the introductory paragraph. It describes the aim or purpose of the essay,
and contains the main ideas that will be developed in the topic sentences
of the paragraphs which make up the rest of the essay. For example, the
underlined sentence in the following introductory paragraph of an essay is
the thesis statement.
Reading is the process of getting meaning from printed material. Reading is
a complex process and depends upon learning specific skills. The purpose
of teaching reading in school is both to teach children to become indepen-
dent active readers and to introduce them to the pleasure and knowledge
which effective reading makes possible.9 -roles n
alsothematic roles.
see q-theory/theta theory
9 -theory/theta theory n
(in universal grammar) a sub-theory which deals with semantic relation-
ships. In the lexicon of the grammar (see lexicon^3 ), each lexical entry
for a verb shows the semantic roles (q-rolesor thematic roles) that go with
it. For example, the English verb smash would have the q-roles:
AGENT (the person or thing carrying out the action)
and
PATIENT (the person or thing affected by the action) Theq-roles are
assigned to the relevant noun phrases in the sentence, e.g.:
Rose smashed the vase
agent patient
The theory of Universal Grammar draws a distinction between these
thematic roles, such as agent and patient, sometimes also called themes, and
grammatical cases, such as grammatical subject and grammatical object
(see case theory). In the example above, Roseis the grammatical subject
and the vase is the grammatical object, but in the sentence:
The vase broke.
the vase still has the patient or theme role but it is now the grammatical
subject of the sentence. There is no agent role in this sentence. In second
language acquisition research, theta-roles and their relationship to gram-
matical cases have been used, for example when distinguishing between
verb groups which require an agent role (e.g. hit, walk, work) and those
which do not (e.g. fall, occur, suffer).
see also d-structure
thick description n
see close description
q-roles