Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 39

3.3 Semantic roles

Almost all syntactic theories operate, either explicitly or implicitly, with
some concept of semantic predicate-argument relations, which go under the
various labels of thematic relations, θ-roles, or semantic case roles. RRG is
no exception, but its approach to them is rather different from other
theories: RRG posits two tiers of semantic roles, one corresponding
roughly to the thematic relations of LFG and other theories, and one which
has no exact counterpart in any other theory. Moreover, in RRG the
assignment of thematic relations to verbs is not arbitrary.

3.3.1 Thematic relations

The LSs introduced in section 3.2 form the heart of the lexical entry for a
verb, and they correspond to the thematic relations/6-role lists that other
theories associate with a verb in its lexical entry. There is, however, no list­
ing of thematic relations in a verb's lexical entry in RRG; rather, thematic
relations are defined in terms of the argument positions in the decomposed
LS representations, following Jackendoff (1976). The definitions are given
in Table 4.

I. STATE VERBS

A. Locational be-at' (x,y) χ = locative,^23 y = theme

B. Non-Locational

1. State or condition broken' (x) χ = patient


2. Perception see' (x,y) χ = experiencer, y = theme


3. Cognition believe' (x,y) χ = experiencer, y = theme


4. Possession have' (x,y) χ = locative, y = theme


5. Equational be'(x,y) χ = locative, y = theme
   II. ACTIVITY VERBS
   A. Uncontrolled


6. Non-motion cry' (x) or eat' (,) χ = effector, y = : locative


7. Motion roll' (x) χ = theme
   B. Controlled DO (x, [cry' (x)]) χ = agent
   Table 4

In terms of these definitions, in (20a) the watch is a patient, the single

argument of a single-argument stative verb of state or condition, Max and

the magazine are themes, the second arguments of two-place stative verbs,