Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 97 стр.

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Lecture 13

Semantic Structure of the Sentence.

Actual Division of the Sentence

1. Semantic roles. Minimization of semantic roles.

2. Actual division of the sentence. The notion of theme and rheme.

3. Language means of expressing the theme and the rheme.

1. Semantic Roles and Semantic Configurations

A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant has with the

main verb

in a clause. It is also known as semantic case, thematic role, theta role

(generative grammar), and deep case (case grammar). Semantic role is the actual

role a participant plays in some real or imagined situation, apart from the linguistic

encoding of those situations. If, in some real or imagined situation, someone

named John purposely hits someone named Bill, then John is the agent

and Bill is

the patient

of the hitting event. Therefore, the semantic role of Bill is the same

(patient) in both of the following sentences:

John hit Bill. Bill was hit by John.

In both of the above sentences, John has the semantic role of agent.

A set of semantic roles and an action expressed by a verb constitute a

linguistic semantic model of an extralinguistic situation and are called semantic

configuration. The set of semantic roles preset by the lexico-semantic peculiarities

of the verb makes us the role structure of the verb. The semantic configuration is

the semantic minimum of the sentence. The role structure of an actual sentence

may include roles that are not part of the semantic minimum.

The theoretical status of semantic roles in linguistic theory is still a largely

unresolved issue. For example, there is considerable doubt about whether semantic

roles should be regarded as syntactic, lexical or semantic/conceptual entities.

However, the most common understanding is that semantic roles are

semantic/conceptual elements. It should be noticed that there is no agreement

about which and how many roles are needed. This is precisely one of the major

drawbacks of the semantic role list approach. Although most theories of thematic