Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

A SYNOPSIS OF ROLE AND REFERENCE GRAMMAR 47

must be actor and undergoer. For verbs which have a single macrorole, the
default choice follows directly from the LS of the verb: if the verb has an activ­
ity predicate in its LS, i.e. it is an activity or accomplishment verb, the mac­
rorole will be actor; otherwise, it will be undergoer. In English, most verbs fol­
low these defaults; the exceptions are intransitive verbs with two arguments,
e.g. lie as in The book is lying on the table or motion accomplishment verbs
such as run in Fred ran to the house, which have only a single macrorole, an
undergoer with lie and an actor with run. There are also verbs like seem which
have a propositional argument and an experiencer in their LS but which do
not contribute the subject or object to the clause. Since the number of mac-
roroles is not predictable from the number of LS arguments with these
verbs, it would have to be specified in the lexical entry of the verb, e.g. 1
for lie and 0 for seem ; it will never be necessary to indicate that a verb takes
two. Since the only contrast that would ever need to be listed in a lexical
entry is binary, 0 or 1, it could be formalized in terms of a simple feature
such as [± MR], with [+ MR] = 1 and [- MR] = 0. The appearance of this
feature in the lexical entry of a verb signals that the default principles are
overridden. The identity of the macrorole would not need to be stipulated,
however, since it follows from the general principle enunciated above. The
default macrorole assignment principles are summarized in (26).
(26) Default Macrorole Assignment Principles
a. Number: the number of macroroles a verb takes is less than
or equal to the number of arguments in its LS:

1. If a verb has two or more arguments in its LS, it will take
   two macroroles.


2. If a verb has one argument in its LS, it will take one mac­
   rorole.
   b. Nature: for verbs which take one macrorole,


3. If the verb has an activity predicate in its LS, the mac­
   rorole is actor.


4. If the verb has no activity predicate in its LS, the mac­
   rorole is undergoer.
   One class of verbs appears to be a universal exception to the default
   generalization regarding macrorole number: activity verbs. Multiple-argu­
   ment activity verbs never have an undergoer macrorole, for the following
   reason. Actor and undergoer have agent and patient as their respective pro­
   totypes, and in order for a class of verbs to have one of these macroroles,