Advances in Role and Reference Grammar

80 ROBERT D. VAN VALIN, JR.

[+MR]) with experiencer and theme arguments. Since they are not activity
verbs, their single macrorole must be undergoer (cf. 26b2). Theme out­
ranks experiencer for undergoerhood in terms of (25), and therefore with
both verbs the theme argument will be the undergoer. The case marking
rules in (61) and (62) assign nominative case to the single macrorole argu­
ment, the undergoer, and the experiencer, a non-macrorole direct core
argument, receives dative case. Thus their case marking falls out naturally
on this analysis, and, as argued in Van Valin (1990a, 1991b), so do the
agreement facts in the two languages. The final point concerns pivot selec­
tion. It was pointed out in section 4.5 that the accessibility to pivot hierar­
chy for Icelandic reflects (25), and there is no actor in (69a); there is an
experiencer and an undergoer-theme, and in terms of (25), the experiencer
is the highest ranking argument with respect to the actor end of the hierar­
chy. Hence the experiencer, not the undergoer-theme, should be the syn­
tactic pivot, and this is in fact the case. In Van Valin (1990a) it is argued
that the same hierarchy for syntactic pivot is operative in Georgian, and
consequently the dative experiencer NP should be the syntactic pivot, and
again this is a correct prediction. Thus the linking algorithm outlined in (63)
handles not only familiar phenomena from English but also phenomena like
inverse constructions which superficially appear to be quite problematic.

5.2.2 From syntax to semantics

The procedure for taking a sentence and linking it to its semantic represen­

tation (LS) is summarized in (70).

(70) Linking from Syntactic Structure to Logical Structure

1. Ascertain the voice of a transitive verb:
   a. If it is active, the pivot is an actor.
   b. If it is passive, the pivot is an undergoer; the actor may
   appear in the periphery marked by an adposition or an
   oblique case, as in English by.^48


2. Retrieve the LS of the predicate in the nucleus from the lexi­
   con and with respect to it execute steps (1) and (2) from (63)
   above, subject to the following proviso:
   a. When there is more than one choice for the undergoer, exe­
   cute steps (b) and (c) below instead of assigning undergoer­
   hood.