact that context heavily affects pattern recognition, it must be possible for information gained at later stages of analysis to affect the earlier stages.

[Norman and Bobrow 1975, pp. 118–119]

I cannot pursue this important point here, but I find it plausible to believe global processing to be the rule, if not the exclusive alternative. A rule like Agent<>VSubj is not to be applied in its proper place in an ordered sequence, like phonological rules in traditional generative models; rather, it is “always there,” available for application whenever conditions are met.

Another observation about the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, and perhaps about prototype rules in general, is that it may have a wider application than just assigning an ETR to the subject. It is sensitive to the presence of the seme (meaning feature) “action,” certainly because it refers to the Agent. This can be seen in cases where an action may or may not be involved, as in

1. [8]

O Ronaldo se separou da Bia.

- “Ronaldo broke up with Bia.”

The Portuguese sentence may refer to the breakup as an event, without any commitment to a causator; it is equivalent to English Ronaldo and Bia broke up. But the sentence can also mean that the breakup was a result of decision by one of the persons in question—and in this case only Ronaldo can be understood as the causator, never Bia. That is, if the denoted event is understood to be an action (as opposed to a nonactive event) the prototype rule applies, assigning the role Agent to the subject (not to the object). The resulting symbolic structure is then

1. [9]

o Ronaldo se separou da Bia

“partner”    “partner”

“agent”

Now in

1. [10]

O óleo se separou da água.

- “The oil separated from the water.”

where there is no possibility of understanding an action, the rule does not apply, and it is not possible to understand the oil as the Agent. This suggests that the rule, although stated here in linguistic terms (semantic role plus syntactic function), is sensitive to features of the schema.

9.4 Prototypes and Prepositions

The prototype notion applies to some important areas of analysis, as for instance to the thematic meaning of prepositional phrases.

The wide variety of semantic roles conveyed by some prepositions has been a traditional problem in stating their meaning. Often, it is approached simply by multiplying meanings; but some authors, like Bennett (1975) and Tyler and Evans (2003) have come up with alternative solutions, certainly better for at least some cases (see below). From the available evidence, I would surmise that both solutions hold part of the truth, but only examination of many examples will show whether this is a correct position, and how much of the semantics of prepositions is covered by each solution. In this section I develop an analysis of some aspects of preposition meaning and its assignment to particular constituents, which I hope will complement existing proposals, and take us a little closer to an understanding of the phenomenon.

9.4.1 Prepositions as Marks of Thematic Relations

An essential component of the meaning of prepositions are the semantic roles they attribute to the prepositional phrases they govern. This is recognized, although in a characteristically fuzzy way, by traditional grammarians; see, for instance, Cunha’s (1976, p. 518 ff), “value of prepositions,” where he lists all prepositions, each with what we may read as a semantic role: direction in space towards a limit; removal from a limit, provenance, or origin; company, and so on. It seems that all prepositions mark semantic roles, among other relations they can express. Thus, the preposition desde “since” is a mark of the role Source; for this particular item, the marking is unambiguous, so that we can say that a phrase governed by this preposition always has the semantic role Source. There are several such unambiguous prepositions in Portuguese: através de “through”[8] (Path), por causa de “because of” (Cause), entre “between” (Location), and so on. These prepositions have simple semantic matrixes, and their analysis is straightforward. In other cases, no unique role is immediately discernable for a preposition; thus, com “with” may mark Company, Instrument, or Manner. But no preposition is totally open as to thematic relation; for instance, com can never mark the Source, or the Cause. And there are cases of highly exceptional coding, as for instance de being the introducer of a Goal phrase in

1. [11]

O urso se aproximou da menina.

- “The bear came near the girl.”

In a case like [11] it is not possible to attribute the semantic role to the meaning of the preposition, since there are no other examples of de marking the Goal: it is an effect instead of the quite exceptional valency of the verb aproximar “come near.”

Generally speaking, prepositions are associated with semantic roles, either just one, or a small set of prototypical ones. Thus it would seem that a prepositional phrase is not liable to have its thematic relation assigned by default. However, there seem to be cases where a prepositional phrase does get its ETR by default, although this is probably rather unusual.

9.4.2 Prototypical Semantic Roles

Some prepositions can mark several roles, which can be diathetic or prototypical. A role is diathetic when truly exceptional, and occurs only with one or a few specific verbs—such as de NP>Goal, which only occurs with the verb aproximar “come near,” as in example [11] above; and it is prototypical when it belongs to a small set of roles associated with a preposition (e.g., com NP>Company, >Instrument, or >Manner). This difference between univocal and polyvalent prepositions is not a clear-cut division, but rather a set of points on a scale, which will only become clear after a convenient survey of all prepositions becomes available. The survey will make it possible to quantify each case, thus showing the whole phenomenon in its details: we will probably have a scale of prepositions, ranging from one-role prepositions (por causa de) to two-, three-role ones, and so on, all the way to a maximum number (which should not be too large). Among these many-role prepositions we find em “in, on, to, into...,” de “of, from...”, por “through, by...”, and others.

At one extreme, diathetic roles are not really determined by the preposition, and can just as well be viewed as part of the syntax of the verb itself; they are not prototypical because their occurrence does not depend on general factors, but on the idiosyncrasies of particular lexical items, as seen above for aproximar de “come near” (ex. [11]), or acabar com “end” (ex. [17] below). On the contrary, prototypical roles are amenable to description in terms of more or less general rules, which can be context-sensitive or context-free in the sense that semantic features of the verb may or not govern their application. For instance, we may say that com “with” has Company as one of its prototypical roles, and this does not depend on the verb (context-free prototype rule)[9]; and we can say that em “in, on, to, into...” has the prototypical role Goal, provided that it co-occurs with a verb of motion (context-sensitive prototype rule).

Let us take the example with the preposition com “with,” given in Sect. 8.2.1 above. As seen, this preposition can code (at least) three prototypical roles: Company, Instrument, and Manner.[10] Let us assume that it can have any of these roles, freely. Of course, in many cases we must explain why only one role is understood, as in

1. [12]

Fui a Campo Grande com minha irmã.

- “I went to Campo Grande with my sister.”

Here only Company is possible. And only Instrument appears in [13], only Manner in [14]:

1. [13]

Fui a Campo Grande com meu carro novo.

- “I went to Campo Grande with my new car.”

1. [14]

Fui a Campo Grande com a maior pressa.

- “I went to Campo Grande in [lit. with] great haste.”

These sentences are unambiguous because of features of the schema evoked by the NP that follows the preposition. My sister is a plausible choice for a Company in a trip, not for an Instrument or a Manner; analogously, my new car cannot be a Company or a Manner, and haste is a suitable Manner, never a Company or an Instrument. This also explains why

1. [15]

Eu fui a Campo Grande com a Mercedes.

- “I went to Campo Grande with Mercedes/with the Mercedes.”

is ambiguous, and may contain a Company or an Instrument. In English the article differentiates the car from a person called Mercedes, but the Portuguese sentence is ambiguous, because articles are also used with personal names.

Another example, already given in Chap. 8, is the sentence

1. [16]

My Inuit friend went to town with four dogs.

where the dogs may be understood as Company. But since my friend is an Inuit, our knowledge of their customs may favor the interpretation of the dogs as an Instrument, pulling a sledge. As a result, the sentence is ambiguous, and its interpretation depends on extralinguistic information.

One thing to observe right away is how prototypes can (in these cases at least) be defined as discrete and even quantifiable relations—nothing like the vague definitions one sometimes finds in the literature. For our purposes, a prototypical role is not a point on a continuum, but on a scale made up of discrete degrees: the coding com > Company is prototypical, not to a degree, but absolutely, because it can occur in principle with any verb, that is, it does not depend on their valencies.

9.4.3 Diathetic com “with”

We also saw that com appears as the introducer of a Patient phrase, as in

1. [17]

A polícia acabou com a festa.

- “The police ended the party.”

Other verbs do not admit com before their Patient phrase:

1. [18]

A polícia protegeu/atrapalhou/cercou ... a festa (not ∗com a festa).

- “The police protected/disturbed/surrounded... the party.”

Here a Patient is semantically adequate as a complement of any of these verbs, but it cannot appear as a com-phrase.

The situation here is clearly different from the one observed in [12]–[14]. In [17] the occurrence of the preposition must be attributed to the valency of the verb acabar “end”; that is, acabar has as one of its diatheses the following:

1. [19]

VSubj>Agent   V   com NP>Patient

This is an idiosyncratic property of this particular verb (and a couple of others). But there is no need to include com NP>Instrument in any diathesis of the verbs seen so far, since this coding is prototypical, hence not conditioned by the valency of the verb. Even sentences with acabar “end” and its prepositional Patient allow the addition of a complement with com in one of its prototypical roles, as in the examples below, which shows once more that the latter do not depend on the verb:

- [10] A polícia acabou com a festa com gás lacrimogêneo.

- “The police ended the party with tear gas.” (Instrument)

1. [20]

A polícia acabou com a festa com violência.

- “The police ended the party with violence.” (Manner)

Diatheses are then to be viewed as the expression of exceptions: they express particular cases where prototypes fail. We see this in [17], and also in [11], where de, usually “from” or “of,” exceptionally introduces a Goal phrase, if the verb of the sentence is aproximar “come near.”

9.4.4 Schematic Filters

Summarizing what we have seen so far, prepositions assign semantic roles to their phrases through the action of several devices; in order of freedom of occurrence, we have the following:

1. (a)

They may appear by virtue of the purely syntactic properties of particular verbs, that is, of their valency (com>Patient with acabar “end,” de>Goal with aproximar “come near”).

2. (b)

They may have several possible roles, which are conditioned by semantic features of the verb—as when we state that em “in” can prototypically express the Goal, provided it occurs with verbs of motion.

3. (c)

They may have several possible roles, which may all in principle occur in any sentence (com > Company, >Instrument, >Manner).

4. (d)

They may be unambiguous markers of some particular role (por causa de>Cause);

In any of these cases, the result of the assignment may be filtered out by well-formedness conditions acting on the cognitive representation. And this raises an interesting question: What, exactly, are these well-formedness conditions, and how should they be represented in the context of language description?

We must look for the answer outside linguistics proper. If we examine examples [12]–[14], repeated here,

- [12] Fui a Campo Grande com minha irmã. (Company)

- “I went to Campo Grande with my sister.”

- [13] Fui a Campo Grande com meu carro novo. (Instrument)

- “I went to Campo Grande with my new car.”

- [14] Fui a Campo Grande com a maior pressa. (Manner)

- “I went to Campo Grande in [lit.: with] great haste.”

we see that the filtering is due to common well-formedness conditions derived from our general view of the world, as applied to the meaning of the lexical items involved.

To repeat, this kind of information is not linguistic, and has nothing directly to do with the structure of any particular language; a description of the language need not represent such facts about things of the world. The fact that the com-phrase cannot mean Company in [13] is not part of the lexicon or grammar of the language, and it would make little sense to include such information in the valency of the verb ir “go,”[11] or in the grammatical matrix of the lexical item carro “car,” or in the description of the grammar of the Portuguese language. These well-formedness conditions are independently needed, and come for free, so to speak, for purposes of linguistic description. Let us call these conditions schematic filters. They operate at a cognitive level stricto sensu, and the reason why we do not understand my new car as Company in [13] is the same that prevents us to think that a person takes his car on a trip for company.

All this can be readily tested by introspection; formal evidence is harder to find. But we need have no compunction about the controlled use of introspection, which is a universal resource in linguistic research, although not always acknowledged.[12] This explanation can be tested by submitting the relevant structures to a certain number of subjects and verifying their understanding of them. If, say, 9 out of 10 subjects agree that com minha irmã “with my sister” must be Company in [12], com meu carro novo “with my new car” must be Instrument in [13], and com a maior pressa “in great haste” must be Manner in [14], we will have evidence which is, to my mind, conclusive.

Schematic filters are conceived as applying to all cognitive representations, automatically; only those that pass the well-formedness test are acceptable. This amounts to saying simply that what we say is supposed to make sense.[13]

9.4.5 Lexical Representation of Prepositions

Each preposition is, therefore, marked as to the semantic role or roles it can express. As for prepositions that convey diathetic roles, the best analysis is not to represent these roles in the semantic component of their items at all, analyzing them as a mere formal requirement of the verb. Thus, the lexicon does not state that de can express Goal in sentence [11]; this is left to the valency of the verb aproximar “come near,” and the requirement of de is considered an idiosyncrasy of this verb—in other words, an exception. These few prepositions, then, have the possibility of null semantics, in certain lexically conditioned situations.

Of course, semantic roles do not exhaust the semantics of prepositions: there are good reasons to analyze in, on, under, in front of, and behind as bearers of the role Location, yet they differ in the details of the location they refer to. These details must be represented in the meaning of each individual preposition, but they have nothing to do with valency.

9.4.6 Context-Sensitive Prototype Rules and the Diathesis

When a prepositional phrase gets a particular thematic relation because it is, say, in a sentence with a verb of motion, we can say that its role is determined in some sort by the verb—for instance, English on, which denotes a Goal with verbs of motion. After all, its role depends on the verb, or on some of its features—and, therefore, occurrence in this construction defines two subclasses of verbs, the ones that can occur in it (that is, verbs of motion) and the ones that cannot. Then, is this complement to appear in the diathesis, according to the criteria given above?

The answer must be negative, because the relation assigned to the phrase is expressible by general rules. It is not, then, a strictly idiosyncratic feature, and this authorizes us not to include it in the diathesis. For example, take

1. [21]

Chegamos em Curitiba de noite.

- “We arrived at Curitiba at night.”

Here em marks the Goal, because the verb, chegar “arrive,” denotes motion. Compare with

1. [22]

Manuela morava em Curitiba.

- “Manuela lived in Curitiba.”

The role of em Curitiba in [21] depends on: (a) the seme “motion,” present in the schema ARRIVE, evoked by the verb chegar “arrive”; and (b) the prototypical role conveyed by the preposition em. From the point of view of the verb, then, there is no idiosyncrasy, strictly speaking; what idiosyncrasy may exist is in the preposition, which selects a particular set of roles as prototypical. This means that the role of em Curitiba in each of these sentences can be derived by rule: if the schema contains the seme “motion,” the role is Goal, if not it is Location. Consequently, if we fail to include these locational phrases in the diatheses, the right roles will still be assigned.

This is different from the case of

1. [23]

Manuela pensou em Curitiba.

- “Manuela thought about Curitiba.”

where the thematic value of the prepositional phrase is entirely dependent on the particular lexical item pensar “think,” which takes em NP as the expression of the Content; but this is not reduceable to rule, since it only happens with one or two verbs (e.g., falar “speak”), and does not depend on a prototypical role expressed by em.

We conclude that em Curitiba in [21] and [22]—unlike the same phrase in [23]—is not part of the diatheses realized by these sentences.

9.4.7 Previous proposals

It must be said that the analysis proposed above is not entirely new. Similar proposals have been made in past years, although to my knowledge none is identical to the present one in its details. I have no intention of going over the vast literature on the semantics of prepositions, but I feel I must mention some relevant previous work, to show that there is, after all, some convergence of views in this matter.

One example is Bennett (1975). Bennett criticizes Lindkvist’s (1950) paper, where Lindkvist,

recognizes five senses each of on and in. According to that analysis, at is supposed to have a different meaning in each of the following: at the door, at the station, at Oxford Street, at the Old Bailey. From the point of view of the present analysis, the differences reside in the context of the preposition rather than in at itself.

[Bennett 1975, p. 65]

Except for the intimation that the preposition would have no meaning at all, Bennett’s comment expresses something close to what I am proposing here; one might add that there is no way to stop Lindkvist’s analysis from growing to more than five meanings, since no two contexts are precisely identical. This has to do with the difference between what we actually understand—as a result of several competing processes, linguistic and extralinguistic—and what is grammatically relevant and part of the structure of the language. Bennett, prudently, does not take a stand on whether context is sufficient to explain meaning differences in all cases, but rather leaves open

[...] the question of whether or not spatial uses of each preposition can be accounted for in terms of a single sense.

[Bennett 1975, pp. 65–66]

The answer will depend on the examination of many cases. There are concrete examples that delimit the range of readings of some prepositions; this survey must be broadened to cover all relevant cases. What Bennett terms “context” can now be expressed more precisely as elements of the schema evoked by the constituents of the sentence or the phrase. For instance, the semantic difference between at the station and at the door can be explained by the fact that the schema evoked by station describes a building, therefore something one can be inside of, whereas door evokes a schema which excludes this reading, forcing the interpretation “in front of.”

Tyler and Evans (2003) seem to adopt a similar position, judging by the following:

Our account of polysemy holds that a linguistic form is paired at the conceptual level, not with a single meaning, but rather with a network of distinct but related meanings. Hence, the meanings associated with a particular form constitute a semantic network. However, it is important to note that not all usages are contained within the semantic network.

[Tyler and Evans 2003, p. 7]

This position is basically correct. My only objection is against the requirement that the several meanings of an item be related; some prepositions, like com, seem to mark widely distinct ETRs: I see no close similarity between “company” and “manner,” for instance. Bechara (2006) analyzes all occurrences of com “with” as expressing varieties of the schematic relation “co-presence”:

[...] in cortar o pão com a faca [‘cut the bread with the knife’] [...] one understands that the knife not only was “present” to the event of “cutting the bread”, but was the “instrument” utilized in order to perform the action.

[Bechara 2006, p. 298; my gloss]

But this looks unlikely to me: being present at the event is a general relation that applies to the Agent, the Patient and to several other possible relations. I believe we must be prepared to admit that a preposition can be truly polysemous, and does not necessarily relate all of its readings to one basic one. In Bechara’s example, I prefer to attribute to com the role Instrument, and leave it at that.

This objection only applies to the attempt to treat all prepositions in this manner; the similarity applies, no doubt, in some cases. Extralinguistic factors interfere all the time, so that it is better to speak of a “network of knowledge,” not necessarily semantic in the linguistic sense. The relevant knowledge often cannot be seen as part of the semantic structure of the language.

Tyler & Evans make a distinction between readings which are “instantiated in long-term memory, and hence persist in the semantic network,” as against readings that “are created on-line in the course of regular interpretation of utterances” (2003, p. 7). I agree with this if it is understood as saying that, except in cases of fixed expressions and collocations such as sem dúvida “no doubt,” all cases are elaborated online on the basis of preexisting coded semantic markings. Both Bennett’s and Tyler and Evans’s approaches point to the same general direction and are basically compatible with the analysis proposed in this book.

9.4.8 Homonymy or Polysemy?

Methodologically, my position relative to the analysis of these examples can be defined as starting from an assumption of radical homonymy, and aiming at radical polysemy. It should be understood, however, that neither extreme is taken as the “truth.” The best solution is almost certainly somewhere in between: we start from homonymy and progress towards polysemy as far as we can; that is the optimum point. And I suspect that it will include a little of each—that is, some prepositions will have a small set of semantic roles, irreduceable to each other, and of course these roles will undergo elaboration, yielding a large set of ETRs.

About homonymy vs. polysemy, Tyler and Evans comment that

The homonymy approach suffers from a number of weaknesses when we attempt to account for words such as over. First, it ignores any systematic relationships among the distinct meanings associated with a single linguistic form. This stands in sharp contrast to a growing body of work [...] which demonstrates that systematic, rule governed relationships do exist in the lexicon.

[Tyler and Evans 2003, p. 5]

This criticism only applies to homonymy conceived as the only situation to be adopted. But we can perfectly well conceive of both situations as coexisting in the semantics of a single lexical item, so that no radical homonymous or polysemous solution is to be contemplated. We saw that com “with” is associated with a set of semantic roles (Company, Instrument, Manner), apparently not derivable from each other; and, besides, each of these roles is elaborated into highly elaborate relations such as “with a hammer” or “in haste”. That is, Tyler and Evans are right in pointing out the existence of “systematic, rule governed relationships,” but this does not exclude the existence of autonomous relationships associated with lexical items by chance.[14]

Tyler and Evans point out a second deficiency of what they term the “homonymy position,” namely, that it

[...] takes a narrow synchronic view. That is, it fails to represent language as an evolving system whose changes over time are largely constrained in a motivated, principled manner. The synchronic semantic network associated with a lexical item is a historical product.

[Tyler and Evans 2003, p. 5]

It certainly is a historical product, like everything else in language; but this does not mean it cannot be described in its synchronic aspect at a given moment in time. It may be that the several semantic roles expressible by com “with” are the development of one common role—or not: this is an empirical question that only specific research can answer. Tyler and Evans go on to state that

[...] it is reasonable to assume that at an earlier stage in the language, a form such as over had fewer distinct, conventionalized meanings associated with it;[6] thus, many of the uses now conventionally associated with the form at one point represented novel uses. The homonymy approach begs the question of why it should be the case that a speaker would choose to use a particular established form in a novel way, rather than coining a new phonological string altogether.

[Tyler and Evans 2003, p. 5; footnote 6 omitted]

I am not sure I follow their reasoning here. The “begged” question has nothing to do with language use at a given synchronic stage, and to my mind is not relevant at this point. Regardless of what our ancestors did in centuries past, nowadays over (as Portuguese com) has a set of “primary” meanings, and this is what must appear in a description of the language as it is today.

Tyler and Evans have still another objection against the homonymy approach:

Finally, the homonymy approach fails to explain the ubiquity of the phenomenon. Every spatial particle of English demonstrates multiple senses. [...] The homonymy approach argues that this too is accidental.

[Tyler and Evans 2003, p. 5, p. 6]

Here too, they seem to consider a purely homonymous hypothesis. Even after we exclude the (very great) effect of elaborations, some homonymy may remain. But now we must take into account the effect of underdetermination: language (i.e., its users) must use a few prepositions, certainly less than a hundred, in order to convey a much greater number of relations. Then, just as run occurs in she ran two miles and also in she runs her own business, the language must make do with the same preposition in in two stages, in the kitchen, in second place, in perfect harmony, in fire, and so on. It may be impossible to derive all these, and other, readings of in from one primary meaning. One may comment that what is ubiquitous is the need to use words in many, often unrelated, meanings.

References

1. Bechara, E. (2006). Moderna gramática portuguesa [Modern Portuguese grammar]. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.

2. Bennett, D. C. (1975). Spatial and temporal uses of English prepositions. London: Longman.

3. Cunha, C. (1976). Gramática da língua portuguesa [Grammar of the Portuguese language]. MEC-FENAME

4. Jackendoff, R. S. (2002). Foundations of language—Brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5. Levi, J. (1975). Nonpredicate adjectives in English. PhD dissertation, University of Chicago.

6. Lindkvist, K.-G. (1950). Studies in the local sense of the prepositions IN, AT, ON and TO in modern English. Lund series in English, 22. Lund: Munksgaard.

7. Magueijo, C. (1980). Introdução ao grego micénico [An introduction to Mycenaean Greek]. Lisboa: Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica.

8. Norman, D. A., & Bobrow, D. G. (1975). On the role of active memory processes in perception and cognition. In C. N. Cofer (Ed.), The structure of human memory. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Company.

9. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

10. Perini, M. A., & Othero, G. d. Á.. 2011. Córpus, introspecção e o objeto da descrição gramatical [Corpus, introspection and the object of grammatical description] Signo, 35(59), 2–12.

11. Rosch, E. (1973). On the internal structure of perceptual and semantic categories. In T. E. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language. New York: Academic Press.

12. Talmy, L. (2007). Foreword. In M. González-Márquez, I. Mittelberg, S. Coulson, & M. J. Spivey (Eds.), Methods in cognitive linguistics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

13. Taylor, J. R. (1989). Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

14. Tyler, A., & Evans, V. (2003). The semantics of English prepositions: Spatial scenes, embodied meaning and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Footnotes

1

This might be more precisely called a valential prototype; here I refer to it simply as a prototype.

2

See an example of nonprototypical de in Sect. 9.4.1 below.

3

Counting only forms current in spoken Brazilian usage.

4

Fazer “make” and trazer “bring” also have this irregularity, but they also have several others.

5

See Perini (2015, p. 273 ff) for a full discussion of this point.

6

Counting by constructions.

7

I owe this objection to Oliver Gobbo.

8

I do not distinguish between simplex and compound prepositions; they behave identically for our purposes. The glosses given, in terms of English prepositions, are only approximate, as there are significant differences between the semantics of individual prepositions in the two languages.

9

I refer to grammatically expressible features of the verb. The whole sentence is also subject to well-formedness filters, which are not linguistic in nature: for instance, a sentence like the Universe began 14 billion years ago does not admit of a Company complement, for nonlinguistic reasons.

10

Also “part of a whole,” as in gosto de carro com ar condicionado “I like cars with air conditioning”: this may be another prototypical role for com. On the other hand, it patterns syntactically like Company/Instrument and has probably done so for a long time: “part of a whole,” “company,” and “instrument” are coded by the same form (morphological case) already in Mycenaean Greek (13th century BC), cf. Magueijo (1980, p. 181 ff).

11

Fui is the past tense of ir.

12

See Sect. 4.8; also Perini and Othero (2011). Talmy (2007) presents a very clear assessment of the uses of introspection in linguistic analysis.

13

I have not seen this device applied to the semantic of prepositions, but the schematic filter idea itself is not new (see following section). In this connection I recall reading Levi’s (1975) dissertation, where she handles the meaning of nonpredicate adjectives in a somewhat similar manner.

14

Or as a result of historical processes which are beyond our capabilities of stating.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_10

10. ETRs and Semantic Roles

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Assignment by defaultComplement vs. adjunctCore vs. peripheral rolePrototype ruleSemantic role

10.1 How Far Can Assignment by Default Go?

An obvious question now is this: How far can assignment by default go? When do we need to specify a semantic role in a diathesis, either by idiosyncratic marking or by prototype rule? Can we discard semantic roles and their attribution in diatheses entirely, and reduce them all to the bare syntactic structure?

The answer is negative: we cannot do without semantic roles in all cases. But, on the other hand, the delimitation of the situations where semantic role specification is needed is something that will have to be established by detailed research of individual cases. Let us then consider the first part of the problem: showing that the postulation of a semantic role is needed for some constituents in the structures of the language. There is a lot of evidence for this.

- First, we have prototype rules, which specify the prototypical role of certain syntactic functions and prepositions. For instance, we can say, for Portuguese, that the Agent is prototypically coded as the subject; in fact, a survey of 133 constructions that include the Agent showed that it is the subject in 131, or about 98% of cases. This must of course be included in the grammar of Portuguese; but it can be stated only in terms of the schematic semantic role Agent, never in terms of particular ETRs like “eater,” “writer,” and “kicker”. The rule is correspondingly stated as Agent<>VSubj. Assignment by default obviously fails to work in this case: it is the role Agent, not any ETR, or any set of ETRs, that is assigned to the subject of most constructions by this rule.

- Another kind of prototype rule is the ones (there are several) that specify the prototypical role of prepositions. For example, com, usually translated as “with,” can prototypically convey Company, Instrument, or Manner. In the sentence

1. [1]

Cortei o queijo com uma faca de plástico.

- “I cut the cheese with a plastic knife.”

the com-phrase is clearly the Instrument; Company and Manner are filtered out because they result in ill-formed meanings. The same occurs in

1. [2]

Anulei o argumento com alguns exemplos claros.

- “I annulled the argument with some clear examples.”

that is, com alguns exemplos claros is still the Instrument, which can be attributed again to the presence of the preposition com.

But the elaborate relations (ETRs) are different in the two sentences: using a knife is a very different event from using some examples. Yet there is no reason to postulate two different rules to account for this difference. If we start from a schematic notion of Instrument (“something which is used in order to attain an aim”), the difference can be readily derived from the different contexts pictured in the two sentences, provided only that we know the difference between an example and a knife. Other similar examples are easy to find, and they end up showing how we come to elaborate images starting from schematic roles. We must conclude, then, that semantic roles like Company, Instrument and Manner are indispensable for stating the prototypical roles of prepositions, otherwise important generalizations will not be captured.

• We may add the case of thematically transparent prepositions; for instance, the preposition por causa de “because of,” which can be said to mean Cause. But in the sentences

1. [3]

Ela chorava por causa do gatinho.

- “She cried because of the kitten.”

and

1. [4]

Ela se elegeu por causa das contribuições clandestinas.

- “She got elected because of clandestine contributions.”

we certainly have two very different kinds of relations. Yet they both have a causative component, and this seems to govern the possibility of using por causa de. We may then analyze the corresponding complement in both sentences as having the semantic role Cause, which elaborates into different relations according to context. Here again we need semantic roles in order to reach a convenient analysis; and only by using semantic roles can we characterize por causa de as a transparent preposition.

•Another example comes from exceptional verbs; take Portuguese apanhar, which means something like “take a beating,” as in the sentence

1. [5]

O Chelsea apanhou do Arsenal.

- “Chelsea took a beating from Arsenal.”

Here the subject is the Patient, which is quite exceptional for a construction including an Agent[1]; and the Agent is represented by a prepositional phrase with de. No general rule can apply here, since this is the only verb in the language to appear in this particular diathesis. And, furthermore, world knowledge cannot help us distinguish who won and who lost, since the situation described is reversible. But apanhar may refer to several kinds of events, and in all cases the immediate causator of the event is coded as de NP, which shows that they are to be unified at some level. The only way to describe the speakers’ use of the verb apanhar is through a diathesis including semantic roles, namely:

1. [6]

VSubj>Patient   V   de NP>Agent

An ETR cannot occupy the place of the Agent because apanhar refers to several different situations: a team beating another, someone spanking someone else, or someone defeating someone else at an argument. Therefore, the diathesis must mention the Agent, not some particular ETR.

The case of apanhar is unique in Portuguese, but there are other less exceptional cases where semantic role specification is required. For instance, we saw that a few verbs have a Patient complement introduced by the preposition com, as for instance

1. [7]

A polícia acabou com o jogo.

- “The police ended [with] the game.”

But the verb acabar also has several readings: “end (an event),” as above, but also “damage,” as in

1. [8]

Você acabou com minha bicicleta.

- “you have damaged (with) my bike.”

and so on. But in all cases the syntax of the complement is the same, and in order to state the rule we must use a general relation: the complement introduced by com is the semantic role Patient, not an ETR like “ended thing” or “damaged thing.”

•We also need to mark the prepositional complement explicitly as the Agent in the passive construction; in a sentence like

- [16] O bolo foi comido pelas formigas.

- “The cake was eaten by the ants.”

the prepositional phrase pelas formigas “by the ants” is the Agent, and this must appear in the diathesis, since this covers a variety of ETRs: “eater,” “writer,” “breaker,” “seer,” and so on. The diathesis is[2]

- [17] VSubj>Patient   V   NPart>Event Result   por NP>Agent

In situations like the ones described above, then, assignment by default, which can only add ETRs to a cognitive representation, is not sufficient to properly describe the construction in general terms, and we need the role Agent as well.

•Another argument for semantic roles comes from the obligatory occurrence of certain complements. For instance, the verb morar “live, reside” requires a complement of Company or Location (sometimes also Manner). Taking Location, we have

- [18] O João morava na casa amarela/perto da ponte/atrás da igreja/em cima do meu apartamento ….

- “João lived in the yellow house/near the bridge/behind the church/above my apartment ….”

The same requirement is made by other locational verbs, like ficar “stay,” estar “be,” se encontrar “be located,” all of which require a complement of Location,[3] elaborated as different ETRs. Yet it seems that we have the same requirement in all these cases; and this requirement must be stated in terms of the role Location.

Basically the same phenomenon can be observed with other verbs, like colocar “place,” which requires a Theme and a Goal; the latter can be represented by many different ETRs, all of them elaborations of the semantic role Goal:

- [19] Coloquei os papéis na gaveta/debaixo da cama/ao lado da TV/aqui ….

- “I put the papers in the drawer/under the bed/besides the TV/here ….”

Verbs that behave like colocar in this respect are pôr “put,” jogar “throw,” enfiar “insert,” derramar “pour,” and others. Here again we see the need for semantic roles in order to state the properties of these verbs.

•There are generalizations valid for the whole language which cannot be stated except by using semantic roles. The most conspicuous is the one stating that an Agent cannot be a nonsubject NP (i.e., an object). No exceptions are known to this rule; it works regardless of the particular ETR that appears in each case, and therefore requires the semantic role Agent for its formulation.

The opposition between semantic roles and ETRs is subject to the following criterion: semantic roles are linguistic units, and are relevant for the application of grammatical rules, whereas ETRs are cognitive elements, not visible to grammar. This distinction is put into function by applying the two criteria seen in Sect. 3.4.1, namely, the Criterion of Necessity and the Criterion of Semantic Similarity; we thus avoid dealing with fuzzy and vague distinctions, and can make definite assertions about the grammar of the language.

The examples given above show that there is sufficient evidence for the postulation of semantic roles—our examples above provide evidence for Agent, Patient, Company, Instrument, Manner, Cause, and Theme, and there are certainly others just as well founded. This shows the way to the eventual construction of the list of semantic roles in existence in the language. These roles are necessarily elaborated into ETRs, so that the roles themselves never show in the data: for instance, in Jim sang we have (at a grammatical level) Jim as the Agent, and also (at a cognitive level) Jim as the “singer”. ETRs are part of the data, and some of them are elaboration of semantic roles, some are not. The examination of many such cases will reveal which thematic relations are grammatically relevant—which will give us, at the end, the list of semantic roles for the language in question.

10.2 Core and Periphery

10.2.1 Nature of the Opposition

I have been referring to core variables, which contrast with peripheral ones. This point has relevance, since it partially conditions assignment of roles and ETRs, and deserves a digression to explain it more fully.

We know that variables are components of a schema that may be bound by other schemata, or schema complexes. Thus, the schema EAT has the core variables “eater” and “eaten thing,” both expressed in the sentence

- [20] Jim ate the pizza.

Jim, or rather the corresponding schema, binds one of the variables of EAT (the “eater”), and the pizza binds another, the “eaten thing.” The result is a cognitive representation. Now, there are still other variables that may relate to this schema, and receive syntactic expression, because one can say

- [21] Jim quickly ate a pizza yesterday in the kitchen.

There are reasons to believe that variables are not equally salient cognitively. Some of them (core variables) are part of the definition of eat—or, more precisely, are ingredients that help distinguish the schema EAT from other schemata. The others (peripheral), although they are compatible with the schema, do not characterize them against other schemata expressing some kind of action. The meaning of eat has ingredients marking it as a verb of action, invented[4] in order to express the relation between an “eater” and an “eaten thing”.

The action of eating must happen in time and space, and it may accommodate modifications of manner, company, and so on. But none of these circumstances characterizes eat as a unique item, being instead common to a wide range of schemata denoting action, event, or state. Returning to the informal characterization used above, the verb eat was not invented to express the place or the moment in which an event occurs, but to relate, in a specific way, an “eater” and an “eaten thing”.

10.2.2 Review of the Literature

The distinction between definitory (core) ETRs and peripheral ones, or something very similar, appears frequently, often implicit, in the literature. For example, Bugarski’s (1968; apud Bennett 1975, p. 2) distinction between tight and loose constructions, as well as the degrees of cohesion mentioned by Chomsky (1965), seem to me to arise from the same perception of coreness in ETRs. Chomsky’s passage deals primarily with syntactic cohesion, but he also mentions semantic relations when he states that in the sentence he decided on the boat on the train

the second Prepositional-Phrase [...] is simply a Place Adverbial, which, like a Time Adverbial, has no particular connection with the Verb, but in fact modifies the entire Verb Phrase or perhaps the entire sentence.

[Chomsky 1965, p. 101]

We can mention in this context the traditional distinction between one-place predicates, two-place predicates, and so on, which take only core relations into account. Fillmore (1970) says that the difference between KILL and DIE is that the former has two arguments and the second only one. He is obviously considering core semantic relations, because these schemata (and their corresponding verbs kill and die) may co-occur with complements of time, location, manner, and so on, which for some reason do not count.

Another example is found in Dik (1980, 1989), who starts from a similar idea when he distinguishes the nuclear predicate-frame, “which defines [the predicate’s] most important semantic and syntactic properties” (1980, p. 5). As seen, he lumps together syntactic and semantic properties, which I prefer to consider separately. Dik (1989) makes an opposition between the nuclear frame and satellites, which are “terms that provide additional information” (apud Santana 2009, p. 112). This is very close, if not identical, to the core–peripheral dichotomy which is used here.

Pustejovsky (1995) represents the semantics of lend as

- lend [...]

- CAT = verb

- SEM = Ro (θ_1, θ_2,θ_3)

- ARGSTR = ARG_1 = np [+ financial_institution]

- ARG_2 = np [+ money]

- ARG_3 = np [+ human]

[Pustejovsky 1995, p. 35]

It is symptomatic that Pustejovsky does not include time or location in the definition of lend, although a loan always occurs somewhere and sometime. What he does is select the variables with definitory value for the verb in question, disregarding the ones that express more general circumstances. This depends on the particular schema (and verb) under analysis: although “location” is peripheral for lend, for the verb morar “live, reside” (as in eu moro em Manhattan “I live in Manhattan”), “location” would be core, since this verb was invented to relate a located entity (generally human) and a location.[5]

Jackendoff (1990, p. 45) represents the semantics of run as an event made up of the motion (GO) of a thing in a path. He does not mention that the event must necessarily take place at a moment in time, and can include circumstances of cause, purpose, and manner. The latter semantic ingredients are left out because they are not part of the individual characterization of run—in our terms, because they are not core elements in the respective schema.

Langacker, speaking of the verb slap, states that

one cannot conceptualize an act of slapping without making some kind of mental reference to the entity doing the slapping and the one receiving it [...]

[Langacker 1991, p. 286]

and refers to these entities as “salient facets of [the verb’s] semantic structure,” which entails the recognition of other, not so salient, facets.

Culicover and Jackendoff say that

As part of its meaning, a verb specifies a certain number of semantic arguments—entities intrinsically involved in the situation that the verb denotes.

[Culicover and Jackendoff 2005, p. 173]

It is the case to ask what “intrinsically” means in this context.

The same restriction to certain ETRs is found routinely in dictionaries. For instance, Borba’s (1990) dictionary of regencies of Portuguese gives for matar “kill” a subject agent/causator and an animate object, without mentioning time or location, elements essential to the action of killing, but which are not core.

Something very similar, perhaps identical, to the distinction between core and peripheral variables is the distinction between core and peripheral frame elements included in Framenet:

We classify frame elements in terms of how central they are to a particular frame, distinguishing three levels: core, peripheral, and extra-thematic. [...] A core frame element is one that instantiates a conceptually necessary component of a frame, while making the frame unique and different from other frames. For example, in the Revenge frame, AVENGER, PUNISHMENT, OFFENDER, INJURY, and INJURED_PARTY are all core frame elements because an avenging event necessarily includes these participants. One cannot imagine an act of revenge that is not preceded by a (perceived) offense or one that is not directed against anybody.

[Ruppenhofer et al. 2006, p. 26][6]

This has certainly to do with the core–peripheral opposition. But there is a difference: the explanation in terms of necessary inclusion is not sufficient because any revenge also must occur at some time and place, and yet Ruppenhofer et al. do not include these relations as part of the core of the frame REVENGE. On the other hand, I agree with Ruppenhofer et al.’s statement that core elements are what makes the frame unique and different from other frames; this is the basis of the definition.

Ruppenhofer et al. (p. 26) also state that “[w]hen an element has to be overtly specified, it is core.” But this is a syntactic criterion, and besides it is often governed by informational factors without grammatical import; it cannot be used in the definition of a semantic function. It would be significant to find that core elements are always necessarily overt—but this statement does not make sense if “core” is defined using conditions on overt occurrence. Furthermore, the statement is not true: core elements can be omitted in many cases (e.g., the girl is reading), and there are cases in which peripheral information must be present. As for the third category, extra-thematic, I found it irrelevant for grammatical analysis, and do not include it in my proposal.

Talmy (1996, p. 238) apparently has the same opposition in mind when he speaks of “conceptual elements and interrelations” that can be viewed as components of an event frame, as opposed to other elements which are “weakly evoked, or not evoked at all”.

Something very close to Talmy’s “weakly evoked” elements is found in Hirsch’s observation that

the knowledge most often needed is also the most directly available and is, so to speak, right at the surface of the schema. Other parts of the schema are “deeper” and take longer to retrieve.

[Hirsch 1987, p. 57]

As seen, the opposition core–peripheral appears very frequently in the literature, and may be considered classic. It is apparently related to a strategy of cognition which selects some features as definitory, perhaps in a functional sense: for instance, a verb exists primarily in order to account for a specific semantic task.

10.2.3 Experimental Proof

An experiment, reported in Lima et al. (ms), shows essentially the same phenomenon. Seventy-nine subjects (undergraduates at UFMG) were asked to produce sentences containing particular verbs; 80 verbs were used in the test. Each subject received 40 verbs, randomized to avoid a fixed presentation order, and was asked to produce one sentence with each verb. Some problematical results were excluded (sentences that did not include the verb; passive sentences; sentences including subordinate clauses, not included in the study). In four cases it was necessary to distinguish radically different readings of the same verb (e.g., coçar “itch” vs. “scratch”). The final results included a total of a little over 2400 sentences, containing a total of 74 verbs. Each sentence was analyzed in terms of the semantic roles expressed in the complements; and for each verb (or reading) the percentage of complements with each semantic role was computed.

For example, with abrir “open” the Patient occurred in 100% of the sentences; Time occurred only in 2.6% (for a total of 38 sentences with this verb). This was interpreted as meaning that Time is peripheral with respect to the valency of abrir. The total distribution of roles found for abrir is the following:

- abrir
“open”

- Agent 100% [N: 38]

- Patient 100% [N: 38]

- Goal 7.9% [N: 3]

- Beneficiary 7.9% [N: 3]

- Cause 2.6% [N: 1]

- Time 2.6% [N: 1]

- [Total N: 38 sentences]

This shows a neat distinction between a group of roles with very high occurrence (Agent and Patient) and a marginal group. The Agent and the Patient integrate the event schema evoked by abrir, whereas the marginal roles do not participate in the characterization of the event. It is important to note that this has nothing to do with the entailments of the schema: an opening event necessarily occurs at some point in time, and yet the role Time was expressed in only one sentence. We need a special criterion to distinguish these two sets of roles, and here it is proposed that these results reflect the opposition between core and peripheral roles.

The distribution found for abrir is typical, occurring with most verbs studied. About one third of the verbs also show an intermediate set of roles, which suggests that there are still other factors to study; but even in these cases the difference is neat between roles with a high percentage of occurrence and peripheral ones. For instance, for assustar “frighten” the role Cause appears as an intermediate one:

- assustar
“frighten’”

- Patient 93.7% [N: 30]

- Agent 65.6% [N: 21]

- Cause 25% [N: 8]

- Manner 9.4% [N: 3]

- Time 6.2% [N: 2]

- Instrument 6.2% [N: 2]

- [Total N: 32 sentences]

Even here, as seen, there is a set of roles with particularly high occurrence: the gap between the Agent (65.6%) and the Cause (25%) is evident. For our purposes, it is enough to assume that the first two are core and the remaining ones are peripheral.

The experiment shows that the opposition between core and peripheral semantic roles (or variables in the schema) is psychologically real.

10.2.4 Core vs. Periphery: General Traits

We can then conclude that variables in a schema can be analyzed in two groups, core and peripheral ones. This is shown by at least three orders of facts:

1. (a)

The basic semantic function of a verb (eat primarily relates an “agent” and a “patient”—not an “event” and the location or time it takes place in).

2. (b)

The extension of the circumstance for the verb in question (“time” is entailed by all and every event verb, while “agent” has a much more restricted distribution).

3. (c)

Immediacy of access, as shown by the experiment reported in Sect. 10.2.3.

There is a potentially weak link in the first of these reasons: the meaning of “primarily,” because it can be argued that in Jim ate the pizza in the kitchen one understands that Jim was in the kitchen at the time. Why is Location not the primary function of the verb eat? I think this can be solved by stipulating that the relation between Jim and the pizza, mediated by the verb, is profiled in the sense of Langacker (2008, p. 66),[7] and all other relations are informationally secondary.

There is also some evidence suggesting that core variables have priority in the assignment process; this may be just another aspect of their immediacy of access. An example is pensar “think” in Portuguese. This verb has a complement with the role Content which is coded as a phrase with the preposition em:

- [22] Ela não pensa em você.

- “She does not think of you.” [lit.: … in you]

Content is a core role for this verb; but of course it can also take peripheral roles such as Location, which is also marked (this time, prototypically) by em. Now, a sentence like

- [23] Ela está pensando no banheiro.[8]

is ambiguous, and can mean “she is thinking about the bathroom” or “she is thinking in the bathroom”; yet the first reading is clearly more prominent, and arises much more easily than the second. This may be because the core role (Content) has priority over the peripheral one (Location, which does not characterize pensar since it may occur with any event verb). The point calls for further research, but this seems to be a plausible explanation .

10.2.5 Complements and Adjuncts

Now, one may ask whether the difference between core and peripheral variables has some connection, or even is coextensive with, the traditional dichotomy between complements and adjuncts. I tend to answer in the negative. To explain this I must first discuss what may be understood as “adjunct” and “complement”—a poorly defined dichotomy in the literature.

The complement-adjunct dichotomy is variously defined in the literature, and it is often based on the optional or obligatory character of each complement. But optionality of occurrence depends on other factors, including discursive and informational ones, and in any case most “complements” can perfectly well be omitted, as seen in sentences like

- [24] Ela está lendo.

- “She is reading.” [omitted direct object]

- [25] Chegamos atrasados.

- “(We) arrived late.” [omitted subject]

and so on.

Furthermore, as pointed out by Bosque (1989), so-called adjuncts can be obligatory, as in[9]

- [26] Churches in Scandinavian countries are made of wood.

- [27] ∗ Churches in countries are made of wood.

The formal definition of “adjunct” often found in the literature is of no use to us. For instance, we find statements like

[...] adjuncts are Predicates that take as argument an expression belonging to a category [α] and build with it an expression of the category α. Thus, informally, an adjunct-adjective takes a noun as an argument and builds a new noun. An adverb takes a verb (or a sentence) as argument and builds a new verb (or a new sentence).

[Franchi 2003, p. 157]

or

Adjunction of β to α creates a new instance of α which immediately dominates α and β.

[Sells 1985, p. 46]

which says the same thing.

This looks at first sight like a very precise definition. But how are we to identify instances of category α? The sequence

- [28] Al is reading.

is a complete sentence. If we add a long book, we get

- [29] Al is reading a long book.

and this is again a complete sentence. Yet we do not conclude that a long book in [29] is an adjunct.

To make a long story short, I think that what we need is not the complement-adjunct opposition in its traditional conception, but rather an opposition helping to distinguish what is to be notated in the diatheses of each verb and what is freely added, without regard for the properties of the verb.

We record in the diathesis what is idiosyncratic to a particular verb, and cannot be derived by rule. Thus, a sentence like

- [30] Eu gosto de você.

- “I like you.” [lit.: I like of you.]

elaborates a diathesis where the preposition de “of” is present. This diathetic information is needed because coding the Stimulus as de NP is exceptional, and depends on the properties of the verb, gostar “like.” Also, the sentence

- [5] O Chelsea apanhou do Arsenal.

- “Chelsea took a beating from Arsenal.”

represents a diathesis where the subject is explicitly marked as Patient, since if it is not the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj will mark it as the Agent, which is incorrect. We have then an opposition between syntactic or semantic elements that must appear in the diathesis and elements that do not, and can be derived by general rules. This does not exactly correspond to the traditional complement-adjunct dichotomy, in any of its formulations, but is necessary, easy to apply, and useful for the analysis.

The conditions under which a complement can be omitted, as well as the requirement that it appear in the diathesis, are not dependent on its coreness status. One example is the subject, which normally, perhaps always, codes a core variable, yet can be omitted (in Portuguese) under conditions that have to do with the possibility of recovering its reference—for instance, third person subjects are normally expressed, but first person ones can be omitted quite freely. In

- [31] Joaquim/ele chegou tarde.

- “Joaquim/he came late.”

the subject can be omitted only in anaphoric context. Now, in

- [32] (Eu) cheguei tarde.

- “(I) came late.”

the subject can be expressed or not, at will, regardless of context. Yet in all cases the subject expresses a core variable of the verb schema.

10.3 Summary

As seen, then, assignment by default is a consequence of the requirement that stipulates that no eligible constituent can remain without an ETR.[10] And this requirement in its turn presumably derives from a condition that stipulates that a sentence must have a discernibly unified meaning; this, of course, has to do with the communicational function of language.

This mechanism deals adequately, in many cases, with the aims of the interpretation system: relating phonological sequences to cognitive representations. Assignment by default works alongside other devices, such as diatheses and prototype rules, in order to reach that aim. As seen, these devices make up a heterogeneous set, of which some parts are linguistic stricto sensu (diatheses, rules) and some are more broadly cognitive (assignment by default).

Role assignment is crucially dependent on the elaboration process, described in Chap. 3 above. The main question, as far as the aims of this book are concerned, is how to relate actually perceived ETRs with complements present in the syntactic structure of sentences. When a complement is assigned a semantic role, the role must be put into correlation with an ETR, as for instance when an Agent is correlated with a “drinker.” This is an elaboration process, ultimately based on the recognition that “drinker” is a hyponym of Agent: a “drinker” is an Agent (although of course not all Agents are “drinkers”). The correlation thus established works in production, when the speaker selects which syntactic function or preposition will be used to code the desired ETR; and also in reception, when the hearer starts from a constituent in a given syntactic function or containing a given preposition in order to find out which ETR is to be assigned to it.

When no semantic role is involved—that is, in cases of assignment by default, as for the object in

- [33] Jim sang the National Anthem.

the elaboration process is skipped over, since the schema already contains the relation in its most elaborate form, and it is this form that the receptor needs in order to build the cognitive representation. In such cases the diathesis and prototype rules have a diacritic function, and are instrumental in singling out, by exclusion, the constituent, if any, that is to be assigned an ETR by default. Thus, in [33] Jim is marked as the Agent (by prototype rule), and the National Anthem, left blank, gets the remaining ETR, namely the “sung thing,” directly taken from the schema SING. Note that the latter assignment does not properly depend on any kind of linguistic knowledge but only on the receptor’s knowledge of what singing is, information that is present in the respective schema.

References

1. Bennett, D. C. (1975). Spatial and temporal uses of English prepositions. London: Longman.

2. Borba, F. d. S. (Ed.) (1990). Dicionário gramatical de verbos do português contemporâneo do Brasil [Grammatical dictionary of verbs of contemporary Brazilian Portuguese]. São Paulo: Ed. UNESP.

3. Bosque, I. (1989). Las categorías gramaticales: relaciones y diferencias [Grammatical categories: Relations and differences]. Madrid: Síntesis.

4. Bugarski, R. (1968). On the interrelatedness of grammar and lexis in the structure of English. Lingua, 19, 233–263.

5. Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: MIT Press.

6. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

7. Dik, S. C. (1980). Studies in functional grammar. London: Academic Press.

8. Dik, S. C. (1989). The theory of functional grammar. Dordrecht: Foris.

9. Fillmore, C. J. (1970). The grammar of hitting and breaking. In R. Jacobs & P. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar. Waltham: Ginn. Reprinted in Fillmore (2003).

10. Franchi, C. (2003). Teoria da adjunção: predicação e relações ‘temáticas’ [Adjunction theory: Predication and ‘thematic’ relations]. Revista de estudos da linguagem, 11(2). Belo Horizonte: UFMG.

11. Hirsch, E. D., Jr. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York: Vintage Books.

12. Jackendoff, R. S. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge: MIT Press.

13. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar—Vol. II, Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

14. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

15. Lima, M. L. C., Pinha, V., & Perini, M. A. (n.d.) (ms). Relações temáticas nucleares e periféricas : um estudo experimental [Nuclear and peripheral thematic relations: an experimental study].

16. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

17. Pustejovsky, J. (1995). The generative lexicon. Cambridge: MIT Press.

18. Ruppenhofer, J. et al. (2006). Framenet II: Extended theory and practice. Retrieved from <Framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu>

19. Santana, L. (2009) Nominalizações como construções valenciais [Nominalizations as valential constructions]. In E. Pezzati (Ed.). Pesquisas em gramática funcional [Research in functional grammar]. São Paulo: Editora UNESP.

20. Sells, P. (1985). Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories. Stanford: CSLI.

21. Talmy, L. (1996). The windowing of attention in language. In M. Shibatani & S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Grammatical constructions: Their form and meaning. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Footnotes

1

This construction is one of only two that escape the prototype rule Agent<>subject.

2

In the analysis adopted here, the verb in the passive is ser “be” (foi in example [16]); the NPart (nominal participle) is comido eaten”, and is not part of the paradigm of the verb comer “eat” being related to it by derivation. This means that sentence [16] does not contain the verb comer “eat,” but the verb ser “be.” This nontraditional analysis is fully argued for in Perini (2015, pp. 273–276); here the only feature that interests us is the role of the prepositional complement.

3

Often as a choice from a short list; thus, estar “be” occurs with a complement of Location or State, as in estou em casa “I am at home” ~ estou cansado “I am tired,” but never without a complement.

4

I use this metaphor to express the basic informational function of this lexical item.

5

This applies more rigorously to the Portuguese verb morar; English live has a wider semantic value, including “be alive.”

6

“Frame” in this context corresponds to our “schemata.”

7

I return to the grammatical relevance of profiling in Sect. 11.6.

8

No is the agglutination of em plus the definite article o.

9

Bosque’s examples are in Spanish; I give English translations for convenience.

10

I return to this requirement below (Sect. 11.4). Some constituents are not eligible for bearing ETRs as they are understood here: for instance, a negative particle.

Part IIIDescriptive Application

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_11

11. What Is a Patient?

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Change of statePatientProfilingTransitive construction

11.1 The Notion “Patient” in the Literature

In the following chapters I examine some cases where assignment by default may contribute the solution of some serious difficulties relative to semantic role definition and delimitation. I start with the role Patient, which is poorly defined in the literature, so much so that often one has to work with vague, nonoperational definitions.

Ever since Fillmore’s (1970) distinction between “change-of-state” and “surface-contact,” linguists have been aware that something did not work with the traditional notion of Patient, then understood as applying to the object in both.

1. [1]

The boy tore the document.

and

1. [2]

The boy kissed his grandmother.

There are both syntactic and semantic differences, as pointed out by Fillmore. An attempt to identify the various notions commonly labeled Patient is,

[...] the surface-contact verbs can also be said to identify a “change of state” of some kind. In a purely abstract sense, a cheek which has once been slapped is different from the same cheek before the slapping took place.

[Fillmore 1970, p. 130, note 9]

This only works indeed at a “purely abstract” level; I hold that we need more concrete notions if we are to make explicit the relation between syntactic structures and cognitive representation.

Subsequent work has failed, in my opinion, to come up with a satisfactory definition of Patient; definitions usually circle around the notion of “change of state,” for instance in what follows:

If an argument undergoes, is changed by, or is directly affected by a predicate, it is a patient. This choice of terminology reflects the fact that a patient suffers the situation, or comes out changed as a result of the action of the predicate.

[Frawley 1992, p. 210, his italics]

But this leaves aside many traditional cases of Patient; we need either a better, more comprehensive definition for this role, or a recognition that we are dealing with more than one thematic relation. As seen below, I favor the latter solution.

Some authors have proposed more complex definitions (Talmy 1988; Dowty 1991), but they lack, I think, a clear distinction between semantic roles and ETRs. And some, like Langacker, recognize the complexity of the relation, without coming up with a really operational definition:

If the prototypical object is a patient, it can also be a mover (I threw it), and experiencer (I offended her), or an unaffected participant with the semantic role of zero (I remember him).

[Langacker 2008, p. 370]

He seems then to view these ETRs as varieties of the role Patient (but the “zero” semantic role is still to be defined).

We may also mention Levin and Hovav (2005), who observe that

the potential fragmentation [of roles/MAP] associated with objects is much more severe than with subjects; with subjects it can be constrained to a handful of roles, such as agent, experiencer, instrument, and natural force.

[Levin and Hovav 2005, p. 40]

I take Levin and Hovav’s “roles associated with objects” as equivalent to the several ETRs that actualize the Patient as traditionally understood.

Without going into an extensive review of the extensive literature on the subject, I present in the following sections my own attempt at a solution.

11.2 Difficulty of Defining the Patient

The failure of the current attempts to define the Patient suggests that what we have here is not a unified role, with a well-defined semantic nucleus, but rather a set of relations difficult to bring together under one common denominator.[1] In what follows I try to deal with this problem, and arrive at an analysis that accounts for all cases of Patient while taking into account their evident semantic heterogeneity.

The traditional role Patient covers a very wide variety of ETRs. A preliminary survey shows, among others, the following ETRs analyzed as Patient:

“change in appearance, shape, or internal structure”

- quebrei o jarro. “I broke the vase.”

- abaixei o muro. “I lowered the wall.”

- o dia amanheceu. “The day broke.”

“beginning of existence”

- compus uma canção. “I have composed a song.”

“end of existence”

- a gasolina acabou. “The gas ran out.”

“instrument”

- abanei as mãos. “I waved my hands.”

“theme,” that is, the entity that undergoes motion

- arrastei a mesa para o quintal. “I dragged the table to the backyard.”

- o chapéu caiu no chão. “The hat fell on the floor.”

“goal”

- ele atingiu minha testa com uma pedrada. “He hit my forehead with a stone.”

“source”

- a multidão abandonou o estádio. “The crowd left the stadium.”

“surface contact”

- a menina acariciou o rosto da avó. “The girl caressed her grandmother’s face.”

and several others, more difficult to classify:

- aplaudi a decisão. “I have applauded the decision.”

- a escola não acompanha o progresso da ciência.

- “The school does not follow the progress of science.”

- os incas adoravam o sol. “The Incas worshipped the sun.”

- cantaram o hino nacional. “They sang the National Anthem.”

- convidei o chefe para um jantar. “I invited the boss for dinner.”

- ele usa óculos grossos. “He wears thick glasses.”

In some cases, no activity opposition can be seen, as in

- eu achei uma carteira na rua. “I found a wallet in the street.”

Schlesinger gives several additional examples in English, including report the incident, imitate the teacher, deny the charges, and describe the picture. About these relations he remarks that “many of them seem to be reserved for the specific verb and have not been given any label in the literature” (Schlesinger 1995, p. 165).

All this variety is trying to tell us something, and it seems difficult to bring all cases under one schematic role, keeping in mind that the Patient cannot be viewed as just a convenient label for several ETRs. The Patient is a semantic role, and as such it corresponds to a schema, with some cognitive coherence—in other words, a common relation must exist between all occurrences of this semantic role. The possibility remains open, of course, that the traditional cases of Patient correspond to more than one schema, in which case it will be analyzed as more than one semantic role, each of them reflecting a unified cognitive area, defined by a particular language within a specific domain. As a first step, we should take up the task inductively, starting from the data and following them wherever they lead. We may end up with several semantic roles other than the Patient, if some ETRs prove impossible to integrate into one schema. The best solution, in my opinion, involves both a semantic role and directly accessed ETRs.

11.3 Degree of Activity

It has been suggested that the Agent be defined as the more active entity and the Patient the less active one in a given scene:

Agents belong to the “active” realm—that of action, change, and force, of mobile creatures acting on the world. Here a willful human actor stands out as a paragon with respect to other active roles (like instrument, experiencer, or natural force). On the other hand, themes [that is, “patients”/MAP] belong to the “passive” realm of settings, locations, and stable situations, where objects with particular properties are arranged in certain ways.

[Langacker 2008, p. 370]

This entails the existence of several cognitive types of “patient”: the entity that changes state, the one that is touched, and so on. But we cannot look for the common content of the role only in the opposition to the Agent, that is, the Patient as a less active participant than the Agent. One reason is that we can have a sentence with a Patient without an Agent:

1. [3]

A gasolina acabou.

- “The gas ran out.”

1. [4]

O gato adoeceu.

- “The cat fell ill.”

In these sentences the Patient cannot be perceived in opposition to an Agent, which does not exist in the sentence and which is not even present in the schema. We should then search for an autonomous definition, not dependent on contrast with another role. And, once we reach a definition of Patient, we need to survey its ways of morphosyntactic coding, in order to ascertain its grammatical coherence within the structure of the language. Besides, defining the Patient merely as less active than the Agent will bring under the “patient” label many relations traditionally (and no doubt correctly) labeled otherwise: “location,” “time,” “goal,” “instrument,” “manner,” “source,” etc.

We need to draw the limits between the several ETRs usually analyzed as Patient, grouping some of them, if possible, under one label. Among these ETRs are: affected entities that change their internal structure, shape, or appearance (the Patient of break, paint, grow, crumple, etc.); entities that undergo contact, without a change in structure or appearance (caress, touch, kiss); entities that begin existence (write a book, compose a sonata); entities that cease existing (end a marriage), and several others.

There are also cases where the state-changing element accumulates another role, as in

1. [5]

Passei tinta branca na porta.

- “I spread white paint on the door.”

where the door changes state, and the paint seems to be an instrument. Here it is difficult to analyze the object (tinta branca “white paint”) as the Patient, which would be the most common analysis, and besides na porta “on the door,” although denoting something that changes state, is apparently also a location (a Path or a Goal).[2]

11.4 Assignment by Default as Part of the Solution

One possible hypothesis is that the variety of ETRs that appear in traditional Patient positions—partially listed above—is the effect of assignment by default.

Let us begin by remembering that the aim of language is to relate sounds and meanings—acoustic images and concepts, in Saussure’s (1916) words. Meaning is not understood merely as something attached to lexical items and other linguistic units, but refers to the evoked schema; schemata articulate into more complex cognitive representations. Thus, the verb greet evokes a schema more or less like the following:

Let us consider just core variables (“greeter” and “greeted entity”), shown above in the first line. Take the following example,

1. [6]

Jim greeted Sally warmly yesterday on campus.

We can understand a sentence as having two cognitive functions: (a) evoking a particular schema (here, GREET), and (b) binding the variables of this evoked schema with other schemata or schema complexes such as JIM, SALLY, YESTERDAY, ON.CAMPUS.[3] The final understanding of the sentence, in what interests us here, is ultimately made up of ETRs: in some cases, they are the result of the elaboration of semantic roles; in other cases, the connection is done directly with the schema (by default). In the above example, the subject, Jim, is the Agent, which gets elaborated into the “greeter”.

The object, Sally, is difficult to characterize in terms of a Patient, since Sally is not asserted to have undergone a change of state. I will explore the possibility that the constituent Sally has no grammatically determined semantic role but is directly filled in by the ETR present in the schema, “greeted entity.” For both the subject Jim and the object Sally the aims of the speech act are met, namely, a relation is established between a formal unit (subject NP, object NP[4]) and an elaborate thematic relation (“greeter,” “greeted entity”). In the case of the object, assignment is by default.

Assignment by default comes out cheaper than assignment by diathesis or by prototype rule because it involves no especially defined semantic roles—it connects the content (e.g., the reference) of a constituent with a semantic function that is already present in the schema. The presence of a “greeted entity” is a necessary part of our concept of greeting, formally represented as the schema GREET; it is part of our world knowledge, and if we can use it to describe a linguistic phenomenon, so much the better. ETRs are present in our memory, and we do not have to invent them for linguistic purposes; and they are part of the facts we deal with, just as phonetic sequences like [ɡri:t] are. On the other hand, semantic roles are part of the structure of particular languages, may vary from language to language, and depend on abstraction, adding therefore to the complexity of the analysis. This does not mean that they are not necessary in many cases, but it means that we should avoid them when possible, and present sufficient argument when they are eventually postulated.

ETRs are cognitive relations which, in principle, are present in the cognitive systems of speakers of all languages. Some ETRs are, I suspect, among the universal primes proposed by Wierzbicka (1988, 1996); but we need an added dimension, the linguistic significance of cognitive functions. Wierzbicka observes that it is not always possible to define these relations (1996, pp. 9–10), since they may have to do with abstract concepts (her example is the meaning conveyed by the conjunction if). We may add that they also have to do with rich and complex sensorial notions—for example, “biter” involves the use of teeth, “licker” the tongue, “kisser” the lips. This applies to ETRs, but not to semantic roles, which select features of ETRs and are often easier to define.[5] And, according to the hypothesis we are exploring, we do not even need a special rule in order to effect the connection between constituents and ETRs—it comes as a consequence of the requirement that no (eligible) constituent may lack an ETR.

This may require some explanation. Generative linguists devised a requirement called the theta criterion, usually stated as

[...] Each argument is assigned one and only one theta role.

[...] Each theta role is assigned to one and only one argument.

[Haegeman 1991 , p. 63][6]

The way it is stated, the criterion has problems, which do not concern us now; but it contains an important kernel of truth, namely, that no constituent eligible to have a semantic role (more precisely, an ETR) is allowed to go without[7]; let us call this the assignment requirement. It ensures that in sentence [6],

- [6] Jim greeted Sally warmly yesterday on campus.

after we mark Jim as the Agent, the constituents Sally, warmly, yesterday, and on campus cannot be left deprived of a cognitive relation within the schema evoked by the verb greeted. We must understand, for instance, yesterday as the “time” when the event of Jim greeting Sally occurred, not as some autonomous time; and so on. This is probably a consequence of the task this sentence is meant to perform, of building a cognitive representation of the scene the sentence describes: something happened involving Jim and Sally, and this happened yesterday, on campus, and whatever Jim did, he did it warmly. This set of relations would not make much sense if it were not connected to the central event evoked by the verb. Again, this is not a linguistic requirement, but a condition on the construction of cognitive representations that make unified sense.[8] An equivalent requirement is subsumed by Talmy (2000, pp. 88–89) under his cognitive coherence function; he explains that

[...] such structuring is necessary for a disparate quantity of contentful material to be able to cohere in any sensible way and hence be amenable to simultaneous cognizing as a Gestalt. That is, without such structuring, any selection of lexically specified concepts concurrently juxtaposed by a sentence would tend to be only a collection of elements, rather than elements assembled so as to convey an integrated idea or thought complex.

[Talmy 2000, p. 89]

This adequately summarizes the task of the assignment requirement as here conceived.

We have already seen that there are good reasons to assign the subject of [6] the semantic role Agent, instead of using an elaborate ETR like “greeter.” For one thing, there is a rule stating that the Agent is prototypically coded as the subject, and it cannot be stated in terms of elaborate ETRs. It works for the subject of greet, eat, jump, read, speak and hundreds of other cases. The elaboration path between the “immediate initiator of an event” (that is, the Agent) and the “greeter” is straightforward: all we have to do is add the kind of event one is speaking about, and come to a more elaborate “immediate initiator of a greeting event,” namely, the “greeter.”

Now, when we come to the object and its presumed role of Patient, the relations are, as we saw above, extremely varied, and show no common semantic area. Just as in the case of the subject (and all complements), what we ultimately understand is a highly elaborate ETR; but here many of these ETRs are not readily amenable to more schematic roles. If we leave these complements unspecified for semantic role, and analyze [6] as a realization of the symbolic structure

1. [7]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP

the role of the unattached NP will be filled in by default, from the information contained in the schema. If this solution generalizes for many, or conceivably all, traditional cases of Patient, we will have an explanation of why this is such a composite role: it is not a semantic role as usually understood, but a reflex of the necessarily varied ETRs found in the individual schemata.

In order to come to a more intuitive notion of the process, let us return to the basic aim of sentence production: to assist in the construction of a cognitive representation. When someone hears the sentence

- [6] Jim greeted Sally warmly yesterday on campus.

the subject, Jim, may be assigned the role Agent by the prototype rule: greet evokes the schema GREET, which has the ETR “greeter” as one of its variables; since this ETR can be recognized as an elaboration of the role Agent, we can assume that the rule Agent<>VSubj applies here, and Jim is therefore the Agent.

The subject is then assigned this semantic role, resulting in,

1. [8]

Jim greeted Sally warmly yesterday on campus.

Ag

Now we still have four constituents to deal with, namely Sally, warmly, yesterday and on campus. Two of these are transparent: warmly can only convey Manner, and yesterday Time. As for on campus, although the preposition is somewhat opaque (cf. on the roof, on paper, the beer is on me, on the telephone, a book on morphology, etc.), most of these readings are excluded before a locative NP, here campus. The only remaining one is Location, because any other will result in an ill-formed cognitive representation—for instance, if we take on as a synonym of about, as in a book on morphology, it will yield a very strange reading in the context of this sentence. We come then to

1. [9]

Jim greeted Sally warmly yesterday on campus.

Ag   Manner   Time  Location

Now only the NP Sally is left. We might assign it the role Patient, but this will bring in the difficulties already mentioned in Sect. 11.2, since Sally is not understood as having undergone change as a result of Jim’s greeting. The closest role available for Sally (among traditional ones) would be Recipient (of a message), but even this does not seem really adequate: after all, Sally does not receive any information from Jim, unlike in Jim told Sally about the crisis.

Suppose we are really at a loss about which semantic role to assign this NP. But a semantic role has no usefulness in itself—it is a means to relate a constituent with an ETR, that is, with one of the variables in a schema here evoked by the verb. In the schema evoked by GREET, with the structure shown in Fig. 11.1, we see that there are two core variables, namely, “greeter” and “greeted entity”; of these, the former is already bound by Jim—that is, we understand Jim to be the greeting person. The only remaining gap in the cognitive representation is the “greeted entity,” and the only remaining role-less constituent is Sally; therefore, the system will associate the two. And, since no ill-formedness in the cognitive representation results, we understand Sally to be the greeted person. Of course, this ETR could not be assigned to yesterday, for instance, even if it were not thematically transparent, because the result would make no sense (yesterday cannot refer to a “greeted entity,” normally a person), and would be filtered out.

Fig. 11.1

Simplified form of the schema GREET

This solution avoids the problem of finding a semantic role for Sally—once the ETR is found, the aims of the system have been achieved, and it does not matter in which way this was done. A constituent can perfectly well lack a semantic role, since semantic roles are theoretical constructs to be adopted or not according to descriptive convenience; but it cannot lack an ETR, regardless of its ultimate origin—by elaboration from a semantic role present in the linguistic structure, or by direct binding from the variables present in the evoked schema. This is so because ETRs are not theoretical constructs, but cognitive relations directly apprehensible by introspection, and essential components of a cognitive representation.[9] By any of these devices, a well-formed cognitive representation can be generated, and communication (as far as these factors are concerned) is successful. The diathesis underlying sentence [6] can be now reduced to

1. [10]

VSubj   V   NP

where the role of the subject is provided by the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj; the role (or rather the ETR) of the object is filled in by default. And the roles of the other three constituents come as a consequence of their thematic transparency; these constituents do not even appear in the diathesis, since both their syntax and their semantic role are independent from the valency of the verb greet.[10]

11.5 Defining the Patient

11.5.1 Definition

We can now define the Patient as simply the entity that undergoes a change of state, understanding this change in a rather broad way: after the event, the changed entity shows some ascertainable difference from what it was before. This means that a sentence like

1. [11]

A vidraça quebrou.

- “The windowpane broke.”

will go on being analyzed as an actualization of the ergative construction,[11]

1. [12]

VSubj>Patient   V

On the other hand, the sentence

1. [13]

Os incas adoravam o sol.

- “The Incas worshipped the sun.”

can be analyzed as

- [10] VSubj   V   NP

where the subject will receive its role (Agent) by effect of the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, and the object NP will be filled in by default, with reference to the schema WORSHIP. Once complete, with the thematic relations assigned, the analysis of [13] is then

1. [14]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP>“worshipped thing”

We thus split the traditional cases of Patient into two groups: some cases show a semantic role, defined as the entity that changes state; and in the remaining cases we have a set of (very many) ETRs, taken from the schemata evoked by each verb. This way one escapes the main problems traditionally met in the definition of Patient, which is understood as a set of ECTs which are semantically similar and coded similarly in the language. The remaining cases must be left open, and will be taken care of through assignment by default. This is a derivation of Fillmore’s insight that

[...] all of the verbs [like break, bend, fold, shatter, crack/MAP] assert that the object identified by the X element is understood as undergoing some kind of change of state. That is, the X element is understood as essentially different after the event symbolized by the verb has “happened” to it. But this does not seem to hold for the verbs [like hit, lap, strike, bump, stroke/MAP]. For the purposes of this essay, we shall refer to verbs like break and bend as “change-of-state” verbs, and verbs like hit and slap as “surface-contact” verbs. The surface-contact verbs assert the occurrence of some physical contact between the two objects, but from the use of these verbs one cannot necessarily infer that the objects have undergone any essential change.

[Fillmore 2003, p. 130]

Fillmore goes on to suggest that “[i]n a purely abstract sense, a cheek which has once been slapped is different from the same cheek before the slapping event took place” [p. 130, fn 9]. He does not commit himself to this view, and does well, for it is a suspicious procedure; he sticks to “essential” change of state. Fillmore refers exactly to what we call occurrence or not in the ergative construction (although of course his analysis is different in its details). He is careful enough to include some hedging (“one cannot necessarily infer,” “essential change”). In part, these hedges may be rephrased in terms of prototypes, since there is certainly a strong correlation between expressing “change of state” and being able to occur in the ergative construction.[12]

If we simply force the whole set of ETRs usually called Patient into a ready-made role, in order to account for all traditional examples in which it appears as the object, we will be in fact defining a semantic role in terms of a syntactic form associated with it, which would make it something very different from a semantic role. This is the danger against which Jackendoff (1987) warns:

Given the importance [of thematic relations/MAP], it is crucial to find out what they really are, so that they have an independent life of their own. We must be sure we are not invoking them as a thinly disguised wild card to meet the exigencies of syntax.

[Jackendoff 1987: 371]

11.5.2 The Transitive Construction

A problem remains, which may be merely notational, but in any case requires some attention: we now have two alternative ways to represent the construction actualized as

1. [15]

As crianças quebraram a vidraça.

- “The children broke the windowpane.”

Here we have an object Patient, since the windowpane undergoes change of state. How are we to represent this construction? It may be

1. [16]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP>Patient

or simply

1. [17]

VSubj>Agent   V   NP

In [16], the object has a semantic role, defined in the construction, eventually elaborated as the “broken thing”; but if we choose [17], the object will be filled in by default from the schema BREAK, and will be again understood as the “broken thing”. That is, both analyses yield the same result, and I see no empirical way to decide between the two. If we turn to a formal solution, we see that [16] is simpler in that it allows the general statement that all cases of “entity that changes state” are analyzed as Patient; and [17] is simpler in that it is shorter. As a temporary solution, I decide for [16], since it appears to make possible a greater simplification of the analysis. We shall, then, analyze all cases of VSubj V NP, where the final NP is a Patient, as the elaboration of a diathesis including an explicit marker Patient.

11.6 Profiling and the Notion “Change of State”

The notion “change of state” still needs work, and here I can only give some hints on how to carry it out. The main problem is that this is an extremely general relation, and can be seen, for instance, in both the subject and object of

1. [18]

Jim ate the lasagna.

Here we can, if we insist, see a change of state in Jim, who is no longer hungry after the event. The way out of this situation is, I believe, to restrict the ETR “change of state” to cases where this semantic component is clearly profiled.

As for the notion of profiling, we may have recourse to Langacker’s explanation:

As the basis for its meaning, an expression selects a certain body of conceptual content. Let us call this its conceptual base. [...] The profile can also be characterized as what the expression is conceived as designating or referring to within its base (its conceptual referent).

[Langacker 2008, p. 66]

Talmy (2000) seems to refer to the same phenomenon, which he terms factors in the attentional system. This case would fall under his mapping of attention,

by which the particular parts of an attentional pattern are mapped onto particular regions of the reference scene. By the operation of this factor, a single attentional pattern can be overlaid in different ways onto the same referent scene.

[Talmy 2000, p. 77]

We can now hold that Jim ate the lasagna does not select Jim’s change of state, but rather the lasagna’s, as part of the conceptual base of the sentence—in other words, this sentence speaks about what happened to the lasagna rather than to Jim. Perhaps with the collaboration of the fact that Jim is an active participant, and the lasagna is not, we select the lasagna as the element that is profiled as undergoing a change of state. This is no doubt facilitated by the fact that the subject is assigned Agent by the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, so that the remaining complement that undergoes a change of state becomes characterized as noninitiator of the event, probably one of the features of the Patient. One might perhaps compare Jim ate the lasagna with the (slightly awkward) sentence the lasagna fed Jim, which denotes the same referent scene, but the attentional pattern centers on Jim’s change of state. This condition of course probably also applies to other semantic roles; this must still be researched. Schlesinger (1995, p. 46 ff) gives some examples that can be interpreted as cases of profiling. But both Schlesinger’s analysis and mine are too sketchy to warrant a sure conclusion. There is room for further research here, based on a wider basis of data.

Another detail to be discussed is the possibility that some kinds of change of state be excluded from the definition of Patient; in particular, I refer to cases of “change of psychological state.” This is discussed in Sect. 12.1 of Chap. 12.

References

1. Dowty, D. (1991). Thematic proto-roles and argument selection. Language, 67(3), 547–619.

2. Fillmore, C. J. (1970). The grammar of hitting and breaking. In R. Jacobs & P. Rosenbaum (Eds.), Readings in English transformational grammar. Waltham: Ginn. Reprinted in Fillmore (2003).

3. Fillmore, C. J. (2003). Topics in lexical semantics. In Form and meaning in language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

4. Frawley, W. (1992). Linguistic semantics. Hillsdade: Lawrence Erlbaum.

5. Haegeman, L. (1991). Introduction to government and binding theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

6. Herbst, T., & Schüller, S. (2008). Introduction to syntactic analysis. Tübingen: Narr.

7. Jackendoff, R. S. (1987). The status of thematic relations in linguistic theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 18(3), 369–411.

8. Langacker, R. W. (1991). Foundations of cognitive grammar—vol. II, Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

9. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10. Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

11. Levin, B., & Hovav, M. R. (2005). Argument realization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

12. Saussure, F. d. (1916/1969). Cours de linguistique générale [A course in general linguistics]. Paris: Payot.

13. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14. Talmy, L. (1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49–100. Reprinted as Chap. 7 of Toward a Cognitive Semantics (MIT Press 2000).

15. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Volume I: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge: MIT Press.

16. Van Valin, R., Jr. (2005). Exploring the syntax-semantics interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

17. Wierzbicka, A. (1988). The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

18. Wierzbicka, A. (1996). Semantics: Primes and universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Footnotes

1

Neither Herbst and Schüller’s (2008) Æffected nor Van Valin’s (2005) undergoer is sufficient to account for all cases traditionally analyzed as Patients.

2

ADESSE (entry PASAR I) gives, for the sentence pasa su propia mano sobre su mejilla “(he) passes his own hand on his cheek,” an object Theme (móvil) and the prepositional phrase Path (trayecto). I return to this example below, suggesting that ADESSE’s may be the best analysis for this case.

3

This of course does not exhaust the meaning conveyed by the sentence, but focuses on our particular cut of it.

4

I call a nonsubject NP the object, for short.

5

They are not always easy to delimit, but that is another problem.

6

For present purposes, we may understand “theta roles” as equivalent to “semantic roles”.

7

The converse situation, an ETR without an overt complement, is acceptable, and results in schematic filling-in, as seen in Sect. 7.6.4.

8

The assignment requirement predicts the unacceptability of ∗Jim ate the pizza the sandwich: with eat, the system provides no way to assign roles to both nonsubject NPs, so one of them remains role-less, which is not allowed.

9

They actually correspond to Langacker’s (1991) “pre-linguistic conceptions grounded in everyday experience.”

10

Of course, they must appear in a complete symbolic analysis of the sentence, but here we are concerned only with the diathesis underlying sentence [6].

11

The ergative is also called “inaccusative” and sometimes “inchoative” (Levin 1993). This analysis will be reassessed below in Sect. 13.10.

12

There are apparently a few exceptions, like deflorar “deflower,” but these seem to be very rare.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_12

12. Experiencer, Theme, Goal, and Patient

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

ElaborationExperiencerGoalPatientTheme

12.1 Is the Experiencer a Patient?

In this chapter I discuss some additional problems about the role Patient, concerning its delimitation with respect to other traditionally defined roles.

Experiencers and Patients behave in somewhat parallel ways in sentences that integrate Fillmore pairs of transitive/ergative sentences; the possibility arises, then, of identifying these two roles, in view of the data of Portuguese. In sentences like

1. [1]

Os alunos desanimaram.

- “The students got discouraged.” (lit.: The students discouraged.)

1. [2]

Esse professor desanimou os alunos.

- “This teacher discouraged the students.”

the constituent os alunos “the students,” normally analyzed as the Experiencer, refers to an entity that undergoes change of psychological state, and, according to our current definition, could be analyzed as a Patient, following the definition we arrived at in 11.5.[1] These sentences are reminiscent of cases where a verb admits its Patient either as the subject (ergative construction) or as the object (transitive construction), as in

1. [3]

Os alunos engordaram.

- “The students put on weight.” (lit.: The students fattened.)

1. [4]

A comida da cantina engordou os alunos.

- “The food in the cafeteria fattened the students.”

The two pairs of sentences are very similar, both syntactically (VSubj V vs. VSubj V NP) and semantically: in [1] and [3], we find a subject that undergoes a change of state and no Agent; in [2] and [4], a subject Agent and an object that undergoes a change of state. Furthermore, the semantics is also compatible: the Patient is the “entity that undergoes a change of state,” and the Experiencer (in these examples) is a first-degree elaboration of this same relation, namely, the “entity that undergoes a psychological change of state.” There are, then, grounds to analyze the Experiencer in these cases as a case of Patient. If we adopt this solution, the ETR “experiencer” will be derived from the Patient by elaboration, which seems possible. And the analysis will be the same for [1] and [3], and for [2] and [4]; occurrence in these two particular constructions will define a well-delimited group of verbs, all having to do with change of state, psychological or not.

If we conflate the Experiencer plus the Patient, sentences [1] and [3] will be analyzed as representing the ergative construction, namely,

1. [5]

VSubj>Patient  V

while sentences [2] and [4] will be analyzed as instances of the transitive construction,

1. [6]

VSubj>Agent  V  NP>Patient

or rather, simply

1. [7]

VSubj  V  NP>Patient

with the subject being assigned the role Agent by the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj.[2]

In spite of all these favorable indications, however, there are obstacles to the identification of the Experiencer as an elaboration of the Patient. The first problem lies in the central component of the definition, the ETR “change of state”: while it seems to be an integral part of the role Patient, in the case of the Experiencer it frequently comes by elaboration, under the influence of the verbal aspect.

Take the sentences

1. [8]

O cristal quebrou.

- “The crystal broke.”

1. [9]

Cristal quebra.

- “Crystal breaks (i.e., crystal is breakable).”

In both sentences we have a change of state, factual in [8] and potential in [9]. This semantic difference has no effect on the change of state, which is clearly present in both sentences. Now, in

1. [10]

Aline adorou essa sopa de cebola.

- “Aline loved this onion soup.”

1. [11]

Aline adora essa sopa de cebola.

- “Aline loves this onion soup.”

we have a (psychological) change of state in [10]: Aline underwent an experience whereby she became aware of having loved the soup. But in [11] one cannot perceive any change of state, not even potential: Aline loves onion soup, even if she never has the luck of having any.

This suggests that “change of state” is a fixed feature in [8] and [9], attributable to the valency of quebrar “break,” but in [10] it is in part derived from the verbal aspect, so that we cannot really say that adorar “love” assigns “change of state” to its subject. Rather, the change appears whenever the verb denotes a process, but it does not in sentences that denote a state. The same effect is found with other verbs of psychological change of state, like gostar “like,” detestar “detest,” and odiar “hate.” At the very least, we must admit that not all cases of “experiencer” are derivable from the Patient. Therefore, it may be more prudent to keep the roles of Patient and Experiencer apart, and define the Patient as “the entity that undergoes a nonpsychological change of state.”[3]

Another indication that this is the best solution is the strong tendency observed in the modern Portuguese language to code the Experiencer as the subject. Although we have subject and nonsubject Experiencers, with all psychological verbs a construction is available with the Experiencer as subject; and with perception verbs the Experiencer is always the subject.[4] Furthermore, with psychological verbs the construction with Experiencer as subject and Stimulus as a prepositional phrase seems to be gaining ground: it is sometimes more colloquial, and with some verbs the version with Stimulus as subject is common mostly in the written style. For example,

1. [12]

O show agradou o menino.  (colloquial or written)

- “The show pleased the boy.”

1. [13]

O menino agradou do show.  (colloquial)

- The boy pleased of the show

- “The boy was pleased with the show.”

Also,

1. [14]

O trovão assustou o cachorro.

- “The thunder startled the dog.”

1. [15]

O cachorro (se) assustou com o trovão.

- The dog  startled  with the thunder

- “The dog was startled by the thunder.”

In the case of [14] and [15], both versions are acceptable in all registers.[5] There is then evidence for a tendency to code the Experiencer as the subject, possibly a historical trend in Portuguese. On the other hand, the Patient, while frequently occurring as a subject, also occurs as an object, and there is no discernible tendency to favor the former coding over the latter one. These facts would be difficult to state if we identified Patient and Experiencer; therefore, I will keep these roles separate, and define the Patient as applying only to nonpsychological (i.e., physical, social, etc.) change of state. The Experiencer will go on being defined as the “entity of which a mental event or state is asserted,” and the Stimulus as the “factor causing the emergence of a mental event or state”; Experiencer and Patient will keep being analyzed as separate semantic roles.

This does not exclude the possibility that Experiencer and Patient be somewhat related semantically—but semantic relations between roles are a matter for future research, and for the moment being I have little more to say about the question. Pairs like [1]–[2] and [3]–[4] will then have to be analized separately; they may be related, but I see no way to express this putative relationship in the context of the present analysis.

12.2 Patient or Goal?

12.2.1 A Problem

In a sentence like

1. [16]

Eles abasteceram a loja.

- “They have provisioned the shop.”

it seems adequate to understand that the shop is both the entity that changes state and the end of a motion (the merchandise is carried to the shop)——then, it would be the “patient” + “goal.” This double specification does not have to appear in the diathesis, since it seems possible to derive one from the other by elaboration. The question now is, are we to elaborate the “goal” from the “patient,” or vice versa? That is, which of these ETRs represents the semantic role to be recorded in the diathesis?

12.2.2 Derivations

The elaboration Patient ⊃“goal” is possible in cases where an entity changes state by effect of adding something brought from somewhere else. This is the case in

1. [17]

Eles encheram a pia de garrafas.

- “They filled the sink with bottles.”

The elaboration track may be as follows:

- a pia “the sink” in [17] denotes

1. (a)

the entity that undergoes a change of state;

(b)

the change is from “empty” to “full”;

(c)

the change is caused by the addition of something (bottles);

(d)

the filling thing must have come from outside (since it could not be generated inside the sink);

(e)

then, the filling thing is the “theme,” having undergone motion from outside into the sink;

(f)

then, a pia “the sink,” besides being the “patient,” is also the “goal.”

We thus come to the “goal”—but not to the Goal, which is a semantic role. The above track authorizes us to assign a pia “the sink” in [17] the semantic role Patient. This analysis agrees with sentences like

1. [18]

O incêndio encheu a casa de fumaça.

- “The fire filled the house with smoke.”

where we do not necessarily understand (d), (e), and (f), because the smoke may have been generated within the house, and was not brought from another location. There is therefore a meaning difference between [17] and [18], which need not be represented grammatically: in both cases the object is the Patient.

The opposite derivation, from Goal to “patient,” would run like.

- a pia “the sink” denotes

1. (a)

the end of the motion of a “theme”;

(b)

the motion is from outside to inside the sink;

(c)

the motion of the “theme” entails a change of state of the sink;

(d)

the change is from “empty” to “full”;

(e)

then, the sink, besides being the “goal,” is also the “patient.”

This derivation functions for sentence [17], but not for [18], or for

1. [19]

Essa bebida enche a gente de gases.

- “This drink fills one with gas.”

1. [20]

Essa meninada encheu a casa com gritos.

- “These children filled the house with their cries.”

Here the smoke, gas, or cries are generated within the location given and therefore cannot be understood as the “theme,” nor the location as the “goal.”

I conclude that the first derivation, starting from Patient, is the most adequate, and we can analyze [16] and [17], as well as [18]–[20], with an object Patient; this Patient is elaborated as the “goal” in some, but not all, cases, and this is governed by world knowledge, such as smoke can be generated within a house, but bottles cannot be generated within a sink. The elaboration of the Patient here results in an ETR complex made up of “patient” + “goal.”

12.2.3 Syntactic Correlations

We may now observe that in

1. [16]

Eles abasteceram a loja.

- “They have provisioned the shop.”

the behavior of a loja “the shop” is similar to the uncontroversial cases of Patient: the phrase is an object, and many of these verbs occur in transitive-ergative construction pairs. Occurrence in the ergative seems to work for abastecer “provision,”[6] and certainly does for encher “fill,” entupir “clog,” completar “fill up,” and others:

1. [21]

Eles encheram/entupiram/completaram a pia.

- “They filled/clogged/filled up the sink.”

1. [22]

A pia encheu/entupiu/completou.

- “The sink filled/clogged/filled up.”

If some of these verbs have no ergative, this is no real problem, since there are other verbs of (causation of) change of state in the same situation: for instance matar “kill,” comer “eat.” This exception has only to be marked in the respective valency—matar has a transitive diathesis, but no ergative.[7]

If the object in [16] and similar sentences has Patient as its role, the final analysis will allow us to include verbs like encher in the numerous groups of verbs admitting of the transitive–ergative alternation. On the other hand, the object of abastecer “provision” cannot be omitted:

1. [23]

∗Eles abasteceram. [eles>Agent]

- “∗They provisioned.”

This will have to be marked, for the moment being, as an idiosyncratic property of this verb, represented in its valency. This is done by including a diathesis with the object, and no diathesis without it.[8]

12.2.4 Theme as a Prepositional Complement

In sentences like

1. [17]

Eles encheram a pia de garrafas.

- “They filled the sink with bottles.”

1. [24]

Eles encheram a pia com garrafas.

- “They filled the sink with bottles.”

the preposition can be de or com, without any difference in thematic relation.

The prepositional complement looks a bit like an Instrument, but these sentences accept an additional Instrument phrase, as in

1. [25]

Eles encheram a pia de água com aquela mangueira fina ali.

- “They filled the sink with water with that thin hose over there.”

This suggests that de água “with water” in [25] should be the Theme. Note that [25] leaves it clear that the water ends up in the sink, so we have both a Theme and a “goal,” as expected. And, because the coding of a Theme as de/com + NP is quite exceptional, the diathesis for [17] ends up being

1. [26]

VSubj>Agent  V  NP>Patient  de NP>Theme

where the Theme complement is explicitly given with its specific preposition (a second diathesis with com NP>Theme is also needed, of course).

12.2.5 Identical Labeling of ETRs and Semantic Roles

In order to avoid the constant introduction of new terms, we have to refer to relations at different levels of schematicity with the same words: I use, for instance, both Goal for the semantic role and “goal” for the ETR. These relations are not identical: the semantic role is defined as the “end point of a motion,” but the ETR “goal” is much more rich and concrete: it includes the information present in the Goal, but also more information, linguistically nonsignificant but essential for the construction of a cognitive representation. In the present example, the “goal” is the end point of the motion of items into a sink, which cannot obviously be included in the definition of the role Goal. The ETR “goal” is a variable in a schema; it is a cognitive relation, not directly relevant for grammatical description, and it also incorporates contextual features, resulting in relations such as “into the sink” or “to New York.” These contextual elaborations are usually not included in the notation, but they are present, and vary from sentence to sentence, or rather from CR to CR. Just as we distinguish the “eaten thing” from the “broken thing” according to different evoked schemata, the “goal” is, in fact, a set of different ETRs and is not the same in Jim drove to NY and the cat jumped into the basket. If we keep all the differences, they must be, respectively, “goal of a drive” and “goal of a jump”—for that is what we find in the respective schemata, DRIVE and JUMP.

The “goal” in [17] is different from the identically named ETR found in the cognitive representation of

1. [27]

Eles abasteceram a loja de artigos de luxo.

- “They provisioned the shop with luxury items.”

For instance, [27] does not necessarily mean that the luxury items ended up inside the shop—they can have been kept in a separate warehouse—but [17] does not allow an interpretation where the bottles do not end up in the sink. Furthermore, in

1. [28]

Eles encheram a pia de água.

- “They filled the sink with water.”

it is understood that the sink is completely full, whereas in [17] no such understanding occurs: one normally assumes that there are spaces between the bottles. All this comes from the initial information provided by the semantic structure of the sentence, plus the semantic structure of the complements, plus general world knowledge, plus information coming from the linguistic or extralinguistic context. As seen, the semantic role is composed of a selection of some features present in the ETRs that can realize it, and it is this selection that is relevant for grammatical purposes. An ETR, on the other hand, is a part of the cognitive representation, made up of rich, complex chunks of meaning.

Use of identical labels for both semantic roles and ETRs is an inconvenience, but it is inevitable if we are not to multiply terminology beyond reasonable limits.

12.2.6 Cognitive Filters and the Elaborate Level

Semantic control devices (or filters) may, in principle, work at the schematic or elaborate level. I tend to favor the elaborate level, since such filters have to do with the well-formedness of cognitive representations; but in any case the point deserves some comment. Let us return to

1. [17]

Eles encheram a pia de garrafas.

- “They filled the sink with bottles.”

which is analyzed as

1. [29]

VSubj>Agent  V  NP>Patient  de NP>Theme

[29] does not represent the final comprehension of the sentence—only its lexicogrammatical analysis. The Patient present in [29] is elaborated into “patient” + “goal,” and this is what appears in the cognitive representation. Our judgments about the message a sentence conveys, or about its acceptability, are not based on the lexicogrammatical structure but on the cognitive representation, which is the final outcome of the comprehension process. Consequently, the cognitive representation derived from [29] contains, not a Goal, which would be a grammatically defined semantic role, but a “goal,” that is, an ETR resulting from the cognitive processing of the utterance. The hypothesis is that restrictions such as that goal complements tend to resist omission, take the elaborate levels in consideration, so that the rule that requires a “goal” when the “theme” and the “agent” are different does not care whether this “goal” is a semantic role or just the result of elaboration from another role (say, Patient). This is just a hypothesis at the moment, little more than a speculation; it must be investigated eventually.

References

1. Loredo Neta, M. (2014). Objeto direto: condições de omissão no português do Brasil [Direct object: conditions of omission in Brazilian Portuguese]. Belo Horizonte: Doctoral Thesis, UFMG.

2. Schlesinger, I. M. (1992). The experiencer as an agent. Journal of Memory and Language, 31, 315–332.

Footnotes

1

Schlesinger (1992) proposed that the Experiencer be analyzed as an Agent, which is untenable on both syntactic and semantic grounds.

2

Let us remember that in [5] the role Patient must be explicitly marked, in order to block the prototype rule.

3

This may sound a bit arbitrary at first, but it is the way the language chose to delimit the role Patient; and who are we to question the language’s decisions?

4

Márcia Cançado, p.c.

5

In writing, and for many speakers in speech as well, the reflexive, here se, is required.

6

For me at least um navio abastece em algumas horas “a ship is provisioned [lit.: provisions] in a few hours” sounds pretty good.

7

There may be semantic factors involved; for instance, unlike encher “fill,” matar “kill” is something that does not occur spontaneously; and there are indications that the ergative always expresses a spontaneous event.

8

Loredo Neta (2014) has found that “goal” complements tend to resist omission; this may be an explanation for this case, but I prefer to leave it open for the moment.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_13

13. Case Studies

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Force and resistanceIdentity of referencePossession relationsReciprocalsTopic sentences

In Sect. 10.1 we had to consider the question, How far can assignment by default go? and we saw that it can go very far indeed. In Chap. 11 we saw the application of the assignment by default hypothesis to the reanalysis of the traditional role Patient. I now proceed to consider some additional cases in which the hypothesis provides a better analysis than the ones currently in use. In some cases this is clear enough; in others, important points remain to be investigated, and all I can offer is a suggestion for future research.

13.1 Constructions of Force and Resistance

13.1.1 ETRs “Force” and “Resistance”

Let us start by examining some constructions occurring in the valencies of verbs of two subclasses, among which

- Subclass A: ceder “yield,” resistir “resist”

- Subclass B: vencer “win, defeat,” convencer “convince,” superar “overcome”

These verbs are associated with the ETRs “force” and “resistance.” “Force” is a factor that tries to make an event happen, and “resistance” is a factor that tries to prevent it from happening.[1] Some of the verbs given above assert the success of “resistance,” and some the success of “force.” Verbs in group A code the “resistance” as the subject and the “force” as a prepositional phrase with the preposition a:

1. [1]

A represa cedeu ao temporal. [2]

- “resist”  “force”

- “The dam yielded to the storm.”

1. [2]

A represa resistiu ao temporal.

- “resist”     “force”

- “The dam resisted [to] the storm.”

Group B includes verbs that code the “force” as the subject and the “resistance” as an object NP:

1. [3]

Meus argumentos superaram todas as objeções.

- “force”  “resist”

- “My arguments overcame all objections.”

1. [4]

O movimento popular venceu a inércia do governo.

- “force”  “resist”

- “The popular movement defeated the government’s inertia.”

1. [5]

Meus argumentos convenceram a assembleia.

- “force”  “resist”

- “My arguments convinced the meeting.”

As a first analysis we have, for verbs in Group A,

- VSubj>“resistance”  V  a NP>“force”

and for verbs in Group B,

- VSubj>“force”  V  NP>“resistance”

One question that arises now is whether we have to posit “force” and “resistance” as autonomous semantic roles, or instead derive them from existing roles. “Force” is certainly the most active participant, and might be an elaboration of Agent; and “resistance” feels closer to the Patient, since it refers to the entity that undergoes (or fails to undergo) a change of state.

However, I find it awkward to analyze “force” as an elaboration of Agent, because it is coded with verbs of Group A in a way that never occurs with currently known cases of Agent, namely, a NP. The fact that it occurs as a subject is not decisive, because this function codes a great number of roles. Analyzing the “resistance” as the Patient seems more promising: it refers to the entity asserted to undergo (or fail to undergo) a change of state. We may try to build tracks connecting these two relations, and if this proves possible we will substitute Patient for the “resistance” in the above formulas, leaving the remaining complement (be it the subject or the prepositional phrase) to be filled in by default.

13.1.2 Interaction with Negation

There is one (apparent) problem with this analysis. In

1. [2]

A represa resistiu ao temporal.

- “The dam resisted (to) the storm.”

our final understanding of the sentence is that the dam does not change state, and this could be taken as an objection against analyzing it as a Patient. But if so we would have to deny the presence of a Patient also in

1. [6]

Os vândalos não destruíram a parede.

- “The vandals did not destroy the wall.”

which does not feel right.

The answer is that the effect of negation must be neutralized when defining semantic roles and ETRs, and this applies not only to explicitly marked negation (as in [6], where the mark is the particle não) but also to negation when part of the meaning of a verb—as in the case of resist, which means something like “not yield.” We then have an Agent and a Patient in

1. [7]

Jim did not eat the pizza.

although Jim did not “do” anything, according to the assertion conveyed by the sentence. Similarly, we need a Location in

1. [8]

Jim never lived in Denver.

The idea is that even in a sentence like [8] we are making an assertion about a location (in Denver), namely, that Jim never lived there; and in [2] the assertion has to do with the dam as a Patient, and this feature of the sentence could be paraphrased as “it is not the case that the denoted event involves the dam as the Patient.” This is a general rule, valid for semantic negation in general; consequently, there is no problem in analyzing Jim as an Agent in [7], in Denver as a Location in [8], and the dam as a Patient in [2].

Schlesinger (1995) was the first to notice this phenomenon:

[...] negation and modals never cancel a feature. For instance, the lexical entry for catch has the features CAUSE + act + aff and CONTROL in one of the arguments. Therefore, these features are assigned to the subject, Barbara, not only in (35)a—where this seems to accord with the situation referred to—but also to the subjects of (35)b-[e], although there is no event actually going on over which Barbara might exercise CONTROL or the CAUSE of which she might be.

(35) a. Barbara catches the ball.

b. Barbara does not catch the ball.

c. Barbara can catch the ball.

d. Barbara might catch the ball.

e. Barbara would catch the ball (if she could).

[Schlesinger, 1995: 45; his numbering]

This is a semantic rule, taking into account the semantic ingredient “negation” (paraphrased as “it is not the case that”), and does not depend on the presence of a syntactically marked negative sentence. We should then analyze an item like resist as the semantic negative of yield; this shows occasionally in dictionary definitions; for example, the Portuguese dictionary Aurélio (1986) defines resistir as “não ceder” “not to yield.” The negative ingredient has a reversing effect on the assertion.[3]

There is further evidence that the rule is sensitive to semantic factors, rather than to syntactic constituents like the negative particle or modal verbs. One reason is that the permanence of the semantic role under negation means that valencies are not affected. Thus, in

1. [9]

O Alfredo mora com a Sônia.

- “Alfredo lives [resides] with Sônia.”

the complement com a Sônia “with Sônia” has the role Company, and is obligatory (as an alternative to Location) whenever the verb is morar “reside.” This complement fulfills the valency of morar if the verb is negated:

1. [10]

O Alfredo não mora com a Sônia.

- “Alfredo does not live with Sônia.”

and also if the preposition is sem “without,” which can be analyzed as a negative version of com “with”:[4]

1. [11]

O Alfredo mora sem a Sônia.

- “Alfredo lives without Sônia.”

and even if the complement is the word sozinho “alone,” which is also a way to express negative Company:

1. [12]

O Alfredo mora sozinho.

- “Alfredo lives alone.”

Since morar cannot appear without a Company (or Location) complement, these examples show that there is a Company complement in all of [10]–[12], and that the rule that “negation and modals never cancel a feature,” to use Schlesinger’s words, applies at the semantic level, and does not depend on the presence of a syntactically autonomous negative particle. Consequently, there is no problem in analyzing the subject in

1. [2]

A represa resistiu ao temporal.

- “The dam resisted (to) the storm.”

as a Patient, although at the level of cognitive representation the dam does not undergo change of state.

This can be formalized by stating that the negation in these cases applies to the whole proposition; that is, a sentence like

1. [6]

Os vândalos não destruíram a parede.

- “The vandals have not destroyed the wall.”

will have a semantic representation approaching

1. [13]

Not true (the vandals destroyed the wall)

Semantic roles are then defined as valid in the domain of the embedded proposition. Now, in

1. [2]

A represa resistiu ao temporal.

- “The dam resisted (to) the storm.”

the negation will have to be attributed to the semantic structure of the lexical item resistir “resist,” to be described as including the semantic ingredient

1. [14]

Not true (X yield to Y)

A similar analysis can be developed for modals with a counterfactual effect, as in Schlesinger’s examples (c)–(e).

The grammatical behavior of semantic roles under negation and modalization shows how grammatical relations are distinct, and to a certain extent independent, from ETRs. This shows the need for distinction between cognitive and lexicogrammatical spaces; it also shows that lexicogrammatical relations are needed in description. In the particular case described above, we must say that negation fails to affect the interpretation of the sentence as far as semantic roles are concerned, yet it does affect interpretation at the ETR level—since, after all, one must understand by [2] that the dam did not collapse. The result is curious: from [2] one gets that there is a Patient, but not that there is a “collapsing thing,” which is an elaboration of the Patient. Of course, this involves no real contradiction, since the only ingredient that goes into the cognitive representation is the elaborate one, where the dam did not collapse.

13.2 Partners and Reciprocals

Let us now examine some verbs which are called “reciprocal” in the literature (e.g., Godoy 2008). We should rather conceive of them as verbs which can appear in reciprocal constructions (and also, almost all, in nonreciprocal ones), such as casar “marry,” juntar “join,” concordar “agree,” divorciar “divorce,” misturar “mix,” unir “unite,” associar “associate,” noivar “engage,” and relacionar “relate.” Reciprocal constructions have the characteristic of including two participants having the same relation with the verb, on an equal footing: if A married B, then necessarily B married A, and so on.

13.2.1 Marry and mix

We start with two examples:

1. [15]

Magda casou com o professor. [5]

- “Magda married the teacher.”

1. [16]

O leite misturou com a água.

- “The milk mixed with the water.”

[15] denotes the establishment of a social relationship, [16] the establishment of a spatial relationship. At a more schematic level, both sentences admit of the semantic analysis

1. [17]

[BECOME X, Y <...>]

[17] does not distinguish [15] and [16] as assertions of a social and a spatial relation, respectively, because specification of the final state resulting from the process, represented as <...>, is missing. This final state can be informally expressed as “married” in [15] and “mixed” in [16].

An interesting hypothesis to be explored is that verbs like casar “marry” and misturar “mix” in [15] and [16] select the same semantic role: the same for both complements (subject and nonsubject), and the same for both verbs; the differences will then be derivable from the internal meaning of each verb. According to this hypothesis, both [15] and [16] would include the semantic role Partner, associated with the subject and the nonsubject complements. The construction underlying these examples will be then

1. [18]

VSubj>Partner  V  com NP>Partner

The role Partner, of course, cannot be simply defined as “participant in an event,” because this description would include the Agent, the Patient and several other roles which, after all, refer to participants in the event.

[18], as seen, would underlie sentence [15] and [16]. The semantic role (Partner) is the same for both complements. A similar solution, by the way, is already found in Framenet for some of these verbs: for instance, mix is referred to the frame Amalgamation, defined as “Parts merging to form a Whole”; marry is also described with the help of just one semantic role (“frame element”), but instead of Parts we find Partners.[6] The essential feature is present, namely, the identity of roles of the two participants and their definition in schematic terms.

13.2.2 An Alternate Hypothesis

But, unlike the pair Agent vs. Patient, which represent different relations, the two Partners have the same relation—whichever it is—with the schema as a whole. This symmetrical relationship is already represented in the meaning of the verb (i.e., in the evoked schema): while a schema like, say, PINCH refers to a situation where two entities participate in an event, each in its own way (“pincher,” “pinched thing”), schemata like MARRY or MIX refer to a situation involving two entities which have the same kind of participation in the event: in [15] both Magda and the teacher are “marrying persons,” and in [16] both the milk and the water are the ingredients of the same mixture. Consequently, the information provided by the role Partner is already present in the schema. The sentence

1. [16]

O leite misturou com a água.

- “The milk mixed with the water.”

gives the two participants different syntactic representations, namely, the subject and a complement of the form com NP “with NP”; but the information that these complements denote two entities that participate in the event on an equal basis does not come from the sentence, but rather from the schema the verb evokes.[7]

We can then dispense with the role Partner, and just leave the corresponding complements thematically blank; that is, instead of

1. [18]

VSubj>Partner  V  com NP>Partner

we can have simply

1. [19]

VSubj  V  com NP

which provides the syntactic structure of the sentence, and nothing more.

If the verb is misturar “mix,” as in [16], the schema MIX will be evoked:

1. [20]

The schema MIX

- asserts the beginning of a state of spatial relation between A and B;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A;

- the degree of closeness increases during a certain time;

- the result is one homogeneous entity, without distinction between the two components.

Since there is no thematic difference between entities A and B, we do not need semantic roles to distinguish them. That is, semantically it makes no difference whether the milk is A or B, the result will be the same, so that [16] and [21] entail each other:

1. [21]

A água misturou com o leite.

- “The water mixed with the milk.”

This is not to say that these sentences are perfect synonyms; they are, however, thematically identical. Assignment will then proceed in this way:

- Step 1

- The verb misturar “mix” evokes the schema MIX, which has the core variables A and B (details in [20] above);

- Step 2

- there are only two eligible complements available; therefore, one will be A and the other will be B;

- Step 3

- both A and B elaborate, on the basis of the main features of the schema, into “substance which is mixed” (“swimix” for short).

The result, for sentence [16], is

1. [22]

O leite misturou com a água.

- “swimix”  “swimix”

- “The milk mixed with the water.”

and, of course, the same assignments work for sentence [21].

In these examples the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj does not apply because the sentence does not portray an action, and no Agent is involved. But in some cases the same verb can imply an action, and in such cases the subject, as expected, is understood as the Agent:

1. [23]

Os cantores se misturaram com os dançarinos.

- “swimix”  “swimix”

- “agent”

- “The singers mixed with the dancers.”

That is, [23] is understood as saying that the singers took the initiative to mix with the dancers. The difference comes, certainly, from our idea of a singer, who can be a volitional agent, as against milk or water, which cannot.

All information we need is now represented, without the need to posit a special semantic role for the complements of misturar: the two mixing elements, A and B, are properly identified when we bind the two variables in the schema MIX. All work is done by the mechanism of assignment by default.

An analogous analysis can be applied without difficulty to sentence [15], which has the verb marry; this verb also evokes a schema with two symmetrical variables, and the corresponding diathesis can include free complements, to be bound directly by the ETRs present in the schema. The schema MARRY contains the following information:

1. [24]

The schema MARRY

- asserts the beginning of a state of social relation between A and B;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A;

- A and B are persons;

- the relation entails expectations of: a commitment of stability + signature of a legal document + living together + sexual exclusivity + children [...];

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

These pieces of information differ in status. Some are definitory: for instance, if the process involves more than two partners we do not call the relation “marriage.” Other items are expectations: we can conceive of a married couple who do not live together, although it would be atypical. This kind of informational complex, including the lack of precision in some details, is typical of the meaning of lexical items, as opposed to semantic relations of a grammatical nature.[8]

The schema tells something about the final meaning of sentence [15], but it does not provide the identity of the partners, nor their role in the event: this is a task for the sentence itself. In the case of marry, and reciprocal constructions in general, the discrimination of roles is not important, because both participants have the same ETR, and the problem is reduced to the identification of the participants. But in cases of nonreciprocity, as in

1. [25]

Magda irritou o professor.

- “Magda angered the teacher.”

we need a way to identify the different roles, and this is provided, as seen, by a mechanism including verb valency and other factors.

Now let us see how, from construction [19] (part of our knowledge of the language), plus the information in [24] (part of our world knowledge) we can derive the detailed cognitive representation that is built by the language user upon hearing sentence [15]. What we have to do, in this case, is just bind the two variables (A and B) mentioned in [24] with the reference of the two entities that appear in the sentence (in this particular case the syntactic functions are not relevant). We then substitute the reference to the participants where the general schema has A and B; this will yield

1. [26]

Sentence [15], which evokes the schema MARRY,[9]

- asserts the beginning of a state of social relation between MAGDA and TEACHER;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation of MAGDA with TEACHER does not differ from the one of the teacher with Magda;

- MAGDA and TEACHER are persons;

- the relation entails expectations of: a commitment of stability + signature of a legal document + living together + sexual exclusivity + children [...];

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

[26] is an acceptable representation of the meaning of [15].

13.2.3 Nonreciprocal aproximar “come close”

There may still be a complicating factor with the analysis of aproximar “come close,” a verb occurring in reciprocal constructions. If we take the schema COME.CLOSE,[10] expressed in Portuguese by the verb aproximar, the example

1. [27]

Marte se aproximou da Terra.

- “Mars came close to the Earth.”

may be understood in a purely spatial and reciprocal reading (i.e., Mars and the Earth underwent motion that brought them near each other). The schema COME.CLOSE has then the following components:

1. [28]

The schema COME.CLOSE

- asserts the beginning of a state of spatial relation between A and B;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A;

- the degree of closeness increases during a certain time;

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

Here again all we have to do is substitute the referents of the participants given in sentence [27] by following procedures similar to the ones used for the construction [21], and we get

1. [29]

Sentence [27], which evokes the schema COME.CLOSE,

- asserts the beginning of a state of spatial relation between MARS and EARTH;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from MARS to EARTH does not differ from the one from EARTH to MARS;

- the degree of closeness increases during a certain time;

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

which describes what we understand upon hearing sentence [27].

[29] adequately represents one reading of [27], where both objects move towards each other, that is,

1. [30]

⋅⋅⋅⋅→M E←⋅⋅⋅⋅

But [27] has a different reading, in which the motion is not reciprocal, that is,

1. [31]

⋅⋅⋅⋅→M E

In this sense, Mars comes closer to the Earth, which remains static. Thematic relations differ: in [31] we have a clear difference between the Theme (Mars) and the Goal (the Earth), and we may need to define another diathesis to account for this reading of sentence [27]. World knowledge is not enough: although in a sentence like I brought the table close to the window only one interpretation is possible, given the impossibility of moving the window, in [27], or in

1. [32]

O Partido Azul se aproximou do governo.

- “The Blue Party came closer to the government.”

both motions are possible: reciprocal motion of both participants, or motion of the subject towards the other participant (not motion of the other participant towards the subject, though). Therefore, what we have here is indeed a new diathesis, namely,

1. [33]

VSubj>Theme  Refl  V  de NP>Goal

Here there is no question of assignment by default. We must conclude, then, that the verb aproximar “come close” participates in a reciprocal construction, that is,

1. [34]

VSubj  Refl  V  de NP

and also in a nonreciprocal one, namely, [33].

This analysis solves a problem detected by Schlesinger:

(4) a. The meteor collided with the moon.

b. ∗The moon collided with the meteor.

The meteor and the moon are equally “responsible” for the collision. So why is (4)a much better than (4)b? An explanation in terms of a selection hierarchy does not seem to be in sight.

[Schlesinger 1995: 29; his numbering]

Now we can answer that ∗the moon collided with the meteor is strange not for grammatical reasons, but because both possible interpretations entail that the moon underwent motion towards the meteor, which is implausible given the relative mass of the bodies involved.

13.2.4 Reciprocity

The constructions we have examined illustrate the phenomenon usually called reciprocity. But reciprocity must be understood as a meaning feature pertaining to the schema rather than a grammatical feature of the verb. It is not strictly correct to speak of “reciprocal verbs” because of cases like

1. [35]

Magda married the teacher.

1. [36]

Judge Smith married more than ten couples today.

The verb is the same, yet only in [35] can the construction be called reciprocal. That is, what is reciprocal is the construction, or more precisely the schema it evokes: marry in [35] and [36] evokes partially different schemata: in [36] the verb evokes a schema complex made up of CAUSE, plus the reciprocal schema MARRY, whereas in [35] only the latter is evoked. Reciprocity is first of all a cognitive phenomenon, defined by the presence of the ingredient “the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A.” This double-faced relation is represented in several ways by the language; thus, we must understand a reciprocal relation between two persons in

1. [35]

Magda married the teacher.

1. [37]

The teacher married Magda.

1. [38]

Magda and the teacher married.

1. [39]

My two best friends got married.

where the two participants are retrived from different syntactic structures. Yet reciprocity, a semantic feature, is present in all cases.

This is not a general opinion: to take an example, in Cançado et al. (2013) certain verbs, not constructions, are marked “→ RECÍPROCO”. Rather, we must understand that certain verbs participate in reciprocal constructions—or, even better, that they can evoke schemata including reciprocal relations.[11] Reciprocity is already represented in the schema, which amounts to saying that our concept of “marriage” necessarily involves reciprocity: if A married B, B necessarily married A, and analogously for other reciprocal notions. Nearly all verbs that participate in reciprocal constructions also appear in other contexts.

There are then no reciprocal verbs; and reciprocal constructions must be understood as referring to semantic associations rather than to syntactic structures. This becomes evident upon examination of the four examples above: [39] does not even have two separate constituents to correspond to A and B in the formula, and yet the meaning of the sentence contains a reciprocal ingredient. Syntactically, these four sentences have nothing specific: [35] and [37] are sequences of subject, verb, and object; and [38] and [39] are made up of a subject plus a verb. What makes them all “reciprocal” is clearly their meaning: the schema their common verb evokes, and the cognitive representation they yield when fully interpreted. A set of rules must be devised so that the common cognitive structure present in these sentences is put into correspondence with three different syntactic structures; these rules are part of the language, unlike the schema itself, which simply expresses part of our knowledge about marriage.

13.3 Additional Examples

Since the solution proposed in the preceding section for cases of reciprocity is somewhat new, some additional illustration is in order; besides, it is necessary to ascertain how far this analysis goes, and whether we can get rid of the role Partner entirely.

13.3.1 Combinar “go well with”[12]

The role Partner is useful in the analysis of sentences like

1. [40]

Esse tom de cabelo não combina com você.

- “This hair color does not go well with you.”

We can now analyze the sentence as representing the construction

1. [19]

VSubj  V  com NP

The verb combinar “go well with” evokes the schema COMPATIBILITY:

1. [41]

The schema COMPATIBILITY[13]

- asserts a relation of esthetic, functional, or social harmony between A and B;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A;

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

which on its turn leads to the following set of assignments:

1. [42]

Sentence [40], which evokes the schema COMPATIBILITY,

- asserts a relation of esthetic harmony between HAIR.COLOR and YOU;

- the relation is reciprocal, that is, the relation from HAIR.COLOR to YOU does not differ from the one from YOU to HAIR.COLOR;

- the result is two entities still clearly distinct.

Since the entities “hair color” and “you” are seen as symmetrically related, no reference to grammatical functions is called for, or prepositions: the corresponding schemata simply occupy the two vacant slots, in any order.[14]

The same verb (in another reading) can also select “social harmony,” instead of “esthetic harmony,” as seen in

1. [43]

A Sara combina com o resto da equipe.

- “Sara goes well with the rest of the team.”

There may be a difference in ETR of the subject of [43], in that it seems to suggest some initiative by Sara; if so, then [19] will not be the correct diathesis underlying [43], but a version comprising a semantic role, perhaps Agent, assigned to the subject. Alternatively, the more active interpretation of the subject may be an effect of the rule Agent<>VSubj, which adds an active reading to combinar, in an analysis parallel to the one seen above for [23]. For the moment being, we must just keep these two analyses, since no evidence is available to enable a decision between the two.

13.3.2 Constructions of Identity

The next question is then, Can the analysis proposed for reciprocals in the preceding section be generalized for all cases of reversible roles? For instance, we may not need semantic roles in

1. [44]

Jack is that student with a red shirt.

since if we reverse the complements (and therefore the semantic roles) the sentence is thematically synonymous:

1. [45]

That student with a red shirt is Jack.

These sentences are currently analyzed in the Valency Dictionary as elaborations of the construction

- VSubj>αRef  V  NP>αRef

where the role αRef (alpha-referential) means that the sentence asserts coreference between the two complements.

Now, the verb here is be, which has a pretty large set of possible meanings. One of these is “assertion of coreference between two entities.” That the verb is responsible for the understanding of [44]–[45] as an assertion of coreference becomes clear if we substitute another verb:

1. [46]

Jack saw/pinched/hates/photographed that student with a red shirt.

Here the coreference disappears, as an effect of the different meaning of the verb.

If the verb can take upon itself the assertion of identity of the two entities, then, we can change the construction underlying [44] and [45] to

1. [47]

VSubj  V  NP

and nothing will be lost, since the schema evoked by the verb here includes two core variables, which are both asserted to be coreferential to each other; in other words, this is another case of reciprocity, answering to the definition stating that “the relation from A to B does not differ from the one from B to A.”

In this particular case, then, assignment by default works, and we do not need the role αRef, because the identity of references is already marked in the schema. The verb, be, evokes a schema containing two core variables, say A and B, which are coreferential by virtue of the internal meaning of the verb.

To be sure, be can also evoke other schemata, as in

1. [48]

That student with a red shirt is intelligent.

where the relation is Quality / Qualified thing. But the meaning of the complements filters out this qualificative interpretation in [44] and [45]—and also the coreferential one in [48]—because the resulting cognitive representation will be ill-formed. Intelligent has no referential potential, then it cannot be coreferential to that student with a red shirt; and neither Jack nor that student with a red shirt can denote a quality, which rules out the qualificative reading in [44] and [45].

I conclude that assignment by default works adequately to derive the interpretation of sentences with coreferential complements. Note that now both [45] and [46] represent the same diathesis, namely, [47], but thematic relation assignment will proceed along different paths in each case. If the verb is pinch, the subject will be assigned the role Agent by the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj; the object will be the “pinched thing” by default. The resulting interpretation is well-formed because, since pinch is an action, there is nothing wrong in including an Agent in the cognitive representation. If the verb is be, both complements will be assigned the ETR “member of an identity,” by default; the prototype rule cannot apply here, because the result would be filtered out since be is not an action, and cannot coexist with an Agent in the same cognitive representation.

13.4 Thematic Relations with estar

13.4.1 On the Valency of estar “be”

Portuguese estar, usually translated simply as “be,” is a rather complex verb, as far as the ETRs of its complements are concerned; the partial list below gives an idea of the variety found:

1. [49]

Ela estava no carro.

- “ She was in the car.”

1. [50]

Ela estava nervosa.

- “ She was nervous.”

1. [51]

Ela estava de acordo comigo.

- “ She was in agreement with me.”

1. [52]

Ela estava com a garganta seca.

- “ She had a dry throat.”

1. [53]

Ela estava com o namorado.

- “She was with her boyfriend.”

1. [54]

Ela estava em pânico.

- “She was in panic.”

We have here several different thematic relations: in [49] it is “location”; in [50] it is a “psychological state”; in [51] some condition referring to a coincidence in opinions; and so on. As we bring in further examples, these relations tend to multiply, to the point that it appears impossible to posit a corresponding number of roles. These ETRs do not look as if they are part of the grammar of the language (as semantic roles are), but rather features of world knowledge, and as such in indefinite number and variety.

On the other hand, each complement (if we judge by this small sample) tends to be thematically transparent: no carro “in the car” is a location; nervosa “nervous” is always a psychological condition, com a garganta seca “with a dry throat” a physical condition, and so on. Transparency is sometimes context-sensitive: for instance, no carro could be a Goal (as in ela entrou no carro “she got into the car”), but this depends on the presence of a schema of motion, which is not the case with the schemata evoked by estar. In other cases, however, transparency is context-free, and many of these constituents, if given out of context, can be correctly understood by language users. In what follows I propose an analysis that takes these facts into consideration, and results in a much simpler linguistic structure (not necessarily a simpler cognitive structure, but this is not under our control in any case). The simpler linguistic structure is to be preferred, not for a priori reasons, but because it saves duplication of pieces of information at several points in the analysis.

For instance, in

1. [55]

Ela estava com a garganta seca.

- “She had a dry throat.”

the nonsubject complement, com a garganta seca, can get its ETR, something like “physical condition,” independently of the properties of the main verb. The ETR is part of the meaning of the phrase, and depends on the meaning of the preposition, com, plus the following NP, a garganta seca “a dry throat”; all the semantic material is generated within the prepositional phrase, and no verb-governed semantic role is needed.

This depends, of course, on extragrammatical factors, here the particular meaning of “dry throat”; if the NP were different, we might have a different result, for instance in

1. [56]

Ela estava com o namorado.

- “She was with (her) boyfriend.”

where the preposition is the same, but the final ETR is “company.” The preposition com, as we have seen, may convey “company,” “instrument,” and “manner,” and ambiguity is usually avoided by the action of a cognitive filter, which for instance rejects “company” in [55], and “manner” in [56], based on the meaning of the NP. In these cases, the semantic information needed in stating the construction may be reduced. For [49], then, we can make do with Located thing assigned to the subject ela “she”; the thematic relation of no carro “in the car” can be assigned by default.

The process can be simplified even further. Suppose we leave both complements blank for grammatically conditioned thematic relations. No carro “in the car” can, and prototypically does, convey the ETR “location.” It could also be a “goal,” but this only with a verb of motion; with estar, it must be a “location.” Now, the presence of a complement labeled “location” requires the presence of a paired complement labeled “located thing”—that is, it simply makes no sense to give the location of something which is not itself mentioned. Since the subject ela is the only available candidate, it will have to be understood as the “located thing”—otherwise it will lack a thematic relation, which is not permitted in the system.[15] Therefore, for cognitive reasons, [49] will end up labeled as

1. [57]

Ela  estava  no carro.  “She was in the car.”

- “located thing”    “location”

In this way we fill out the requirements of interpretation without any use of semantic roles—all we use is cognitive conditions, which are independently needed, and the result is an adequate connection between the syntactic structure and the meaning (in what concerns us, thematic relations). Nothing else is really necessary for the aims of language, which are limited to establishing a relation between form and meaning in the details we are considering.

Of course, the fact that [49] can be analyzed in this manner does not mean that the same will work for most, or all, sentences. But for many sentences that have estar as a main verb it seems to work, and this seems to be the case for sentences [49]–[54], all of which then correspond to a construction with the syntactic form

1. [58]

Subject  Verb  X

where “X” stands for a prepositional phrase or a nominal. Thematic relations do not appear in this grammatical representation, and will be added by default on the basis of the requirements in the schema evoked by the verb.

In summary, according to the present hypothesis all thematic relations in the sentences with estar examined above, as well as any eventual cases of unacceptability, depend on two factors: first, the semantic potential of the lexical items occurring in the sentence, and, second, conditions on cognitive well-formedness (schematic filters).

13.4.2 (Un)Acceptability and Evoked Schemata

Now take an unacceptable sentence like

1. [59]

∗Ela está Maria.

- “She is Maria.”

The ill-formedness does not show in the translation, because English has no differentiation between the two modes of being.[16] For Portuguese the difference can be stated thus:

Ser introduces a quality seen as essential, inherent to the subject, whereas estar introduces a quality seen as temporary, transitory, or otherwise nonessential.

[Perini 2002: 271]

The problem with [59] is then that it asserts “being Maria” as a nonessential property of the person referred to as she. But “being Maria” cannot be thus understood: we normally take being someone as an inherent property. If we substitute ser, the sentence becomes acceptable:

1. [60]

Ela é Maria.

- “She is Maria.”

The same explanation works for

1. [61]

∗Ela está italiana.

- “She is Italian.”

since one does not conceive of a nationality as something you assume temporarily. Again, substituting ser gives an acceptable result.

Now take

1. [62]

∗Ela estava até Lisboa.

- “She was until Lisbon.”

This sentence is strange because of the semantic potential of phrases introduced by até “until”—this preposition denotes ETRs related to a (spatial or temporal) “goal,” but the basic semantics of estar involves no motion or extension, and is incompatible with the notion of “goal.” Here a preposition denoting just “location” would be acceptable:

1. [63]

Ela estava em/perto de/fora de Lisboa.

- “She was in/near/outside Lisbon.”

In all these cases we see how the acceptability of different complements of estar can be accounted for by conditions having to do with the meaning of the verb, plus the thematic potential of the complement. I am not sure whether this kind of explanation will take care of all cases of constructions in which estar occurs; but a preliminary survey seems promising, and a hypothesis that deserves investigation is that the purely syntactic construction shown in [58] is responsible for most occurrences of this verb in Portuguese. Both complements receive their ETRs by default, and unacceptable cases are readily explained through cognitive ill-formation.

13.5 Discourse Topics[17]

13.5.1 Sentence Topic and Discourse Topic

Let us now examine another case where the traditional conception of thematic relation assignment fails to work, so that we must resort to assignment by default: this is the case of discourse topic constructions.

Brazilian Portuguese has two kinds of topic constructions; one of them is found in many related languages, and consists simply of the fronting of a constituent, as in

1. [50]

Essa cerveja eu não bebo.

- “This beer I won’t drink.”

Apart from the sentence-initial position, this topic has a semantic function identical to the same constituent when not fronted:

1. [51]

Eu não bebo essa cerveja.

- “I won’t drink this beer.”

[50] and [51] are not perfect synonyms, to be sure; but they contain exactly the same thematic information, which is the point for our present discussion. This kind of topicalization applies to several syntactic functions (object, adverbial complements, etc.), and as seen occurs also in English.

The other kind of topic (which we may call discourse topic) is characteristic of Brazilian Portuguese and other, but not, apparently, all languages.[18] It has the form of an NP, also fronted, but does not semantically correspond to a nonfronted NP. One example is

1. [52]

Esse cano sai fumaça.

- “Smoke comes out of this pipe.” [lit.: This pipe comes out smoke.]

If we want to say the same without topicalizing the constituent esse cano, it will have to be preceded by the adequate preposition, here de, which is a marker of the role Source:

1. [53]

Sai fumaça desse cano.

- “Smoke comes out of this pipe.”

As seen, we now have the prepositional phrase desse cano “from this pipe,” instead of the NP esse cano.[19]

Discourse topics are very frequent in spoken Brazilian Portuguese; they were first studied by Pontes (1986, 1987), who provides many examples taken from actual utterances. One important feature is that discourse topics may convey several different semantic roles, without any formal marking to distinguish between these roles. In [52] the topic is the Source; other examples, with different roles, are

1. [54]

O meu carro furou o pneu.

- “possessor”

- “My car blew a tire.”[20]

1. [55]

O quintal, sai pela porta branca.

- “goal”

- “(To go to) the backyard you leave by the white door.” [lit.: The backyard you go out by the white door.]

1. [56]

Aquela escola deles, rouba tudo! [EP][21]

- “location”

- “In that school of theirs everything gets stolen.” [lit.: That school of theirs, steals everything.]

1. [57]

Meu óculos, você apanhou a capa? [EP]

- “possessor”

- “Did you bring the case of my glasses?” [lit.: My glasses, did you bring the case?]

In all these sentences, the topic is an NP, without preposition; but if we prefer not to topicalize it, a preposition must appear, respectively

1. [58]

Furou o pneu do meu carro.

- “My car blew a tire.” [lit.: Blew the tire of my car.]

1. [59]

Sai pela porta branca para o quintal.

- “(To go to) the backyard you leave by the white door.”

1. [60]

Rouba tudo naquela escola deles!

- “In that school of theirs everything gets stolen”[22]

1. [61]

Você apanhou a capa do meu óculos?

- “Did you bring the case of my glasses?”

The preposition cannot be omitted if there is no topicalization:

1. [62]

∗ Furou o pneu o meu carro.

1. [63]

∗ Sai fumaça esse cano.

1. [64]

∗ Sai pela porta branca o quintal.

and so on.

Some of these sentences can be rescued, in informal spoken language, by marking the relevant NP intonationally: the final NP is pronounced in a lower pitch, preceded by a rising intonation:

1. [65]

Furou o pneu↑, ↓o meu carro.

1. [66]

Sai fumaça↑, ↓esse cano.

This intonational contour is another mark of the topic, so that we still have the same phenomenon here. Curiously, though, this does not work for [64]; there must be, then, some still unknown limitation on this structure.

13.5.2 ETR Assignment in Topic Sentences

The topic in these structures has a thematic relation that varies from sentence to sentence, but is not morphosyntactically marked. The topic is always an NP, which is a thematically opaque structure. This raises the question: how does the receptor know which is the role, if there is no formal clue about its identity? A well-established principle (the assignment requirement, introduced in Sect. 11.4) states that no eligible constituent can lack a thematic relation. This is stated in generative works as part of the (grammatical) theta criterion, but I think instead of it as a condition on the well-formedness of cognitive representations.

Consequently, the topic needs a thematic relation, otherwise the sentence will be filtered out as ill-formed. The traditional mechanism that sees assignment as an exclusive task of the main verb does not work for this case. One might say that with the verb sair “go out” the topic (first NP in the sentence) is always the “source.” This works in [52] but fails in

1. [55]

O quintal, sai pela porta branca.

- “goal”

- “(To go to) the backyard you leave by the white door.” [lit.: the backyard, go out by the white door]

where the verb is also sair but the topic is the “goal.”

We thus have cases involving well-known semantic roles, but the assignment seems to be conditioned by nongrammatical factors—for instance, by the position of the participants with respect to the backyard. In no way can these facts be captured by the traditional role-assignment device, which is based on lexicogrammatical factors, such as the valency of the main verb.

The way out of this dilemma is provided by assignment by default. In the case of

1. [52]

Esse cano sai fumaça.

- “Smoke comes out of this pipe.” [lit.: this pipe comes out smoke]

I propose the following analysis: first, let us consider that the verb sair evokes a schema, COME.OUT; this schema has the core variables “theme” (“thing that comes out”) and “source” (“location the theme comes from”), plus others like “goal” and “path.” The cognitive representation is built on this basis; the “thing that comes out,” recognizable as an elaboration of the “theme,” is the subject NP fumaça “smoke”—this is a lexicogrammatical fact of Portuguese, stated in the valency of sair “come out.” Now, the construction has no room for another NP, since sair never occurs in a construction with two NPs (except in sentences with a discourse topic, of course). Therefore, as far as lexicogrammatical processes are concerned, esse cano “this pipe” remains without an ETR. Since role-less constituents cannot occur, and given the impossibility of assigning a role to esse cano in [52] by (normal) grammatical means, the system has recourse directly to the schema, on the following lines: if the schema COME.OUT has a “theme” and a “source,” and the “theme” is denoted by the subject fumaça “smoke,” we must understand the remaining constituent, esse cano “this pipe,” as denoting the “source”—this ETR is assigned by default to esse cano. The inacceptability of [63] shows that this only works when the remaining constituent is a topic; since this is the case in [52], we end up with an association established between the topic esse cano and the ETR “place the theme comes from” (an elaboration of Source). In this particular case, this is the only way to rescue the sentence from being marked as ill-formed and therefore unacceptable.

The device is context-sensitive in a way that regular assignment by valency is not. Besides being conditioned by lexicogrammatical information, assignment by default depends on cognitive conveniences: all it is concerned with is that the utterance make sense, and since with COME.OUT both the “source” and the “goal” yield well-formed cognitive representations, either can in principle be used to complete the assignment to esse cano. And

1. [63]

∗ Sai fumaça esse cano.

is unacceptable because it corresponds to a syntactic structure (with two NPs) that is not present in the valency of sair. Besides, assignment by default cannot apply here: it is blocked by the nontopic status of the constituent, plus the thematic potential of the NP, which does not include “source.” It is interesting to note that thematic potential is partially ignored in the case of this kind of topic (as in [52]), which shows that there is still a lot to be investigated in this matter.

This mechanism results in a great variety of ETRs being attributed to topic NPs, and the requirement of cognitive well-formedness is evident in most cases. For example, in

1. [56]

Aquela escola deles, rouba tudo! [EP]

- “(In) that school of theirs everything gets stolen.”

aquela escola deles “that school of theirs” could, in principle, be understood as the subject, and therefore the “agent,” of rouba “steals”; but rouba can also be understood as having an indeterminate “agent” (“gets stolen”), and in this case the initial NP cannot be integrated into a regular construction. It is then filled in by reference to the main schema (STEAL), which admits of a location; and since a school is a location, that is what it is understood to be. As seen, in the latter case assignment is a cognitive, not a grammatical process.

In

1. [57]

Meu óculos, você apanhou a capa? [EP]

- “Did you bring the case of my glasses?” [lit: My glasses, did you bring the case?]

the sequence você apanhou a capa? is grammatically processed to yield the reading “Did you bring the case?” But then the initial NP, meu óculos “my glasses”[23] has no place in the sentential structure. The assignment system has to search for a way to integrate it, and ends up doing so by assigning to meu óculos the ETR “possessor” (of the case). The reason for this choice, again, is not grammatical but cognitive: if meu óculos is the “possessor” of the case, the resulting semantics makes sense.

Note that the process ends up adding an ETR (“possessed thing”) to a capa “the cover” as well. This may also be an effect of the requirement that utterances make sense: if the case has nothing to do with the glasses, it will become impossible to construct an unified cognitive representation out of [57]. Besides, “possessor” and “possessed thing” are paired, so that one does not occur without the other.[24]

Some other examples, with different ETRs, are as follows:

1. [67]

Minha casa deu ladrão. [EP] “location”

- “A burglar broke into my house.” [lit: My house there came a burglar.]

1. [68]

A Joana não se deve confiar. [EP] “stimulus”

- “One should not trust Joana” [lit: Joana one should not trust.]

Confiar “trust” requires a preposition, em, with the Stimulus; but it does not appear in this sentence. If the phrase were not the topic, we would have

1. [69]

Não se deve confiar na Joana.[25]

- “One should not trust Joana.”

This system is in harmony with the idea that humans are meaning-searching creatures; and it shows that in this particular we are prepared to use a variety of means in order to attain our aims. What is most interesting to linguists is the limits of this meaning-searching effort. That there are limits is shown by the fact that a phrase composed of without + NP, even if it is the topic, cannot be interpreted as a “location,” and a nontopic object NP cannot be an “agent.” There are thus lexicogrammatical indications that override the needs of meaningfulness; how far this goes is an interesting question for linguists and cognitive scientists alike.

13.5.3 Sentence Topics

Assignment by default brings in a bonus in the analysis of topicalized sentences like

1. [70]

O queijo, o rato comeu.

- “The cheese, the mouse ate.”

These sentences, where a constituent is fronted and interpreted as the topic, are very common in Portuguese, and are a problem for syntactically-based analyses. Traditional grammar must recognize a direct object in the fronted constituent, but then it must admit two different syntactic configurations for this function. Transformational analyses simply postulates the moving of the relevant constituent to the head of the sentence. As soon as one abandons the transformational solution,[26] though, the problem returns: a special interpretation rule is needed in order to assign the fronted element the correct semantic role.

Assignment by default automatically solves the question; since the verb, comeu “ate,” evokes the same schema in [70] as in

1. [71]

O rato comeu o queijo.

- “The mouse ate the cheese.”

we can let a prototype rule assign Agent to the subject, and the remaining NP will get its ETR by default. For [70] all we need to record in the diathesis is

- NP, VSubj V

and the semantic role Patient need not be present in the diathesis: we may let the topic NP be assigned the ETR “eaten thing” by default, since the subject will be the Agent by prototype rule.

13.6 Constructions of Time of Day

In a construction specialized in stating the time of day,[27] like

1. [72]

São quatro horas.

- “It is four o’clock.”

the only complement shows a thematic relation which occurs only with the verb ser “be”; it is not very clear which semantic role it represents. It cannot be the semantic role Time, which has a very general occurrence in the language, since there are clear syntactic and semantic differences. Syntactically, Time complements are coded as adverbs or prepositional phrases, such as às quatro horas “at four o’clock,” ontem “yesterday,” depois do almoço “after dinner”; but the complement in [72] is coded as one of a small set of NPs, all of them denoting some period of time: quatro horas “four o’clock,” meio dia “noon,” and so on.

Semantically, the role Time asserts the time reference of the event denoted in the sentence:

1. [73]

Manuel chegou às quatro horas.

- “Manuel arrived at four o’clock.”

whereas in [72] the complement asserts the time reference of the speech act: although nothing in [73] says that the information is given at four o’clock, [72] asserts just that, and is true when uttered at that time of day. One may say that such sentences have deictic reference to the stated time.

Also, the time period referred to in construction [72] is not free: this construction seems to be restricted to expressing the time of day, not the day of the week, or the year, and so on. Thus, in order to inform the day of the week, normally one uses a construction like

1. [74]

Hoje é sábado.

- “Today is Saturday.”

with an explicit adverbial reference.

It is then difficult to extract a semantic role from uses of the construction instanced in [72]. On the other hand, the meaning of the sentence is clear enough, that is, there is nothing obscure about what one means when uttering [72]. How can we integrate this fact into an analysis of such sentences? We may start by sketching the schema evoked by the verb. The verb ser “be,” just as its English counterpart, is pretty complex, and can evoke several schemata; one of them has the following structure:

BE.TIME

Seme

<time location of speech act>

Variable
core: “time reference”

Now suppose that [72] is a realization of the diathesis

1. [75]

V  VSubj

without any thematic marking. Since the verb is são, a form of ser “be,” there is the possibility that the schema BE.TIME be evoked in this case. If so, the verb refers to time location of the speech act, and the subject, being the only complement, will be assigned the ETR “time reference” by default. This results in the correct cognitive representation for sentence [72].

One may wonder how is it that the system (and the language user) can come to the conclusion that, of all schemata related to ser, this one is the correct one. I think one hint is the absence of a second complement, since ser occurs normally with at least two: o Instituto é na praça “the Institute is on the square”; Elizabeth é a rainha “Elizabeth is the queen”; nós somos de São Paulo “we are from São Paulo”; esse bolo é delicioso “this cake is delicious.” Another hint is the semantics of the complement: quatro horas “four o’clock” is not able to bind a variable in any of the other diatheses of ser. Pieces of information like these function as filters, so that [72] ends up being identified as evoking the schema BE.TIME, and consequently as being an elaboration of diathesis [75]. The thematic relation of its only complement is independent of valency, being assigned by force of cognitive factors, mainly the requirement that all eligible complements have an ETR. We have here an example where assignment by default can be allowed to apply, with correct results.

13.7 Diatheses of ser “be”

The verb ser “be” can evoke several schemata, and at least some of them allow for assignment of ETRs by default. As a start, let us take the sentence

1. [76]

Renata é aquela menina loura.

- “Renata is that blonde girl.”

Here the evoked schema has as its internal meaning an assertion of identity of reference: [76] means in effect “Renata and that blonde girl are coreferent.” This means that both complements have the same thematic relation; in the Valency Dictionary, this is expressed by using the semantic role αRef, read “alpha-referential”; the diathesis found in the Dictionary is

1. [77]

VSubj>αRef  V  NP>αRef

which is OK as far as we limit our notation to the properties of the lexical item ser “be.”

But in actual use not only the verb comes into play, but also, necessarily, the schema it evokes; in this case, it looks like this:

BE.IDENTITY

Seme

<identity of reference between entities>

Variables
core: “entity 1 asserted to be the same as entity 2”

“entity 2 asserted to be the same as entity 1”

The numbering of the entities has no semantic significance; it is just to explain that there must be two of these entities.

Now suppose we simplify [77] to

1. [78]

VSubj  V  NP

Since the two variables have the same label, it is possible to complete [78] by default, and we do not need any thematic marking here; the diathesis can then be reduced to its syntactic component. The difference between Renata é aquela menina loura “Renata is that blonde girl” and aquela menina loura é Renata “That blonde girl is Renata” has nothing to do with thematic structure, but rather with the presuppositions made by the speaker about what the receptor already knows; for instance, these sentences are answers to different questions.

We saw that ser can evoke BE.IDENTITY and also BE.TIME; but if the latter is chosen for [76], the result will be ill-formed, since there are two, not just one, complements, and besides neither of them denotes a period of time. Ser can also evoke BE.QUALITY, which is ruled out because neither of the complements can express a Quality. This is possible in

1. [79]

Renata é alta.

- “Renata is tall.”

and here it is BE.IDENTITY that is ruled out, since alta “tall” is not referential. As seen, we can keep [78] as the diathesis underlying both [76] and [79], and the interpretation will come out correctly; for

1. [72]

São quatro horas.

- “It is four o’clock.”

of course, [78] is not adequate because here we only have one complement; the diathesis will be

1. [80]

V  VSubj

As seen, in these cases all we have to consignate in the verb’s valency is the syntactic structure, and the assignment of thematic relations (ETRs) is entirely the task of cognitive factors.

13.8 Alternate Stimulus

In sentences with preferir “prefer,” like

1. [81]

Elsa prefere chá a café.

- “Elsa prefers tea to coffee.”

the subject is quite clearly an Experiencer (the entity of which a psychological state is asserted), and the object chá “tea” is the Stimulus (the causator of a psychological state). But then we have a café “to coffee,” which seems to be another Stimulus, but with some subtle differences; in particular, it is less preferred than tea, which shows that it is not precisely the same thematic relation. This relation appears only with preferir “prefer,” and it is hard to see how can we bring it under a general label; we may have to resort to assignment by default here.

With this in mind, let us try to make explicit the schema evoked by preferir:

PREFER

Seme

<expression of a greater desire for one event or entity than for another>[28]

Variables
core: “preferring entity”

“preferred alternate”

“nonpreferred alternate”

Note that the presence of two alternates is necessary here; comparison between two possibilities is an integral part of the meaning of preferir.

Since the syntax includes three complements (subject, object, and prepositional phrase), it is not possible to fill in all three by default: assignment by default is not structurally constrained, and we may end up with the wrong pairings of ETRs and complements—say, concluding that Elsa prefers coffee to tea.[29] But we do not have to do that, because the “preferring entity” is recognizable as an elaboration of the Experiencer, a well-established semantic role; similarly, the “preferred alternate” can be derived from the Stimulus; these assignments (respectively, to the subject and the object) yield a well-known construction, occurring in the valencies of verbs like amar “love,” detestar “detest,” odiar “hate,” apreciar “be fond of,” and others. So far, then, the diathesis underlying [81] is

1. [82]

VSubj>Experiencer V NP>Stimulus a NP

The remaining complement, a NP (a café “to coffee” in [81]) is left blank. This being forbidden by the assignment requirement applying to CRs, the remaining ETR in the schema is assigned to it, resulting in

1. [83]

VSubj>Experiencer V NP>Stimulus a NP>“nonpreferred alternate”

which corresponds to a correct interpretation of sentence [81].

13.9 A Dog and His Owner

13.9.1 Marta and Her Dog

A rather more complicated example of the need for assignment by default is illustrated by sentences like

1. [84]

Marta tem um cachorro.

- “Marta has a dog.”

1. [85]

Esse cachorro tem dono.

- “This dog has an owner.”

The Portuguese verb ter “have” conveys, in one of its readings, a relation of Possession: usually it is assumed that the subject is the Possessor, and the Possessed thing is the (direct) object.[30] This appears in

1. [84]

Marta  tem  um cachorro.

- Possessor   Possessed thing

- “Marta has a dog.”

Now, in the syntactically identical sentence

1. [85]

Esse cachorro tem  dono.

- Possessed thing   Possessor

- “This dog has an owner.”

the relations are reversed, since one understands the subject, esse cachorro “this dog,” as the Possessed thing, and the object dono “owner” as the Possessor.

Should we then postulate an additional construction, with the roles reversed, for the same verb, ter? If we had two constructions here, they would be

1. [86]

VSubj>Possessor V NP>Possessed thing

and

1. [87]

VSubj>Possessed thing V NP>Possessor

Verbs do routinely occur in several constructions, so that there is nothing impossible in principle with this analysis. But a closer examination shows that it is impracticable, because it predicts the acceptability of

1. [88]

∗ Um carro novo tem Marta.

- Possessed thing  Possessor

- ∗“A new car  has Marta.”

and this sentence is as bad in Portuguese as its gloss in English is. If we adopted the two-construction analysis, it should be acceptable, because the verb is the same (ter “have”), and there is no way to stop [87] from applying to it. I shall argue, instead, that [84] and [85] are realizations of one and the same grammatical construction.

13.9.2 A Hypothesis

We can now return to sentences [84] and [85], and the expression of the “possessor” and the “possessed thing”:

1. [84]

Marta  tem um cachorro.

Possessor   Possessed thing

“Marta has a dog.”

1. [85]

Esse cachorro  tem  dono.

- Possessed thing  Possessor

- “This dog has an owner.”

The hypothesis I want to explore here is that the complements of ter do not associate with the ETRs “possessor” and “possessed thing” directly. Rather, at the grammatical level the complements of this verb have a much more schematic relation, related to the notion of possession, but without the specification of which complement is the “possessor” and which is the “possessed thing”—equivalent to the bare information that ter, in this reading, refers to a relation of possession. This extends to the two complements, since a relation of possession necessarily involves two entities. Which of the complements, or rather which of the schemata evoked by each complement, is to be understood as the “possessor” and the “possessed thing” depends on nongrammatical information; in particular, it does not depend on each complement’s being the subject or the object of the sentence. The reason why the dog is understood as possession in both cases is then due to nongrammatical factors, namely, the information that people can own dogs, not vice versa. In the case of [89], a second factor reinforces the first, that is, the presence of the item dono “owner.” The corresponding schema is defined (for English owner) in Framenet as

- An owner has (or lacks) a Possession.

- [Framenet, entry Possession; Owner]

That is, the notion of an “owner” is necessarily bound with the notion of “possession.” Therefore, a further reason to understand the dog as possession in [85] is that this way the corresponding schema binds one of the variables in the schema OWNER. The fact that esse cachorro “this dog” is the subject in [85] is no hindrance, since according to this hypothesis the verb, ter, only specifies that there is a relation of possession involved, but does not specify the particular roles of each complement: to take the Framenet formula, the schema has an Owner and a Possession, but no mention is made in the schema to the particular complements that associate with each of these core elements.

But why cannot one understand [85] with the dog as “possessor”? A dog can be a “possessor” (the dog’s collar was torn), but in this case the “possessed thing” would have to be dono “owner,” which would then have an unbound variable (the “possessed thing”); and, although there is some evidence that this word can appear with this variable unbound, as in

1. [89]

Eu gostaria de ser dono.

- “I would like to be an owner.”

such sentences have an incomplete flavor, unless in anaphoric context.[31]

Therefore, the alternate interpretation actually never arises. In

1. [90]

Marta tem Antônio.

- “Marta has Antônio.”

the nonpossessive interpretation is forced on the receptor by the fact that human beings can be “possessors,” but not “possessed things,” which makes the possessive interpretation somewhat difficult to get, since it leads to an implausible CR.

And in

1. [91]

Essa terra tem dono.

- “This land has an owner.”

of course the effect is much more radical, and dono “owner” is the only acceptable “possessor.”

The construction is then the same in [84] and [85], and can be reduced to its syntactic component, namely,

1. [92]

VSubj V NP

Everything else in the resulting CR comes from extragrammatical information, such as the one contained in the schema evoked by ter “have.” At most, we may have very schematic roles assigned to the two complements, something like “participant in a possession relation,” which adds practically nothing to what is already present in the schema, and need not be recorded in [92]. As seen, the analysis hinges on the fact that dono “owner” fundamentally expresses a relation between two entities, and that this relation has to do with possession.

A similar phenomenon can be observed in other cases, with different relations. For instance, we can say

1. [93]

A presa do tamanduá é o cupim;

- “The anteater’s prey is the termite.”

Here the subject is the “predator” and the object is the “prey.” This might be attributed to the diathesis. But in

1. [94]

O predador do tamanduá é a onça pintada.

- “The anteater’s predator is the spotted jaguar.”

the assignments are reversed: the subject is the “prey,” and the object is the “predator.” Yet the syntactic structure is the same, and the verb is the same. This clearly has to do with the relational semantics of the items presa “prey” and predador “predator.”

In summary: in sentences like [84]–[85] and [93]–[94] the thematic relation assignments disregard the syntactic structure and are determined by features of the schemata evoked by certain nouns. The noun dono “owner” has a variable labeled “possessed thing”—which amounts to saying that you cannot be an owner if you do not own something. The same occurs for predador “predator,” which has a variable “prey,” and for presa “prey,” which has a variable “predator.” Such nouns are comparatively rare, and for the moment being we have no definite principle to explain why the valential requirements of the verb do not prevail; but the details of the phenomenon seem clear enough, and crucially depend on assignment by default.

This analysis also explains why the sentence

1. [88]

∗ Um carro novo tem Marta.

- ∗“A new car  has  Marta.”

is unacceptable: neither carro “car” nor Marta are relational items, and have no variable that may trigger the process of assignment by default. Then, [88] must be processed according to the normal valency of ter “have,” with a subject Possessor, which here yields no acceptable interpretation. This interpretation assumes that ter has a diathesis with the subject Possessor, and also a diathesis without this marking; these diatheses are distinct, as explained in Sect. 13.12 below.

I do not really think we have a convenient analysis for these sentences here; but these considerations may hopefully lead to some discussion, and perhaps a better explanation for these curious phenomena.

13.10 Transitive and Ergative Constructions

I have been referring to ergative sentences like

1. [95]

O leite congelou.

- “The milk froze.”

as realizations of a diathesis where the subject is marked as the Patient. This diathesis is necessary in order to block the application of the Agent<>VSubj prototype rule.

But there is a flaw in this reasoning: it fails to take into account the evocation of schemata by verbs like congelar “freeze,” and many others, which can appear in ergative and also in transitive sentences like

1. [96]

O cozinheiro congelou o leite.

- “The cook froze the milk.”

As is known, the semantic difference between ergatives and transitives is that the latter add a causative element, with the possibility of an “agent.” That is, [95] corresponds to the schema FREEZE, which is an event; [96] corresponds to the schema complex CAUSE (FREEZE), which is an action; and a verb like congelar “freeze” can evoke either of these schemata. Note that FREEZE only has one core variable, the “freezing entity,” and CAUSE (FREEZE) has two, the “freezing entity” and the “freezer.”

Now, the Agent<>VSubj prototype rule naturally only applies if there is an Agent—more precisely, if the evoked schema has a variable recognizable as an elaboration of the role Agent. This is why it cannot apply when the verb is ser “be,” for instance, since this verb never evokes a suitable schema. It also cannot apply to a sentence like

1. [97]

Meu gato morreu.

- “My cat died.”

because morrer “die” only evokes a schema with a core variable “dying entity,” that is, a Patient.

Now let us return to transitive/ergative pairs. In [96] the verb, congelar “freeze,” evokes a schema, CAUSE (FREEZE), containing a variable identifiable as an elaboration of the Agent, and the prototype rule correspondingly applies, marking the subject as the Agent. The evocation of this schema is mandatory, because if the simpler schema FREEZE were evoked, the sentence would have a complement without an ETR, thus violating the assignment requirement, since this schema only has one variable to assign. The presence of the variable labeled Agent[32] is due to the component CAUSE. In [95], the component CAUSE is not present in the evoked schema, so that only a Patient variable is present. The result is that even if the diathesis has no thematic mark, the right ETR will be assigned to the subject (the only available complement), that is, the subject of [95] is the Patient, which agrees with the meaning of the sentence.

In this way, we can keep the diatheses for [95] and [96] maximally simple, namely,

1. [98]

VSubj V      (for [1])

1. [99]

VSubj V NP   (for [2])

and the ETRs will be assigned correctly. The difference between ergatives (like [95]) and transitives (like [97]) is reduced to the presence or absence of the object; the difference in thematic relations automatically derives from the fact that verbs like congelar “freeze” can evoke two schemata: one of them, FREEZE, refers to an event affecting an entity that becomes frozen; and the other, CAUSE (FREEZE), refers to an event where some external entity causes another entity to become frozen. The subject of [95] is the Patient—or rather the “freezing entity” because the corresponding schema only contains one variable, so labeled. The subject of [96] is the Agent because of the regular application of the Agent<>VSubj prototype rule; and the object is the Patient (“freezing entity”) by default. In other words, the subject of [95] cannot be the Agent not because the prototype rule is blocked by a diathesis, but for reasons having to do with the evoked schema. Consequently, the opposition between transitive and ergative sentences, while still needed, is not grammatical, since nothing distinguishes the diathesis underlying [95] from the one underlying, say, Bill snores: just subject and verb, without thematic marks. Verbs like congelar, then, in their lexicon state, have a comparatively rich semantics, since they can evoke two related, but distinct, schemata. In this they contrast with a verb like morrer “die,” which can only evoke one schema, which lacks an Agent; and with a verb like matar “kill,” which can only evoke a schema with an Agent and a Patient. This difference explains the difference in constructions each verb can occur in.

On the other hand, there are some change-of-state verbs that cannot occur in ergatives (one example is deflorar “deflower”); for the moment being, they must be marked as exceptions—actually, semantic exceptions. This may have to do with the ability of each verb to express a spontaneous event, that is, one that does not depend on the action of an Agent, which of course is not the case with deflorar. Only verbs that can express spontaneous events would appear in the ergative. This hypothesis works if we consider that ergatives are the expression of just this kind of event; and it also accounts for the impossibility of adding an Agent complement to ergatives.

The conditions under which a verb like congelar “freeze” evokes one or the other schema would be easily stated in syntactic terms—in particular, the presence of an object, were not for a complication that appears in Portuguese. This problem (for which I do not have at present a convenient solution) comes from the fact that sentences like [95] are actually ambiguous. The sentence

1. [100]

Esse aparelho congela.

can mean “this equipment freezes (things),” or “this equipment gets frozen” because the object can be simply omitted so that the first reading has the Patient filled in schematically (as shown in Sect. 7.6.4). Here, then, we have congelar evoking the schema CAUSE (FREEZE), although the syntactic structure is identical to the one we find in [95]. This possibility seems to have something to do with the aspect of the verb—and this is why [95], with a verb in the perfect, is not ambiguous. But the phenomenon has not been studied, and will have to remain as a problem to be solved.

13.11 Other Constructions

I give now some additional examples illustrating the effect of assignment mechanisms. The degree of certainty of these analyses varies, and some of them may have to be revised. They are included here not only to show the way the system works to get the desired results but also to illustrate doubts still to be considered. In the step-by-step descriptions of each example the order of steps is not significant, except when intrinsic ordering is involved.

1. [101]

A menina acariciou o rosto da avó.

- “The girl caressed her grandmother’s face.”

- Step 1: The verb evokes the schema CARESS.[33]

- Step 2: This schema includes two core variables, the “caressing person” and the “caressed thing.” The former is identifiable as an elaboration of the Agent, because it includes the feature “immediate initiator of an event.”

- Step 3: The subject, a menina “the girl,” gets the role Agent, by effect ot the prototype rule Agent<>VSubj, and is consequently understood as the “caressing person.”

- Step 4: The object cannot be the Patient, because the sentence does not assert any change of state of the grandmother’s face. It is then left role-less.

- Step 5: The assignment requirement (Sect. 11.4) does not permit a constituent to lack a thematic relation; then, the object, o rosto da avó “her grandmother’s face” receives the remaining variable, “caressed thing,” by default.

Result  A menina   acariciou   o rosto da avó

Agent

“caressing person”      “caressed thing”

1. [102]

Nádia gostava de você.

- “Nádia liked you.”

- Step 1: The verb, gostar “like,” evokes the schema LIKE[34]; core variables: “entity that likes something” and “liked entity.”

- Step 2: At least one of the complements must be marked valentially; here we opt for marking the subject as Experiencer.[35] The diathesis is then

- VSubj>Experiencer  V  de NP

- Step 3: The remaining complement, de você, gets its thematic relation by default.

Result  Nádia    gostava   de você

Experiencer

“entity that likes sth”    “liked entity”

1. [103]

Nádia gostava de cerveja.

- “Nádia liked beer.”

This sentence can get its thematic relations in the same way as the preceding one, [102], this is as far as structural conditioning goes. But there is another, nonlinguistic difference: cerveja “beer,” unlike você “you,” cannot denote an animate being. Therefore, the only possible “entity that likes something” present in the sentence is Nádia, which opens another way to assign thematic relations: the only assignment that will escape schematic filters is

- Nádia>“entity that likes”  V  de cerveja>“liked entity”

There are then two ways to reach the correct assignments; for all we know, receptors have a choice between them, and may apply one or the other according to convenience.

Result   Nádia   gostava   de cerveja

“entity that likes sth”   “liked entity”

1. [104]

Ela enrolou o corpo no lençol.

- “She wrapped her body with a sheet.”

1. [105]

Ela enrolou o lençol no corpo.

- “She wrapped the sheet around her body.”

Here we have the same verb, the same syntactic structure, and the same thematic relations, so that the sentences are thematically synonymous. But the couples thematic relation/syntactic form are different:

1. [104]

Ela  enrolou o lençol  no corpo.  “She wrapped the sheet around her body.”

- Agent   Theme   Goal

1. [105]

Ela  enrolou o corpo  no lençol.  “She wrapped her body with a sheet.”

- Agent   Goal    Theme

As seen, in [104] the Theme is an NP, and the Goal a prepositional phrase with em;[36] in [105] these associations are reversed.

Sentence [104] is not exceptional, and fits well with many others such as

1. [106]

Ela colocou o peixe na geladeira.

- “She put the fish in the refrigerator.”

Here we have the same sequence of semantic roles and the same syntactic representations for each one. In both cases the Theme cannot be omitted:

1. [107]

∗ Ela colocou na geladeira.

1. [108]

∗ Ela enrolou no corpo.

[107] and [108] are only acceptable in anaphoric context.

But sentence [105] is exceptional in having the assignments reversed. Nothing similar occurs with other verbs; if we try a similar sentence with colocar “put,” we get a totally unacceptable result (as long as the thematic assignments are kept):

1. [109]

∗ Ela colocou a geladeira no peixe.

- Goal   Theme

Goal in [105] is represented by an NP. This does occur, with a few verbs (like reach), but cannot be generalized, and must appear in the diathesis. Therefore, [105] must be analyzed as representing the diathesis

- VSubj  V  NP>Goal  em NP

The role of the subject is provided by prototype rule. As for the role of the prepositional phrase, it can be equally be filled in by prototype rule: there are indications that em “in, into” marks the Goal whenever the verb denotes motion.

Other cases that seem to call for assignment by default are:

1. [110]

Eu te condeno a seis anos de prisão.

- “I sentence you to six years in prison.”

1. [111]

Os cenobitas observavam regras absurdas.

- “The cenobites followed absurd rules.”

1. [112]

Está fazendo frio.

- “It is cold.”

1. [113]

Vou substituir os doces por frutas.

- “I will replace candies with fruit.”

In all of these cases, and several others, the semantic role of the constituent in italic is difficult to state in general terms; they may arguably be filled in by default, on the model seen in the preceding sections.

13.12 Diatheses and Semantic Roles

One possible consequence of the use of assignment by default in analysis is a reduction in the list of semantic roles, currently rather long and full of uncertainties. This depends on the examination of each thematic relation in terms of its possible elaboration from more schematic relations, following the lines suggested in the previous chapters. It is a long task but is necessary if we want to adequate the list of roles with a maximally economical description of the structure of the language.

The number of diatheses also will certainly be reduced. However, as shown in Sect. 10.1, semantic roles are still needed in analysis, so that some pairs of diatheses must be distinguished by roles only, the syntax being identical. The extension of use of semantic roles, as opposed to ETRs assigned by default, is an empirical question, to be solved by a complete survey of the list of diatheses. And the list itself must be reviewed in light of the present considerations.

A notational point to be made clear is that when we have two diatheses which differ only in that one of them has a semantic role associated with a complement, and the other has a role-less complement (to be filled in by a prototype rule or by default), we still have two distinct formulas, because the unassigned constituent is not to be understood as having a nonspecified role; rather, this notation means merely that a role will be provided by rule. We may express the two diatheses discursively as, for instance, “the object is a Patient” and “the object has an ETR to be specified” by prototype rule or by default. In our notation, this makes for two distinct formulas, and two different diatheses.

13.13 Complexity of the Relation Sound-Meaning

Research on verb valency has shown that the relation between thematic relations and syntactic functions is far from simple. There are general tendencies, usually with a few exceptions, and there are narrowly localized idiosyncrasies. And the symbolic structure of sentences is not derivable by means of a single mechanism, like verb valency.

This is not universally admitted; Chomsky, for one, expressed the belief that syntactic structure is cleanly derived from semantic roles. For instance,

[...] the lexical entry for persuade need only indicate that it s-selects two complements, one a goal, the other a proposition. All other features of the VP headed by persuade are determined by general properties of the UG. A child learning English must, of course, learn the meaning of the word persuade including its properties of s-selection [...] Nothing more must be learned [...] In particular, no properties of e-selection and no rules of phrase structure are required in this case.

[Chomsky 1986: 88; apud Klotz 2007: 117]

Klotz (2007), to whom I am indebted for the above quote, goes on to comment that

That these were more than just casual remarks can be seen from the fact that Chomsky reiterated that view nine years later in 1995, when he noted “... that subcategorization follows almost entirely from θ-role specification” (Chomsky 1995: 31).

[Klotz 2007: 117]

Klotz asks “to which extent the syntactic valency of verbs can be reduced to semantic facts” (ibid.). The present book is largely devoted to an attempt to answer this question.

Examination of many examples shows that the situation is significantly more complex than intimated in Chomsky’s passages. Just as examples, I can mention a few additional facts from the grammar of Portuguese which certainly require a revision of these positions.[37]

Take a verb like roubar “steal”; it evokes the schema THEFT,[38] which has as its core variables an Agent (which becomes the “final possessor”), a Theme (the “stolen thing”), and a Source (which is the “initial possessor”). The Theme transits from the Source to the Agent, in a process of transfer of possession. This may be expressed in Portuguese as

1. [117]

Roberto roubou mais de dez milhões da União.

- “Roberto stole more than ten millions from the Union.”

The subject (Roberto) is the Agent, the object (mais de dez milhões) is the Theme, and the final complement (da União) is the Source. Exactly the same message (the same cognitive representation) can be expressed with the same verb but with different syntactic coding:

1. [118]

Roberto roubou a União em mais de dez milhões.

- “Roberto robbed the Union of more than ten millions.”

The subject is still the Agent, but now the object is the Source, and the Theme is a prepositional phrase with em.[39] This is clearly a counterexample to assertions such as the ones by Chomsky quoted by Klotz; that is, it is not true that subcategorization follows entirely from θ-role specification. Actually, Chomsky (1995) says that it follows almost entirely from role specification, which leaves a door open for argumentation; a large survey of examples is necessary in order to come to an assessment of the importance of role assignment in the determination of syntactic structure.

That there is some correlation is clear, witness the existence of prototype rules such as Agent<>VSubj, which allows for very few exceptions. On the opposite side we have cases like that of roubar “steal,” which are not unique: in Perini (2015, Appendix 1) I study a group of verbs of stealing: roubar, furtar, lesar, assaltar, all denoting similar events with the same set of participants (except for assaltar “mug,” which does not allow for the expression of the Theme), with a different syntactic structure for each. Similar sets of verbs are enfiar, cravar, trespassar, all meaning something like “cause something to penetrate,” but with different representations for each participant; and enrolar “wrap,” which as we saw has two ways of saying the same thing, as in

1. [104]

Ela enrolou o corpo no lençol.

- “She wrapped her body with a sheet.”

1. [105]

Ela enrolou o lençol no corpo.

- “She wrapped the sheet around her body.”

[104] and [105] express the same cognitive representation, with different role assignments.

Another Portuguese example comes from psychological verbs like assustar “frighten,” as in

1. [119]

O urso assustou a menina.

- “The bear frightened the girl.”

1. [120]

A menina assustou com o urso.

- “The girl got frightened at the bear.”

Again, thematic relations and constituents pattern identically in both sentences, but the pairing of syntactic functions and semantic roles differs: in [119] the subject is the Stimulus, and the object the Experiencer; in [120], the subject is the Experiencer and the Stimulus is a prepositional phrase with com. This duality of structures extends to other psychological verbs, like divertir “amuse,” and enojar “disgust.” Yet even here there are exceptions: gostar “like” can never have subject Stimulus; the subject is always Experiencer, and the Stimulus comes with the preposition de:

1. [121]

Eu gosto de você.

- “I like you.”

With verbs meaning “beat, spank,” Portuguese offers three constructions, syntactically distinct but with the same thematic information; for instance,

1. [122]

Maria espancou João.

- “Maria beat João.”

1. [123]

Maria bateu em João.

- “id.”

1. [124]

João apanhou de Maria.

- “João took a beating from Maria.”

In all these sentences João is the Patient, but it is the object in [122], a prepositional complement with em in [123], and the subject in [124]; Maria, always the Agent, is the subject in [122] and [123], and a complement with de (in [124]).[40]

Pairs parallel to [122]/[123], in which the same role is expressed by an object or by a prepositional phrase, are relatively numerous; thus the same thematic information found in [121] appears in

1. [125]

Eu amo você.

- “I love you.”

Other examples of Experiencer/Stimulus, with other prepositions, are

1. [126]

Eu confio em você.

- “I trust you.”

1. [127]

Eu conto com você.

- “I count on you.”

See also the synonymous

1. [128]

Eles pisaram a grama.

- “They stepped (on) the grass.”

1. [129]

Eles pisaram na grama.

- “They stepped on the grass.”

Even in the absence of a complete survey, then, we may at least conclude that there are serious doubts about the belief that syntactic coding is entirely (or almost entirely) predictable from semantic role assignments.

Another problem with the notion that semantic roles determine syntactic structure is that, as shown in this book, semantic roles are not always present, since there are cases of assignment by default; in such cases no prediction is possible, since an ETR like “worshipped thing” cannot be the basis for a rule predicting syntactic coding. That is, θ-role specification is not always present, and in such cases it becomes impossible to base general assertions on it, at least in grammatical terms.

References

1. Aurélio. (1986). Novo dicionário Aurélio da língua portuguesa. [New Aurélio dictionary of the Portuguese language]. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira.

2. Busse, W. (Ed.) (1994). Dicionário sintáctico de verbos portugueses [A syntactic dictionary of Portuguese verbs]. Coimbra: Almedina.

3. Chomsky, N. (1986). Knowledge of language: Its nature, origin and use. New York: Praeger.

4. Chomsky, N. (1995). The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

5. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

6. Godoy, L. A. G. (2008). Os verbos recíprocos no PB: Interface sintaxe-semântica lexical [Reciprocal verbs in Brazilian Portuguese: lexical syntax-semantics interface]. Master’s thesis, UFMG.

7. Klotz, M. (2007). Valency rules? The case for verbs with propositional complements. In T. Herbst & K. Götz-Votteler (Eds.), Valency: Theoretical, descriptive and cognitive issues. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

8. Levin, B. (1993). English verb classes and alternations: A preliminary investigation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

9. Li, C., & Thompson, S. (1976). Subject and topic: a new typology of language. In C. Li (Ed.), Subject and topic. New York: Academic Press.

10. Perini, M. A. (2002). Modern Portuguese: A reference grammar. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

11. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

12. Perini, M. A. (2018). The language-cognition interface and topic constructions in Brazilian Portuguese. In Coelho, S., & Tenuta, A. (Eds.). Uma abordagem cognitiva da linguagem: Perspectivas teóricas e descritivas (e-book) [A cognitive approach to language: Theoretical and descriptive perspectives]. 81-93. Belo Horizonte: POSLIN-UFMG.

13. Pontes, E. (1986). Sujeito: da sintaxe ao discurso [Subject: from syntax to discourse]. São Paulo: Ática.

14. Pontes, E. (1987). O tópico no português do Brasil [Topics in Brazilian Portuguese]. Campinas: Pontes.

15. Schlesinger, I. M. (1995). Cognitive space and linguistic case: Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

16. Talmy, L. (1988). Force dynamics in language and cognition. Cognitive Science, 12, 49–100. Reprinted as chap. 7 of Toward a Cognitive Semantics (MIT Press 2000).

17. Talmy, L. (2000). Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 1: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Footnotes

1

These notions come from Talmy (1988), who also studies their grammatical significance.

2

Ao is the agglutination of the preposition a plus the article o.

3

It has no effect on presupposition, as is well known: [2] still pressuposes that there has been a storm, and so on.

4

This is by the way represented in the morphology of the English preposition, with+out.

5

For many speakers a reflexive is required here: Magda se casou com o professor, o leite se misturou com a água. This has no relevance for the exposition.

6

Frame elements in Framenet are normally more elaborate than usual semantic roles. This agrees with the chiefly cognitive (not exclusively linguistic) orientation of the project.

7

This is basically recognized, in a way, in the Framenet entry for Cause_to_amalgamate (corresponding to the verb mix): the description refers to “an Agent joining Parts”; and it is also stated that Part 1 “requires Part 2,” and vice versa. ADESSE also recognizes the identity of thematic relations: for mezclar “mix,” it has entidad1 and entidad2, which represent the same thematic role; numbering has to do with the topic status of one of them (José M. García-Miguel, p.c.).

8

Cf. Talmy’s (2000: 24) observation that “grammatical forms are semantically constrained while lexical forms basically are not [...] the basic function of grammatical forms is to structure conception while that of lexical forms is to provide conceptual content.” The same applies to grammatical and lexical thematic relations.

9

Not only this schema: it also evokes MAGDA, TEACHER, and so on. The schema evoked by the verb performs a central role—something already found by traditional grammarians, when they state that the verb is the central element, or the “soul” of the sentence.

10

Framenet has ARRIVING for this notion, but “come close” is clearly distinct from “arriving”: only the latter is telic, for one thing.

11

More adequately, Levin (1993) speaks of “reciprocal alternations,” rather than “reciprocal verbs.”

12

This section follows a suggestion by Polyana Plais (p.c.).

13

Defined in Framenet as “Item 1 and Item 2 are compatible with each other if they can exist or function together in some context without problem, conflict or other undesirable situation.”

14

In Portuguese at least, we can also say você não combina com esse tom de cabelo “you do not go well with this hair color”; as for English, I am not sure.

15

This is the assignment requirement, seen in Sect. 11.4.

16

Perhaps ∗she is being Maria conveys a feeling of unacceptability similar to the one the Portuguese speaker experiences with [59].

17

A previous version of this section was read at the 2016 International Symposium on Verbs, Clauses and Constructions (Logroño, Spain, October 2016) and was published as Perini (2018).

18

Li and Thompson (1976) suggest that one criterion for language typology can be topic-or subject-prominence. If so, Brazilian Portuguese is somewhere in between.

19

Desse is an agglutination of the preposition de “from” plus esse “this.”

20

In this particular case the English sentence is parallel to the Portuguese: my car is the Possessor, a tire is the Possessed Thing (besides being the Patient).

21

Examples marked “EP” are taken from Pontes (1987). Pontes’s examples are all drawn from observed utterances.

22

Naquela is an agglutination of em “in” plus aquela “that.”

23

In written Portuguese meus óculos (plural); in the Brazilian spoken language, óculos is generally used as a singular.

24

On pairing of thematic relations see Perini 2015, 10.1.

25

Na is the agglutination of the preposition em plus the feminine article a.

26

As we must, following Culicover and Jackendoff (2005, Chap. 1).

27

I disregard an apparently similar construction, instanced by deu / bateu meia noite “it struck midnight,” which I suspect refers primarily to the noise of a clock: note that one can say bateu meia noite às duas horas “it struck midnight at two.” In any case, this omission is not crucial here.

28

Framenet: “An Experiencer has a greater desire to participate in some Event, as against another [...] event which exhibits a specific Contrast with the Event” (entry PREFERENCE).

29

Or, worse, that coffee prefers tea to Elsa.

30

This analysis is the only one found in Busse (1994: 386), and also in ADESSE, entry tener.

31

And in any case a dog being possession is a much more plausible situation than a dog owning something—since the schema for OWNER, as seen, includes a “possessed thing,” which can be filled in by the schema DOG, a creature we are accostumed to see as being frequently owned.

32

More rigorously, labeled in a way that allows recognition as an elaboration of Agent. But let us keep things simple by calling this variable Agent.

33

Framenet includes this in the more schematic notion MANIPULATION, but here we may keep the more elaborate one.

34

Framenet: EXPERIENCER_FOCUSED_EMOTION, with variables Experiencer and Content. ADESSE: GUSTAR, variables Experienciador (Experiencer) and Estímulo (Stimulus).

35

This may be the result of a prototype rule, still to be researched. Note that the Agent prototype rule does not apply, because neither of the variables can be identified as an elaboration of Agent.

36

No = em + definite article o.

37

Of course, it may be that features of Universal Grammar (UG) fill in the gaps, so that only thematic information is necessary. I remain skeptical about this possibility, until such universal features are found and duly supported by empirical data.

38

Described in Framenet as “a Perpetrator takes Goods from a Victim or a Source”; ADESSE has as participants Poseedor-final (“final possessor”), Posesión (“possession”) and Poseedor-inicial (“initial possessor”).

39

The same in English, but with a different verb, rob instead of steal.

40

Pairs active/passive are an additional counterexample, since they show the same constituents, with the same roles, in different syntactic functions.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_14

14. Apology of the Lexicon

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

ComplexityConstituent structureLexiconNP head

14.1 On Complexity and the Lexicon

A fact not always fully recognized in modern linguistics is the degree of complexity of the structure of languages; I refer in particular to the high incidence of idiosyncrasy in the system. When reading about grammatical theories one has sometimes the impression that a language is basically composed of rules and principles, and that these elements are sufficient to describe most of what happens when language is used. Extensive work on the data rapidly dispels this impression. In spite of a very important regular component, languages are very irregular in many of their aspects; this is shown for instance by the numerical importance of idioms and other fixed expressions both in the lexicon and in texts,[1] and in the great variety of valencies exhibited by verbs and other items.[2] Both these kinds of phenomena are treated in the lexicon, since they are often conditioned by individual lexical items and are only liable to generalization in limited ways.

In this context one can clearly see how important the study of the lexicon is, and how inadequate is the custom of leaving it in shadow as a secondary component in language structure.[3] In traditional generative grammar a syntactic tree is the basis for lexical insertion, but lexical insertion is in itself at least as complex a process as the construction of the tree, and perhaps much more. In Sells’s (1985) survey the process is dismissed in a few lines,

When lexical entries of the appropriate category are inserted onto the bottom of a tree, we then have a sentence. [...] V can immediately dominate sneeze or sleep or cook, etc. [...] Nothing prevents what looks like the same word from appearing in different categories—so sneeze, sleep, and cook are all nouns as well as verbs. In such cases, it is safest simply to consider that we have two different, though related, lexical items that happen to sound the same.

[Sells 1985: 13]

This position glosses over extremely important issues by just naming some lexical entries “appropriate,” or calling two entries “different, though related.” If we try to state this appropriateness, difference, or relatedness in detail, one faces a tremendous task, definitely no lighter than the building of the grammar itself.

Of course, this position was, even at the time, object of criticism; but it was often taught to graduate students, and I suspect that many linguists bought it as the solution to most problems in linguistic analysis, leaving just a small residue of bothersome cases to be eventually explained.[4] Maurice Gross, for one, identified the problem accurately, mostly as a result of his extensive study of the syntax of French verbs; he observes that

Two elements [...] belong to the same class when they have the same syntactic properties.

For our set of 3,000 entries (that is, verbs), this relation yields a set of 2,000 classes. Since each class contains an average of 1.5 verbs, it can be said that, in general, there are no two verbs with the same syntactic properties.

[Gross 1975: 214][5]

Generative and other theories have certainly increased in empirical adequacy and sophistication in the decades after the publication of Sells’s book; but even nowadays, I suspect, one can find good linguists who do not take lexical problems in consideration to the extent they deserve. As for myself, I began to realize the importance of the problem when I tried to elaborate an analysis of the internal structure of the NP without resorting to any kind of previous data selection.[6] Complexity, understood as the presence of idiosyncrasy, is at the foundation of lexical studies; language is not a neatly arranged system, but a rather messy set of heterogeneous mechanisms, having in common only their ultimate objective of relating forms and meanings, so that the emitter can code his ideas in perceptually accessible forms, and the receptor can construct a cognitive representation. And in this process the use of shared world knowledge is crucial.

This is now fully realized by many linguists, and complexity is an integral part of descriptions, partly as a result, I would say, of work on cognitive science as instanced by Norman and Bobrow (1975), Rumelhart and Ortony (1976), Schank and Abelson (1977), Minsky (1985), and others. This change of attitude (not universal, but quite widespread) has as a consequence a great increase in interest on the lexicon. Current research has tended to show the lexicon as the main interface between language and world knowledge, which only adds to its importance.

14.2 Downscaling Grammar

When one takes into account lexical items and their semantic-cognitive properties, many aspects of the grammar traditionally treated as part of syntax end up being described in terms of meaning. This makes it possible to significantly simplify the grammar, in particular the syntax, a proposal found in Culicover and Jackendoff’s (2005) Simpler Syntax principle, which states that

The most explanatory syntactic theory is one that imputes the minimum structure necessary to mediate between phonology and meaning.

[Culicover and Jackendoff 2005: 5]

Extensive use of information contained in lexical items allows this process to be carried pretty far, so that the grammar ends up being significantly simpler than suggested by previous theory. This does not apply only to syntax, but also to the rules that establish symbolic connections, as we have seen in the case of prototype rules like Agent<>VSubj, which does away with diathetic marking of the semantic role of the subject in most cases where an Agent is present. Diatheses can themselves be viewed as symbolic rules, stating the relation of syntactic units and functions with thematic relations; and we saw how the role of diatheses is also much reduced when we introduce direct relations with cognitive functions (assignment by default). The main descriptive reason why simplification is to be desired is that it prevents extensive duplication of information, for instance in the rule and in the lexical items involved. We may add that this has an important effect on description, but not necessarily on the use of language, since the user has several resources at his disposal, and may use each of them according to the conveniences of the moment.

Prototype rules and assignment by default have been stated and put to use in several passages of this book, and require no further development at the moment. Here I will briefly consider a couple of other points where grammatical rules and structures can be made much simpler by making use of the cognitive information evoked by lexical items.

14.3 Constituent Structure

Constituent structure is not part of the data—that is, a receptor has no direct access to it, since constituents larger than words are not formally marked.[7] A system of rules that relates constituent structure diagrams (“trees”) with meaning is necessarily incomplete; we still need a way to relate constituent structure to conveyed information, whether provided by the phonetic sequence or by preexistent grammatical, semantic, and cognitive knowledge. What a receptor has to begin with is a sequence such as

1. [1]

The girl with John is intelligent.

and he must come, among others, to the conclusion that John is intelligent is not a constituent, although the sequence is present in the sentence. But in

1. [2]

She said that John is intelligent.

the same sequence is a constituent, and has a unified semantic representation, which, to repeat, does not come with the sentence: the receptor must work for it. Constituent structure is basically a semantic phenomenon, and this is recognized in the literature, as for instance in the following:

[...] constituents typically correspond to strings of words that are bound together in terms of semantics. [...] If one word modifies the meaning of another, they will be linked together in a constituent.

[Carnie 2011: 111][8]

There are probably several ways to process these sequences; here I give one of them, which may be used by a receptor in many cases. In [2] one may, for instance, deal with the valential properties of the words girl and said. We know that said is a form of say, a verb that takes a sentential complement with the role Content (that is, “what is said”); a sentential complement can have the form that + sentence, which is what we find in the sequence. Therefore, if we take John is intelligent as a constituent (that is, the embedded sentence) in [2], the whole structure closes properly, both syntactically and semantically: that plus John is intelligent make up an NP, which can be the object of the verb said. But the same solution will not work for [1], for several reasons: first, girl cannot take a sentential complement (some nouns, like reason, can, but girl cannot); second, with plus a sentence cannot be a syntactic unit, since with does not take a finite sentence as its complement (it can take a gerundive one, as in she put up with John hating cats). In summary, there is no syntactic way to take John is intelligent in [1] as a unit, and still have a structure consistent with the lexical items in the sentence. Other segmentations do work out, as for instance taking the girl with John as an NP, which is OK as far as syntax is concerned, and besides has a unified semantic structure that makes sense; and it can be taken as the subject of is, which yields a single sentence, where John is intelligent is not a constituent.

We have been dealing with syntactic structures as defined in the grammar in the usual way. But to explain why the structure that works for [1] does not work for [2], and vice versa, we need to take into account the individual properties of some lexical items; just syntax will not do. In the following example,

1. [3]

∗ She is that John is intelligent.

the problem is in the semantics, because the verb is can have a that-clause as a complement:

1. [4]

Her idea is that John is intelligent.

[3] is ill-formed because it asserts identity between a person and an abstract idea: an anomalous cognitive representation. [4] is well-formed because it asserts identity between two ideas. These examples, and many more, show how insufficient is it just to state, with Sells (1985) that “[w]hen lexical entries of the appropriate category are inserted onto the bottom of a tree, we then have a sentence.” What we mean by a “lexical entry of the appropriate category” must be carefully defined, and this is much more complex than appears at first sight.

14.4 The NP head

14.4.1 Why NPs Have a Head

As an additional example illustrating the delicate interplay of formal, semantic and cognitive factors in grammar, let us examine the problem of how to define the NP head, and how speakers are able to identify it with ease. The NP head is a grammatical function, with syntactic consequences; yet its location within the NP depends on the meaning and reference potential of individual lexical items.

An NP is always analyzed as being a structure organized around a central constituent, named the head. It is with reference to the head that the position of some other constituents is stated, for instance the position of the so-called adjectives; thus one speaks of preposed and postposed adjectives, which means adjectives occurring before and after the head, respectively. The head has also several other properties, which make it a sort of a gravity center for the NP. For some, the head would be a syntactic function, definable in terms of form; according to this view, the syntactic component of the grammar marks one of the terms in the NP as the head, and certain grammatical processes are sensitive to this mark—like for instance number agreement (that car vs. those cars), and gender agreement in Portuguese (aquele carro amarelo “that yellow car” as against aquela bicicleta amarela “that yellow bike”).

But it can be shown that a working definition of the NP head must take into account the semantic, ultimately cognitive, properties of the lexical items involved; no purely morphosyntactic definition works, if it ignores the properties of the particular lexical items included in the NP. There is no way to identify the head of an NP by taking into account formal features such as agreement control, valency control, and linear order, counted either from the beginning or the end of the phrase: all proposals based on such elements can be shown to fail. Nevertheless, the head of an NP is easily identified, and linguists are in agreement that the head in o sapato velho do meu irmão “my brother’s old shoe” is sapato “shoe,” not velho “old” or irmão “brother,” which could be heads in other NPs. This has already been noticed:

Linguists of divergent theoretical persuasions are in almost complete agreement as to what is the head and what is the non-head in a given construction.

[Nichols 1986: 57]

And this does not apply to linguists only: any language user, given an NP, can tell “what one is speaking about”: in my brother’s old shoe we speak about a shoe. This ability to identify the head is essential to comprehension, and is easily put to use by any speaker, which suggests that there is a reasonably safe criterion behind the analysis. Our task is to make this criterion explicit. The crucial features are lexical, semantic, and ultimately cognitive, that is, which constituent works as the head of an NP depends on the defining features of the schema it evokes.

But there is some syntax involved as well: for instance, the presence of a preposition before it disqualifies an NP as a possible head:[9] thus, the NP the bird on the roof cannot refer to a roof. In Portuguese the same happens: banco de pedra “stone bench,” where banco “bench” is the head. The English for this phrase is stone bench, and here syntax also interferes, since in double-noun constructions the first noun is not eligible to be the NP head.

14.4.2 Syntactic and Semantic Factors

In order to treat these cases in a relatively unified way, we must first resort to the semantic composition of each lexical item and of the phrases they appear in—that is, in fact, to the contents of the schemata they evoke. In the bird on the roof, although roof as a single word may refer to a thing, the presence of the preposition disqualifies the phrase on the roof as a referential constituent, so that it cannot denote a thing, but rather a location. Now, the word bird can also refer to a thing, and not being inside a prepositional phrase, it is eligible as the reference center of the NP. An NP is an instrument used to refer to things, and as such it needs a reference center; in the bird on the roof there are two main constituents, and only one of them has referential potential. Accordingly, we understand this NP as referring to a bird; the remaining constituents refine this reference, restricting it to a bird that is “on the roof” and that is “the” (a given entity). A similar process informs us that with that expensive dress we refer to a dress, since dress is the only item with referential potential present in the phrase.[10]

All this derives from a few assumptions, which I find plausible:[11]

1. (a)

Every NP has a reference center.

This seems to be the essential function of NPs: bringing reference to things into the cognitive representation being built.

1. (b)

No NP has more than one reference center.

In George and Miriam we do not have an NP with two reference centers: rather, we have two coordinate NPs, and their sequence makes up a third NP, to which reference is made at the sentential level, as in George and Miriam are Australian, where the subject is only one, George and Miriam.

1. (c)

Prepositional phrases have no reference potential.

This admits of exceptions, specifically when a preposition is required by a verb, as in Sarah applied for a scholarship; here for a scholarship does refer to a thing. These relatively numerous cases are marked in diatheses of the verbs involved.

1. (d)

Individual words may have, or not, referential potential.

In English, dress has referential potential, but expensive does not.

These four assumptions seem to me to be uncontroversial and traditional enough, and they are important in what follows.

We have seen that velho amigo is ambiguous: “old friend” and “friendly old man”; this comes from the fact that both velho “old; old man” and amigo “friend; friendly” have referential potential (and are marked +R); and, furthermore, both have qualificative potential (+Q)[12] so that the following two interpretations are possible:

- velho  amigo

- Q    R  “old friend”

- velho amigo

- R    Q  “friendly old man”

Now, a sequence with the reverse order, amigo velho, is not ambiguous, and means “old friend,” but not “friendly old man.” Here we see the intricate way syntax and semantics are intertwined in the structure: amigo has qualificative potential, but only if it is postposed to the head. Consequently, the interpretation

- amigo velho

- Q  R

is ill-formed, for lexicogrammatical reasons.

In cases where both items are free from this symbolic restriction, both orders are possible, in both readings, since both items have qualificative or referential potential regardless of their position in the NP. This results in four possible combinations, as for example in pequena loura versus loura pequena, both interpretable as “blonde girl” or as “small blonde,” since pequena when referential means “girl,” and when qualificative means “small.”

We can then conclude that the identification of what we call the NP head depends on properties of the lexical items: the head must be an item with referential potential—that is, an item that can evoke a schema including, as part of its basic features, reference to a thing.[13] This is a property that words like the, of, slightly and thin do not have; and this is what words like table, John and good do have. As seen, there are “adjectives” in both groups—but this is because this class is poorly defined; for our purposes what counts is the presence or absence of referential potential, which I represent by the feature [±R]; the property of restricting the reference of another item is represented by [±Q]. The item thin is [−R, +Q]; John is [+R, −Q]; and good is [+R, +Q].

14.4.3 Semantic Function of the NP

There is only one referential constituent per NP (and per reading, when more than one is available); this is what Zwicky (1993) calls the characterizing participant, and I prefer to call the reference center of the NP.

The presence of a reference center is required because of the essential function of the NP, namely to identify a referent. All additional information, when present, must adapt to this basic fact. The head supplies the reference center, upon which the rest of the NP elaborates the final reference: from “dog” we come then to “that small yellow dog in the backyard.” The meaning relation between the head and the NP is one of hyponymy: the NP expresses a hyponym of the head’s reference. This means that NPs are one of the resources a language uses in order to elaborate the information contained in an item; we have here another aspect of the elaboration process, which seemingly pervades much of the functioning of a natural language. The hyponymic relation between the NP and the head is usually recognized, as in

the phrase is a “kind of” the head since the latter provides both the semantic and syntactic type of the phrase.

[McGlashan 1993: 204]

and in

Semantically, the Head is the characterizing participant in a construction; intuitively, the meaning of a construct is a subtype of the meaning of the Head (red apple denotes a subtype of apple, make a box a subtype of make), while the Dependent plays a contributory role in the semantics, restricting the meaning of the Head in one way or another.

[Zwicky 1993: 296]

This is true as respects the semantic function of the head: that small yellow dog has a more elaborate reference than dog.[14] This seems to be the basic semantic function of the NP. McGlashan’s assertion is correct, except for the mention of the syntactic “type” relation between the head and the NP, which as we shall see below (14.4.6), does not work. But the idea that the head is semantically a more schematic version of the NP is correct, and can become the basis for a working identification criterion.

We saw that this semantic condition is subject to syntactic restrictions: in Portuguese, amigo velho “old friend” is unambiguous because amigo, although it is [+R], cannot show this feature if it is preposed to the head. The feature composition of these two words allows the following four possibilities:

- amigo velho

1. (a)

R  R

2. (b)

Q  Q

3. (c)

R  Q

4. (d)

Q  R

Interpretation (a) is excluded because no NP can have two heads; (b) is excluded because an NP must have a head, that is, a term with referential reading; (c) is well-formed, and is not excluded, meaning “old friend”; and (d), semantically well-formed, is excluded because of a syntactic (or, rather, symbolic) constraint that the item amigo cannot be Q when positioned before an item marked R (the head).

The symbolic restriction seen above for amigo applies to a certain number of Portuguese nominals, but not to all: for instance, velho “old; old man” can appear as a Q even before the head, as shown in velho amigo, which is ambiguous between “old friend” and “friendly old man.” In these sequences the head may be the first or the second constituent; but in amigo velho the head must be the first constituent. In pequena loura versus loura pequena, both interpretable as “blonde girl” or as “small blonde,” as we saw, both orderings are ambiguous because both items have referential and qualificative potential, and neither is restricted to being qualificative only when postposed to the referential term. These examples show that, besides the semantic potential of each item, syntactic information is also needed in the process of locating the head of an NP; and locating the head is needed for the correct interpretation of the NP. Here again, we find the high relevance of the lexicon as an instrument in the connection of the two extremes of the language activity, form and meaning—or, in other words, sounds and cognitive representations.

Semantic and formal factors interact in a complex way, and in no way can we analyze them as separate compact components, such as is found in traditional generative grammar. As observed before (9.3), things work as if the language user has simultaneous access to all information, and makes use of it as is convenient for the task at hand.

14.4.4 Subcategorization

There is no working, operational account in the literature of how the NP head is identified. Generativists define the head in terms of projection: the NP is the maximal projection of an N:

A fundamental and central concept in all contemporary syntax is the concept of a head. The head of a linguistic unit is that part of the unit that gives its essential character. In the present context, the head of an NP is the noun; it is in virtue of the fact that it is headed by a noun that the phrase is a noun phrase.

[Sells 1985: 27]

This is the traditional conception of head within generative theory, and it does not essentially differ from the usual idea of head that comes from traditional grammar. In particular, it refers to the “essential character” of the phrase, and it ties the definition to the word class “noun.”

Both these points require more reflection than they have received. For instance, is a word like table a noun? If so, how can we explain that it is not the head in table manners, table tennis, table top, and so on? This is a pretty basic question, but seems not to have been asked often enough. Besides, what exactly is the “essential character” of a unit? If it refers to its distribution and/or grammatical properties, it is easy to show that the head of an NP differs significantly from the NP as a whole in this respect.

Now, if “essential character” refers to the meaning of the unit, again there are differences: for instance, my old dog has a much more elaborate meaning than simply dog, which has a generic reference that the former NP lacks. I think there is something here to be eventually used, but it requires more careful explicitation; talking of identity of meaning or of reference is not enough.

We find in a recent introduction to syntax that the head is

The primary word in a phrase; typically subcategorizes for the other elements in a constituent.

[Carnie 2011: 337]

The first part would have to be made clearer: primary in what sense? I suspect this is a hidden semantic condition. As for the head being the subcategorizing constituent, it fails to work in too many cases. If our example is

1. [5]

Um lindo crepúsculo.

- “a beautiful sunset”

we can argue that crepúsculo “sunset” is the subcategorizing element, hence the head; lindo “beautiful” could not be responsible for the form of crepúsculo (masculine), because the latter does not vary in gender, while lindo does. Then, it is crepúsculo that subcategorizes for the masculine form of lindo.

But this reasoning does not work for all cases; take

1. [6]

Um velho professor

- “an old teacher”

Now we have two words, velho “old” and professor “teacher” which both vary together in gender:[15]

1. [7]

Uma velha professora

- “an old (female) teacher”

Which is responsible for the form of the other? There is no satisfactory syntactic answer to this question: either word could be subcategorizing for the other, and if we stick to this definition there is no way to know where is the head of this NP. Yet finding the head is a prerequisite to understanding the NP: are we speaking of a teacher (who is old) or of an old person (who is a teacher)? Note that we can say um velho “an old man” and uma velha “an old woman,” which shows that velho/velha can be an NP head. And we can also say um professor velho “an old (male) teacher” and uma professora velha “an old (female) teacher,” which shows that just order is not sufficient in finding the head.

Actually, [6] and [7] are both ambiguous, and can refer to a teacher, adding the information that he or she is old, or to an old man or woman, adding that he or she is a teacher. But this cannot be derived from syntactic information; it is rather the result of an operation based on the semantic and referential potential of these items. Actually, Carnie’s (2011) statement that the head “subcategorizes for the other elements in a constituent” is correct, but does not refer to a syntactic function. It refers rather to a semantic one: in [5], crepúsculo “sunset” is the head because it has referential potential, which lindo “beautiful” has not; and in [6], since both velho “old, old man” and professor “teacher” have referential potential, the NP is ambiguous. In any case, the generative solution, as usually understood, makes it difficult to account for the ease with which speakers locate the head of an NP.

In conclusion so far, the subcategorizing element in an NP is determined by at least partially semantic criteria, although it has formal consequences like number and gender determination.

14.4.5 Other Morphosyntactic Criteria

If we want to define the NP head in purely syntactic terms, we may first try the linear position it occupies within the structure. This solution was attempted in the first steps in the research that led to a previous work (Perini et al. 1996), defining, among others, the functions pre-head, head and modifier, to occur in this order; the idea was that once we identify the pre-head, the head would be the following constituent; or, if we find the modifier, the head would be the preceding constituent. The attempt to put this procedure to work showed that it does not work.

An immediate problem is that both the pre-head and the modifier are optional; and the modifier can occur more than once in an NP. This prevents the definition of the head as the nth constituent counting from the beginning or from the end of the construction—especially if we consider that many items, such as velho “old, old man” and alto “high, top” can be pre-heads, heads or modifiers. I conclude that it is not possible to define the head in terms of the order in which it occurs within the NP.

Another way to define formally the head might be to associate it with the control of agreement. This does not work, as seen in the preceding section.

Now, if we could make two mutually exclusive lists of items, one of “nouns” and the other of “adjectives,” we might define the head as the noun, at least in cases where only one noun is present. This is one of the criteria hinted at in Sells’s passage given above. But it works no better than the other ones, because word classes do not function in the way traditional grammar suggests.[16] In Portuguese most items in the nominal area can appear in such a way as to be analyzed in traditional terms as a head or as a modifier. An example is the word amigo “friend, friendly,” which works one way in

1. [8]

Meu amigo

- “my friend”

and in another way in

1. [9]

Um gesto amigo

- “a friendly gesture”

Presumably, amigo would be a “noun” in [8] and an “adjective” in [9]. It is sometimes held that we have here two lexical items, one a noun and the other an adjective. But this does not solve the problem, because we still have to explain how a receptor can tell one from the other, since they are pronounced alike; distinguishing two items only adds one step to the procedure, without explaining it.[17]

It is true that some items have a more limited behavior; thus, mesa “table” would always be a noun, paternal “fatherly” always an adjective. But as long as we have cases like amigo—and they constitute a majority of nominal items—we are still at a loss for a convenient analysis. The lesson in these examples is that it is impossible to define the NP head in totally formal terms, although there are some formal indications that might help in a few cases—but never in all, or even most, of them.

14.4.6 Zwicky (1993) as a Starting Point

Zwicky (1993) has a more sophisticated discussion of the problem and, although he does not arrive at a totally satisfactory solution, his paper provides some important insights; my solution partly derives from his proposal.

The NP head has a number of properties, having to do with factors such as identification of the main referent of the phrase; control of nominal agreement; control of nominal valency in the NP; and control of verb agreement in the sentence. These factors were enumerated and discussed by Zwicky (1993), who stated the problem in a more concrete way than the vague expositions found in part of the literature. According to Zwicky, the head is a complex notion, and its first property, as we saw in the quotation given above, is “the characterizing participant in a construction.” This property portrays the NP head as the reference center, which is what language users must identify in order to understand the utterance. This is certainly a central property of the head, and we must find a way to explain how users find it so easily—which was done in 14.4.3 above.

Another property pointed out by Zwicky is that

With respect to its internal syntax, the Head is the required element in a construction [...] ‘required’ in the special sense that without this element the construct is elliptical [...]

[Zwicky 1993: 297]

Here I must disagree. The reason is that I suspect that in some cases the head of an NP can be omitted, resulting in sentences like

1. [10]

Alguns acreditam no governo.

- “Some believe in the government.”

It seems to me that the subject, alguns “some,” has no head, although one must understand this NP, even in nonanaphoric context, as referring to people, not to inanimate things or even animals. In any case, Zwicky’s second criterion fails to work as an instrument for the identification of the NP head—language users cannot test the obligatory occurrence of each constituent in order to find the head.

Another of the properties proposed by Zwicky for the NP head is that

With specific reference to its external syntax, the Head is the determinant in a somewhat different sense: the distribution of the construct as a whole is predictable from properties of the Head [...] so that the Head determines what is in effect the lexical subcategory of the construct as a whole. The Head as external representative, or ‘external determinant’, is the element in a construction that serves as the trigger or the target for external lexical subcategorization [...] with respect to partners of the construct as a whole, and as the trigger for government or agreement [...] For external purposes [...] very red tomatoes has a distribution predictable from the properties of tomatoes [...]

[Zwicky 1993: 297]

and also

With respect to both its internal and its external syntax, the Head is the syntactic category determinant. It determines the syntactic category of the construct as a whole [...] while the category of the Dependent has no direct reflection in the category of the construct.

[Zwicky 1993: 297]

This property seems to be derived from the notion of endocentric construction, introduced by Bloomfield (1933: 194). The idea is that a phrase (say, an NP) would have a syntactic distribution identical to one of its constituents. Another derivation of this property seems to me to be the generative idea of the NP (or Ndouble bar) as the projection of a head N. To be fair, it must be said that Zwicky does not insist on identity of distribution; rather, he merely states that “the distribution of the construct as a whole is predictable from properties of the Head,” and this may be true. But it remains to be verified, with due formulation of the correspondence rules that derive the distribution of an NP (and other constituent classes) from the distributional potential of its head.

This way to define the NP is widely accepted, explicitly or implicitly, by linguists working on the topic, and not always with the restrictions added by Zwicky. As one example among many, we have Company (1992), who defines the NP by its property to

occur in the majority of the same contexts that the immediate constituent considered as the head; that is, the substantive head and the noun phrase are equivalent (N≡NP) because they have similar possibility to appear in more extensive phrases.

[Company 1992: 13]

Company is aware that equivalence is not perfect, but she takes it as an acceptable approximation. But distributional equivalence of words like John, friend, and book, with the NPs which they head is largely fictional. According to the above definitions a phrase like Nadine’s German friend would have a similar distribution to its head, friend. But the differences are striking: for one thing, friend can occur as the head of an NP, and the whole NP obviously cannot; for another, the NP can be the complement of be, as in

1. [11]

That man at the corner is Nadine’s German friend.

whereas just friend does not occur there. A noun can appear as a vocative (friend, help me) but an NP cannot. Table can appear as a modifier, as in table manners, but that white table cannot.

Even the assertion that both the head and the NP can be the subject of a sentence is incorrect, first because in many cases the head cannot appear in that function:

1. [12]

∗ Friend called me.

And even when it can, as in

1. [13]

Martha called me.

one must ask whether the subject is the word Martha or the NP [Martha]NP, which sounds the same but patterns in a way parallel to larger units like my friend Martha and the like. If we insist that the word Martha is the subject in [13], we must deny that Martha is an NP in that sentence. But if we do so we must abandon the generalization that the subject function is always filled in by an NP: there will be exceptions, like Martha in [13]. Furthermore, the exception would be extended to the other functions of the NP, such as object and complement of preposition. According to this analysis, the subject, the object and the complement of a preposition would be filled in sometimes by an NP, sometimes by a noun. I do not see what we have to gain from this analysis, and have to conclude that this criterion does not work.

14.4.7 Agreement Control

The NP head has a number (singular or plural), which controls verbal agreement. This may be a semantic phenomenon: if the NP head is, say, plural, and the other constituents merely elaborate it, we end up with a plural NP, which harmonizes with a plural form of the verb. Here the process is semantic from beginning to end.

This derives from the pro-drop nature of Portuguese: many sentences can appear with the subject, with a person-number suffix, or both. To repeat the examples given in Sect. 4.3,

1. [14]

Nós saímos.

- we  left

1. [15]

Saímos.

- (we) left

1. [16]

Nós saindo, vocês podem ir dormir.

- we leaving, you can go to sleep

- “(When) we leave, you can go to sleep.”

In [14], the Theme (“we”) is represented twice: by the subject nós “we,” and by the person-number suffix −mos. What is wrong in a sequence like

1. [17]

∗ Eu saímos

- I  left-1st.pl

is that it gives contradictory information about the Theme: the subject asserts it is “I,” and the suffix that it is “we.” As seen, the conditions governing agreement are semantic.

But nominal agreement, an important and widespread phenomenon in Portuguese, and also present, in a much more restricted form, in English,[18] seems to be a purely syntactic phenomenon. It is based on largely meaning-free categories, like grammatical gender, and even number in cases like férias “vacation,” costas “back,” which are always plural in Portuguese, even when they refer to singular entities. But nominal agreement is governed by an NP constituent (the head) defined by its referential status, which is a semantic feature. That is, a constituent’s being taken referentially in an NP depends on its having referential potential (a feature of the schema).

These examples, a few among many, show the highly intricate manner that syntactic, semantic and symbolic factors interact in order to assign to one of the items in an NP the status of controller of nominal agreement; and it also shows that lexical marks are crucial in the process. The process is complex and extensive and calls for detailed charting, a task for future research; but I would risk to say that the main lines of the definition of the NP head are clear enough.

References

1. Bloomfield, L. (1933). Language. London: Allen and Unwin.

2. Carnie, A. (2011). Modern syntax: A coursebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

3. Company, C. C. (1992). La frase sustantiva en el español medieval. Cuatro cambios sintácticos. [The noun phrase in medieval Spanish. Four syntactic changes]. México: UNAM.

4. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

5. Fulgêncio, L. (2008). Expressões fixas e idiomatismos do português brasileiro [Fixed expressions and idioms in Brazilian Portuguese]. Belo Horizonte: Doctoral Thesis, PUC-Minas.

6. Fulgêncio, L. (ms). Dicionário de expressões fixas e idiomatismos do português. [Dictionary of fixed expressions and idioms in Portuguese].

7. Gross, M. (1975). Méthodes en syntaxe. Paris: Hermann.

8. Liberato, Y. G. (1997). A estrutura do SN em português: uma abordagem cognitiva. [The structure of the NP in Portuguese: a cognitive approach]. Doctoral Thesis, UFMG.

9. McGlashan, S. (1993). Heads and lexical semantics. In G. G. Corbett, N. M. Fraser, & S. McGlashan (Eds.), Heads in grammatical theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

10. Minsky, M. (1985). The society of mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.

11. Nichols, J. (1986). Head-marking and dependent-marking grammar. Language, 62, 1.

12. Norman, D. A., & Bobrow, D. G. (1975). On the role of active memory processes in perception and cognition. In C. N. Cofer (Ed.), The structure of human memory. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman.

13. Perini, Mário A (Forthcoming). Class and function in linguistic theory: word classes, prototypes, and grammatical categories

14. Perini, Mário A., Lúcia, F., Regina, B., Sigrid, F. (1996). O Sintagma nominal em português: Estrutura, significado e função. [The NP in Portuguese: structure, meaning, and function] Revista de Estudos da Linguagem (special number). Belo Horizonte: UFMG. Available at <periodicos.letras.ufmg.br index.php relin issue view / 409>.

15. Rumelhart, D. E., & Ortony, A. (1976). The representation of knowledge in memory. La Jolla, CA: Center for Human Information Processing, University of California, San Diego.

16. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts plans goals and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

17. Sells, P. (1985). Lectures on contemporary syntactic theories. Stanford: CSLI.

18. Zwicky, A. (1993). Heads, bases and functors. In G. G. Corbett, N. M. Fraser, & S. McGlashan (Eds.), Heads in grammatical theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Footnotes

1

Fulgêncio’s survey (2008; ms) has shown that close to 9000 idioms and other fixed expressions are known to all speakers, and are currently used in the spoken language of Brazil.

2

Another source of idiosyncrasy is inflectional morphology, in particular in languages with rich verb systems, as is the case of Portuguese; and also derivational morphology, an area where one frequently has to abandon all attempt at the formulation of rules.

3

This custom is, fortunately, less and less frequent.

4

This was my feeling when I finished my graduate studies in the mid-seventies.

5

See also Culicover’s observations on idiosyncrasy in grammar (1999, Chap. 3).

6

The results were published as Perini et al. (1996).

7

In some languages words are, but not larger units. In the written language, of course, constituents are partially marked with spaces, plus signs like comma, question mark, and period.

8

As has long been recognized, here also there are exceptions, if comparatively few; for instance, in this book is difficult to read we need the semantic unit “read this book,” which does not correspond to any syntactic constituent.

9

Actually, this is a partly semantic restriction, since the presence of the preposition has an impact on the meaning of the phrase: prepositional phrases have no referential potential.

10

These observations are valid at the highest level of constituency; if we go down to subordinate-phrase level, on the roof contains the NP the roof, where the word roof is the head.

11

They come in part from Liberato (1997).

12

When the signal is shown, as in [+Q], the feature refers to a potential: “this form can be a Q”; when no signal is shown, as in [Q], we refer to the actual realization in that context: “this form is a Q here.” Qualificative is a convenient label; in fact, it might be called restrictive, because its function is to restrict the reference of the head: a black bird is not any bird, but a black one. But restrictive begins with the same letter as referential, so I prefer the (by the way traditional) term qualificative.

13

“Thing” is a technical term and includes persons, animals, and abstractions as well. For an elaborate definition, see Langacker (1987, Chap. 5).

14

Not necessarily more specific: elaborate reference may be generic, as in small yellow dogs are very friendly.

15

Let us ignore the article, um(a), which adds nothing to the point.

16

Apart from the problem that “noun” could not be defined by its property of being able to occur as the head of an NP, of course.

17

There are other problems of a more theoretical nature, having to do with the distinction between classes and functions, which I discuss elsewhere (Perini Forthcoming).

18

Only in the items this and that, which agree in number.

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019

M. A. PeriniThematic Relationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_15

15. Results and Conclusions

Mário A. Perini[1]

(1)

Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil

Mário A. Perini

Keywords

Assignment by defaultLanguage and cognitionSemantic rolesThematic relations

15.1 Complexity of the Assignment System

If there is a lesson on methodology to be learned from our work on valencies, it has to do with the crucial importance of extended surveys of the grammar and the lexicon. Even a partial description of verb valencies such as the one we have constructed to date (about 650 verbs, out of an estimated total of at least 3000)[1] revealed a wealth of facts about the structure of the language, and, no less importantly, forced us to base our work on some theoretical principles and rules which are firmly grounded on empirical data. This goes counter to the often followed tendency of researching a limited set of data, sometimes suggested by a theoretical standing adopted beforehand. Theories are important, since they portray our understanding of the language; but they must be built from the ground up, upon carefully described and systematized data. This is not to say that all analysis is necessarily bottom-up; but it means that all theoretical notions used in analysis must be defensible in terms of the concrete facts of the language. Here we may cite Gross’s (1975, 1979) remarks on the reluctance of most modern linguists to build inventories, which detracts from the descriptive value of their analyses:

[...] linguists seem to have renounced to build inventories, which nevertheless seem to us to be fundamental.

[Gross 1975: 20]

In this book I present some results that come mostly from work on a description of Portuguese verb valencies. I do not offer these results as valid for language in general, not even for the whole of the structure of Portuguese. They may be understood as a contribution to a theory of verb valency which is, nevertheless, an essential part of any more comprehensive theory to be eventually constructed. I had also to discuss some important methodological points, including the need for a systematic distinction between semantic roles and ETRs, and the development of an elaboration system to relate these two levels of analysis.

In this book I present new aspects of a phenomenon already studied in Perini (2015): the unexpected complexity of the assignment system that associates sentence constituents with thematic relations (semantic roles and ETR). In particular, I explore the extent of assignment by default, and come to the conclusion that it is more widespread than suggested in my previous book. This has the advantages of shortening the track between the form of sentences and the cognitive representation it conveys, by skipping the semantic role stage; also, it solves the traditional difficulty represented by the need to define a great number of semantic roles of very restricted distribution, to the point that “at the extreme, every verb defines a distinct set of participant roles that reflect its own unique semantic properties” (Langacker 1991a: 285). It also leaves explicit the role of the mind in requiring closure and cognitive well-formedness of the CRs that result from the interpretation of sentences. Finally, it also minimizes the need to postulate special machinery to account for the assignment phenomenon, showing that part of it is a natural result of the way our mind works in order to make sense of the utterances we receive. Besides, the application of assignment by default may bring about a significant reduction in the number of valential verb classes, which at first sight seems incredibly high.

15.2 Elaboration and Linguistic Analysis

Elaboration (under this and other labels) is far from a new notion, and was conveniently stated for instance by Langacker (1987, 1991b, 2008); see quote in 3.2. In this book I make an attempt to integrate this notion into linguistic analysis, chiefly as a means to relate semantic roles and ETRs. As seen, however, the elaboration process is more than just that, and is one of the instruments for describing the very process of understanding linguistic utterances, making use of meaning features of lexical items, prototypes, and elements of the linguistic and extralinguistic context. In this sense, the elaboration process deserves an important place in linguistic analysis, and must be studied in detail.[2]

Assignment by default allows a radical simplification of the analysis, without harming the basic aim of lexicogrammatical description, which is the establishment of a system connecting, on one hand, lexical units and grammatical relations and, on the other, ETRs (which ultimately lead to cognitive representations, accessible to language users by introspection). Note that the connection between these two poles is necessary in any case; what is in question is the nature, and degree of complexity, of the intervening mechanism. Assignment by default offers a linguistically less complex analysis; as for its nature, it dispenses with specific rules, and makes use of general, independently motivated, conditions on cognitive well-formedness.

The notion of elaboration is basic for stating the process of assignment of ETRs by default, which as seen is one of the basic instruments relating linguistic units and relations with their ultimate interpretation, that is, their cognitive representation. And assignment by default, in its turn, makes it possible to adequately approach such important questions as: the analysis of many cases traditionally, but incorrectly, analyzed as containing a Patient; the proper definition of Patient as a semantically coherent role;[3] the analysis of reciprocal constructions, and other cases where two constituents show the same thematic relation with the verb schema; and the assignment of thematic relations to discourse topics, largely bypassing syntactic structure.

Elaboration is needed in order to relate semantic roles to ETRs; and this relationship is essential because language users have introspective access to ETRs, not to semantic roles. That is, in the cat scratched the girl we do not understand an Agent and a Patient, but rather a “scratcher” and a “scratched person,” or even the corresponding visual images, synthesized in our memory. If we only deal with semantic roles, there will be no way to test the results of the analysis against concrete data, which come from language speakers’ judgments and understanding of sentences.

15.3 Schematic Filters

Cognitive filtering of possible meanings is a widely recognized phenomenon, and is almost obvious: what we say must make sense, otherwise it is excluded by some sort of cognitive device. Although such a device is often difficult to state with rigor, its intuitive action is clear enough; thus, if one says this work meets all requirements, the most frequent reading of meet, “come to the same place,” is excluded, and one must resort to an alternate such as “satisfy.” This reflects our expectation that utterances make sense; as a matter of fact, relatively few words have only one meaning (or a closely similar set of meanings), so that this kind of filtering happens all the time.

It was shown that schematic filters are responsible for the correct interpretation of prepositions that express more than one prototypical semantic role: implausible readings are excluded, and when more than one is plausible the result is ambiguous. This means that schematic filters are also necessary to fully analyze phenomena traditionally seen as purely grammatical, such as thematic relation assignment. Thematic relation assignment by default and schematic filters are instances of the certainly more general fact that sentence meaning is largely drawn from non-structural information.

As a secondary (for us) bonus, schematic filters are probably one triggering factor in the perception of metaphors: the process begins with the identification of an ill-formed cognitive representation, which starts a searching process that may end in a metaphoric interpretation of the sequence.[4]

15.4 On Testing Linguistic Hypotheses

A possible objection against the use of elaboration and ETRs is that these are not linguistic relations, but belong to the study of cognition. I agree that such devices describe aspects of cognition, rather than features of particular languages; but they must still be considered in the context of linguistic studies, for at least two important reasons.

The first (and least important) reason is that strictly linguistic and cognitive factors are not neatly distributed into separate sequential components, but follow each other without much regard as to their nature. An example is the order of adjectives in Portuguese, in phrases like

1. [1]

Vestido novo importado/vestido importado novo

- “a new imported dress”

1. [2]

Escola pública federal/∗escola federal pública

- “federal public school”

As seen, the order is fixed in the second example. This happens because (in the Brazilian system) federal schools are always public, although not all public schools are federal (some are run by the city, some by the state). This determines, for speakers aware of the difference, the order of the adjectives: the more comprehensive one must appear first, then the more restrictive one. In [1], where there is no inclusion relation between the notions “new” and “imported,” the order is free. This is an example of a syntactic fact governed by world knowledge.[5]

If we have to draw a boundary between linguistic and nonlinguistic components in the description of language use, it will be a most complex one, reminiscent of some European boundaries in past centuries, full of twists, indentations, and enclaves. Even so, I think the boundary can and must be drawn, and will show the interaction between language knowledge and world knowledge. But this is not the same limit as the one between what is and what is not to appear in a linguistic description—here we are not properly concerned with what is present in a particular language, but with the way the understanding system makes use of world knowledge as against language-specific units, rules, processes, and so on. Therefore, both kinds of information must be studied, since we do not know in advance where the boundary is, and one of our tasks is precisely to draw it with some precision.

The second, and most important, reason why linguistic analysis should include ETR-level relations is that all grammatical statements must be ultimately testable against data. That is, when we say that there is an Agent in the cat scratched me we should be prepared to show it by testing with naive speakers who, lacking linguistic training, will only tell us that there is a “scratcher” in the cognitive representation they build on the basis of this sentence. That is, “scratcher” (or “scratching entity”) is something that can be understood independently of definition or explanation, in a word, linguistic training; it can even be related to a visual representation, which Agent cannot, since it bunches together, at a schematic level, such different notions as “scratcher,” “eater,” “writer,” and “driver.”

Let me insist on this point, which is fundamental. Testing linguistic analyses depends on relating them to aspects of cognitive representation in an intuitively satisfactory way. For instance, why do we feel sure when we claim that there should be an Agent in the analysis of John jumped? Surely because the cognitive representation we get from this sentence includes a recognizable hyponym of Agent, namely the “jumping entity.” Our intuition tells us clearly that without a “jumping entity” no “jumping” event is conceivable; this event (evoked by the verb jump) corresponds to a schema having a variable so labeled. It is this ETR that can be directly tested for presence in a particular sentence, and it is a positive answer that authorizes us to include an Agent in its analysis.

Now, in the case of assignment by default no semantic role is posited; yet an ETR must be present. The presence of the ingredient “worshipped entity” in the sentence the Incas worshipped the sun can be tested with language users, including nonlinguists. The answer will be positive, which means that this ETR should be included in the analysis of the sentence: that is all that counts. The means to reach this result may vary; in some cases (as in John jumped) a grammatically supportable semantic role is available which will yield by elaboration the desired ETR. In other cases, no semantic role is available, but the by-default mechanism can yield the correct result. Both roads are open, and each can be followed according to circumstances; the crucial consideration is that the cognitive result be testable, just as the phonetic one is—otherwise our hypothesis will not be testable, and will be empirically void. Our analysis must then come all the way down to ETRs, because the aim of linguistic analysis is to relate forms (ultimately, phonetic sequences) and meanings (ultimately, concretely accessible ETRs and other cognitive relations and units); definitely, the so-called logical form will not do, because it is not testable in real situations. The same applies at the other end: we cannot base our analysis on comparatively abstract phonological representations, because they do not occur in perceptual form, and cannot be tested.

This, of course, does not mean that abstract phonological representations, as well as semantic roles, are to be discarded; but it means that they cannot be the object of testing, and their postulation calls for adequate support. It does not mean either that there is no distinction between knowledge of a language and world knowledge—I believe there is—but that the limits are not simple. And it means that dealing exclusively with language (or “competence”), even if we could distinguish it a priori from world knowledge, would result in a set of nontestable statements, of little use in a scientific description.

15.5 Defining Prototypes

The notion of prototype is indispensable in lexicogrammatical description but is often taken in a most vague and approximative manner so that it is really not operational. Here I propose a more rigorous way to treat the notion so that it can be even quantified, if need be, in terms of number or percentage of constructions or lexical items that have a given feature. Thus, instead of simply speaking of “irregular verbs,” we can range them according to the number of irregular forms (in English: be is more irregular than make), and also according to subclass size (be is morphologically unique, but ring belongs to a set of verbs including sing, drink, spring, and others).

In what concerns semantic role assignment, we can also state prototype rules such as our old friend Agent<>VSubj, which applies to a readily quantifiable set of verbs, in contrast with verbs that have an Agent but do not undergo this rule. And this kind of prototype seems essential in order to account for the thematic possibilities of the most common prepositions. Thus, we have a definition that, albeit partial because stated with consideration of valency description, may be a first step towards a more clear, rigorous and operational idea of prototype in lexicogrammar. We can then simplify the description to a significant degree, at the same time bringing it closer both to observable facts and to speakers’ intuitions.

15.6 Limits of a Language

Let us return now to a question asked at the start of this book: How can one draw the limits of a language?

We saw that linguistic and nonlinguistic factors collaborate in generating sentences and their meaning, as well as excluding ill-formed ones; ill-formedness in its turn is also sometimes linguistic, sometimes cognitive in a wider sense. These two orders of factors are intertwined in complex, but not inextricable, ways. In particular, each descriptive statement can usually be identified as purely linguistic, purely nonlinguistic, or as expressing a relation between the two; and the relation between the two main spaces can be expressed with precision. But the components of a description do not organize themselves neatly, which makes it difficult to apply traditional labels such as “syntax,” “semantics,” “pragmatics,” and “deep structure.” Of course, it still makes sense to speak of particular languages, since many features are language-specific, including individual forms and units, the ways they come together in formal sequences, the several ways of associating forms and meanings, and the delimitation of semantic roles. This is a strictly empirical question: these two spaces must be charted in detail, thus showing the way human languages have found to balance linguistic signalling and world knowledge in order to establish communication.

Verb valency is an area of language structure where the effect of distinguishing these two orders of phenomena is particularly clear. For example, the Portuguese verb estar “be,” examined in Sect. 13.4, has at first sight a pretty complex valency, including a certain number of diatheses, among which the following:

- VSubj>Located thing  V  em NP>Location

1. [3]

Ela estava no carro.

- “She was in the car.”

- VSubj>Qualified thing  V  AdjP>Quality

1. [4]

Ela estava nervosa,

- “She was nervous.”

- VSubj>Qualified thing  V  AdvP>Manner

1. [5]

Ela estava com a garganta seca.

- “She had a dry throat.”

- VSubj>Companion   V  AdvP>Company

1. [6]

Ela estava com o namorado.

- “She was with her boyfriend.”

Besides several others, more difficult to analyze in terms of semantic roles.

Yet it is possible to reduce all these diatheses to just one, and a much simpler one, namely

- VSubj  V  X

where “X” stands for a syntactic variable, with any form or constituency. Now the thematic relations can be filled in by reference to the several schemata which are evoked by the verb, estar. Complexity is thus transferred to the cognitive domain, where it is inevitable.

The simple formulation avoids repeated information; for example, take

1. [3]

Ela estava no carro.

- “She was in the car.”

If we analyze this sentence as a realization of

- VSubj>Located thing  V  em NP>Location

we will have, explicitly stated in the diathesis, that is, in the grammar of the language, the information relative to each of these semantic roles, plus their assignment to the right complements. But the same information can be derived from cognitive information, which must be recognized as existing, such as:

1. (a)

Estar evokes (among others) the schema LOCATIVE.RELATION, defined as “a Located thing is located relative to a Location.”[6]

2. (b)

Ela “she” is an NP, which does not have Location in its semantic potential (NPs never do). It can be a Located thing, though.

3. (c)

No carro is a prepositional phrase with em, and therefore does have Location in its semantic potential (as a consequence of one of the prototypical readings of em).

From these details of our world knowledge, plus knowledge of the semantics of lexical items present in the sentence, we can retrieve exactly the same thematic information contained in the diathesis as given above. Therefore, there is no reason to include the full diathesis as part of the structure of the language; we may very well be content with the unfilled version,

- VSubj  V  X

which allows a substantial simplification of the grammatical component of the analysis of sentence [3], while at the same time avoiding repetition of information.

This is only one example, but it is probably typical of many others; what they show is that the limits of a language are more restricted than usually assumed. In other words, a description includes a smaller amount of properly linguistic information—although of course it is still highly complex and extensive. As compared with traditional views, the description of a language includes not only a simpler syntax (as pointed out in Culicover and Jackendoff 2005), but also a simpler semantics. Many complements have no semantic role, and the gap is filled in through assignment by default. Note that this affects our understanding of the task of language learning: it helps define what must be learned as part of the particular language one is acquiring, as against world knowledge, which of course also must be acquired, but as part of a different set of tasks.

The borderline between language structure (grammar, in the widest sense) and world knowledge is not simple, and certainly not currently known in all its details. One of the tasks facing linguists in the coming years is to chart it properly, keeping to the simplicity requirement already advocated by Culicover and Jackendoff. This will lead to a more realistic view of language and its use as an instrument for communication.

Can we single out a principle underlying all these apparently disparate considerations? I think we can. But it is a very general and schematic principle, which nonetheless will, I think, remain as a fundamental base for the understanding of the structure of languages. It is simply the principle that language is a system relating sensorially perceptible objects and cognitive representations; in Saussurian terms, acoustical images and concepts. Language, in all its wonderful complexity, is in essence a system contrived by the human mind in order to bring about that connection. Current linguistics lacks a real paradigm, but we all hope it will have one some day. And, whatever it may look like, it will include this principle as an essential component.

References

1. Castelfranchi, C., & Parisi, D. (1980). Linguaggio, conoscenze e scopi [Language, knowledge and scopes]. Bologna: Il Mulino.

2. Culicover, P., & Jackendoff, R. S. (2005). Simpler syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

3. Gross, M. (1975). Méthodes en syntaxe. Paris: Hermann.

4. Gross, M. (1979). On the failure of generative grammar. Language, 55, 4.

5. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of Cognitive Grammar – vol. I, Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

6. Langacker, R. W. (1991a). Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

7. Langacker, R. W. (1991b). Concept, image, and symbol: The cognitive basis of grammar. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.

8. Langacker, R. W. (2008). Cognitive grammar—A basic introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

9. Perini, M. A. (2015). Describing verb valencies: Practical and theoretical issues. Cham: Springer.

10. Perini, Mário A., Lúcia, F., Regina, B., Sigrid, F. (1996). O Sintagma nominal em português: Estrutura, significado e função. [The NP in Portuguese: structure, meaning, and function] Revista de Estudos da Linguagem (special number). Belo Horizonte: UFMG. Available at <periodicos.letras.ufmg.br index.php relin issue view / 409>.

Footnotes

1

The estimate excludes technical, obsolete, and regional items.

2

One point to consider is whether, and to which limit, this position puts into question the competence/performance dichotomy. At present I suspect that the dichotomy does hold, pending perhaps some reformulation. But, honestly, I do not feel competent to go into the problem in depth.

3

Of course, this is relevant for the delimitation of other semantic roles as well; I mention the Patient as an important example, which is discussed in this book.

4

The same idea is already found in Castelfranchi and Parisi (1980: 82–84).

5

Details and further examples in Perini et al. (1996).

6

Framenet gives “a Figure is located relative to a Ground location,” which says essentially the same.

Index

Note: The numbers here refer to section numbers.

A

Adjunct and complement 10.2.5

Adverbial adjunct 5.2

Agent 2.3.3
vs . Causator 3.4.2

Agreement
controlled by NP head 14.4.7

Assignment by default chapter1, chapter 7
limits 10.1
in reciprocal constructions 13.2
and the role Patient 11.4
in topic constructions 13.5
in topic sentences 13.5.3
two constituents in the same sentence 7.4.1

Assignment system 6.2
mechanisms 6.2

B

Binding of variables 2.1.2

C

Characterizing participant (of NP) 14.4.3

Closure 2.3

Cognitive representation 2.2
well-formedness conditions 2.3.1

Competence vs . performance chapter 1

Complement and adjunct 10.2.5

Constituents 14.3

Construction
endocentric 14.4.6
ergative 3.4.2, 13.10
of force and resistance 13.1
of identity 13.3.2
reciprocal 13.2
topic 13.5.1
of time of day 13.6
transitive 11.5.2, 13.10

Constructional meaning 7.3

Core vs . peripheral variables 2.1.3, 10.2
experimental proof for 10.2.3
in the literature 10.2.2
three core variables in a schema 7.4.2

Criteria for grouping ETRs into semantic roles
criterion of necessity 3.4.1, 3.4.2
criterion of semantic similarity 3.4.1

D

Diathesis 5.1.1
blocking prototype rules 7.6.2

Discourse topic 13.5

Distinction of formulas 13.12

E

Elaboration chapter 3
elaboration tracks 3.3
empirical testing 4.3
and linguistic analysis 15.2
and schematicity 3.2

Elaborate thematic relation (ETR) chapter 1, 1.2, 3.2, chapter 10
fuzzy distinctions 4.2
and semantic roles 3.4

Emitter
vs . receptor 5.4

Endocentric construction 14.4.6

Estar 13.4

Expectation 2.1.1

Experiencer
is it a Patient? 12.1

F

Filter
schematic 7.5, 7.6.3, 9.4.4, 12.2.6, 15.3

G

Gestalt 2.3.1

Goal
exceptional coding 8.3, 9.4.1
Goal and Patient 12.2

H

Head (of NP) 14.4
syntactic determination of the head 14.4.2

Homonymy 9.4.8

I

Indirect object 5.2

Internal meaning of verb 4.6

Introspection
use in linguistics chapter 1, 4.8

L

Lexical item (meaning of) 2.1.2

Lexicon chapter 14

Limits of a language 2.5, 6.3, 15.6

M

Modifier (of NP) 8.4, 14.4.5

N

Negation, effect of 13.1.2

Noun phrase (NP)
head 14.4
identifying the NP head 14.4.2
semantic function 7.2, 8.1, 14.4.3

O

Object 11.4 fn

P

Partner (semantic role) 13.2

Passives construction 9.2

Patient Ch. 11
definition 11.2, 11.5.1
and experiencer 12.1
and Goal 12.2
treatment in the literature 11.1

Polysemy 9.4.8

Pre-head (of NP) 14.4.5

Preposition 9.4
diathetic 9.4.3
Lexical representation 9.4.5
as marks of thematic relations 9.4.1
meaning 9.4.1
and prototypes 9.4
with verbs of motion 9.3.5

Profiling 11.6

Prototype 7.5, chapter 9
definition 9.1
lexical vs . grammatical extension 9.2
and prepositions 9.4

Prototype rule 3.2, chapter 9
application 9.3
context-sensitive 9.4.3

R

Receptor
vs . emitter 5.4

Reciprocal constructions 13.2

Reference center (of NP) 14.4

S

Schema 2.1

Schema complex 2.1

Schematic vs . elaborate relations 3.2

Semantic roles chapter 3
diathetic 8.2.2, 9.4.2
entailment as a basis for defining 4.4
and ETRs 3.2, chapter 10
and literal meaning 4.14
multiple semantic roles 3.5
prototypical 9.4.2
semantic roles are necessary 10.1

Subcategorization 14.4.4

Subject
identification rule 5.2

T

Testing chapter 1

Thematic potential chapter 8

Thematic relation chapter 1

Topic constructions 13.5
sentence topic 13.5.3
thematic relation assignment in 13.5.2

Track, hyponymic 3.3, 4.5

Transitive construction 11.5.2

V

Valency chapter 5

Valential subject 5.3

Variable 2.1.2