Contents: Wormhole Revisited | Adjectival
Theta Roles | Nominal Theta Roles | Prepositional Theta Roles Contents: Wormhole Revisited | Adjectival
Theta Roles | Nominal Theta Roles | Prepositional Theta Roles
More on Theta
Roles
In our first look at the wormhole, not all theta roles were covered because of the limited range of the worm in the wormhole. Let us add the object food to the wormhole. Let's put food at each end of the wormhole. The worm must eat to stay alive. He now has a purpose for moving in the wormhole: to obtain nourishment in order to stay alive. The worm is own benefactor when it eats, although if a verb implies a self-benefactor, the self-benefactor is rarely marked as an overt theta-role. When the food is gone, the worm comes in contact with the end, in which case he reverses his direction as before. If the worm doesn't eat, he will die. Then he will decompose. Additionally, let's add "five inches" as the length of the wormhole. The worm moves five inches through the wormhole from one end to the other--five inches is a measure theta role.
(1)
Adding a mouth
has certainly increased the number of theta roles. And it has
increased the number of predicates. We have chosen to ignore whatever
other organs the worm might need to process his food. We went
as far as converting FOOD into FUEL, which he needs to move, stay
alive, and so forth. This is to illustrate the role constructum.
The argument of most adjectives is a theme:
The argument of some adjectives is an experiencer:
Some adjectives take two arguments
The argument of some nouns is a theme as in container
nouns:
Nouns of the ruler-controller class assign themes:
Nouns of the whole/part class assign one theta role:
Nouns of the relation class assign two theta roles:
The partial argument structure of (16) is the following:
Locative Prepositions assign two theta roles. The
external argument is a theme, and the internal argument has various
theta-roles depending on the meaning of the preposition. Consider
the following sentences:
In (26) the verb be is a copular verb. Its function is discussed in Predicate Adjectives. It has no semantic function. As such it cannot assign a theta role. The lamp is a theme which is assigned by the preposition on.. The preposition also assigns the theta role location to the table. The function can be seen more easily in (27). It fits into a context such as:
John wasn't looking for the lamp. It was just there. What he found or came across is a lamp (standing) on his table. If he were looking for the lamp, the definite article would have to be used:
The lamp is a theme (what he's looking for) and in his room is the location where he found it. The logical structure for (26) is the following:
Tense cannot be copied onto the preposition on since it can only be copied on to a verb. Since TENSE needs a host, the auxiliary dummy verb be is inserted to function as a host for TENSE. Go to 322 lowering.
Contents: Wormhole Revisited | Adjectival
Theta Roles | Nominal Theta Roles | Prepositional Theta Roles
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