Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

56 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR.

stated in terms of thematic relations alone, each statement would include a
disjunctive list of thematic relations, e.g. "possessor raising is possible only
if the possessive NP functions as patient, theme, experiencer or locative in
its clause." The macrorole undergoer subsumes these thematic relations
and thereby makes possible an elegant statement of this restriction. Third,
the fact that the statement of certain grammatical restrictions must make
reference to the notion of core argument is evidence in support of the LSC,
in which that is a fundamental unit. As noted in section 1.2, there is no
comparable category in X-bar theory, and consequently there would not be
a comparable straightforward statement of these restrictions in an X-bar-
based theory, which would lack a syntactic unit corresponding to the core in
the LSC.

4.3 Syntactic pivots

Languages like Acehnese are very unusual; the vast majority of languages

do provide evidence for the postulation of grammatical relations in addition

to semantic roles. The traditional description of these phenomena is in

terms of the grammatical relations of subject, direct object and indirect

object, but the investigation of Philippine, ergative and active languages

has shown that analyses based on the traditional approach and its modern

derivatives are highly problematic.^32 The central concept in RRG for hand­

ling these phenomena is pivot of a syntactic construction. It may be charac­

terized as follows. In all languages there are syntactic constructions in

which there are restrictions on which NPs and AdPs (arguments and non-

arguments) can be involved in them; these restrictions define a privileged

syntagmatic function^33 with respect to that construction. In Acehnese these

restrictions can be formulated in terms of either the specific semantic mac-

roroles of actor and undergoer or the general syntactic notion of core argu­

ment. Hence the privileged syntagmatic function is semantically defined

with respect to the constructions in (29)-(35) but syntactically defined with

respect to (36). In languages like English, Dyirbal and Lakhota, on the

other hand, there is a restricted neutralization of semantic roles with

respect to the privileged syntagmatic function in most syntactic construc­

tions. The restriction on arguments which can be involved in them is not

characterizable in purely semantic-role terms, as in Acehnese; rather, it

must be defined non-semantically, i.e. syntactically. The NP bearing the

syntactically-defined privileged syntagmatic function is the syntactic pivot