THEMATIC ROLES

To understand the difference between thematic and functional categories we first

need to introduce concepts to do with how the elements of a sentence can be related to
each other. Take a simple sentence:

(1) Peter chased Mary

This sentence describes an event which can be described as ‘chasing’ involving two
individuals, Peter and Mary, related in a particular way. Specifically, Peter is the one doing
the chasing and Mary is the one getting chased. The verb describes the character of the
event and the two nouns refer to the participants in it. A word which functions as the
verb does here, we call a predicate and words which function as the nouns do are
called arguments. Here are some other predicates and arguments:

(2) a Selena slept

argument predicate

b Tom is tall

argument predicate

c Percy placed the penguin on the podium

argument predicate argument argument

In (2a) we have a ‘sleeping’ event referred to involving one person, Selena, who was doing
the sleeping. In (2b) the predicate describes a state of affairs, that of ‘being tall’ and again
there is one argument involved, Tom, of whom the state is said to hold. Finally, in (2c)
there is a ‘placing’ event described, involving three things: someone doing the
placing, Percy, something that gets placed, the penguin, and a place where it gets placed, on
the podium.
What arguments are involved in any situation is determined by the meaning of the
predicate. Sleeping can only involve one argument, whereas placing naturally involves
three. We can distinguish predicates in terms of how many arguments they
involve: sleep is a one-place predicate, see is a two-place predicate involving two
arguments and place is a three-place predicate.
Moreover, the nature of the arguments is also largely determined by the meaning of
the predicate. Compare the following:

(3) a Harold hit Henry

b Sam saw Simon

In the first case, Harold is the one doing the hitting and Henry is the one getting hit
whereas in the second Sam does the seeing and Simon gets seen. However, these
arguments play very different roles in the two events. With hit the one doing the hitting
consciously performs an action and the one who gets hit is affected in some way by this.
We call an argument who deliberately performs an action an agent and one who or which
is acted upon a patient. With see, the arguments are not interpreted as agent and patient
however: Sam is not performing any action and Simon is not getting acted upon in (3b).
Instead, we call these arguments experiencer, for the one who does the seeing, and percept,
for the one who gets seen. Collectively, we call terms such as agent and patient, thematic
roles, or Θ-roles for short.
Different linguists tend to make use of different Θ-roles and there is very little
agreement amongst them. However, below you will find a few guidelines to the main
types of thematic roles.
Agent: volitional intentional, deliberate initiator of an event. Sometimes the term is used without the
condition that the act be initiated deliberately, but it is more accurate to use the term Actor/Initiator (also
Causer) to cover such cases. Initiators need not be sentient/animate. Every agent is a type of
Initiator/Causer, but the reverse does not hold.

(4) FRED (agent) painted the wall.

(5) The door was opened by MARY. (agent)

(6) THE FOOD (initiator) made me sick.

(7) A BRANCH (initiator) crushed the car.

(8) THE COMPUTER (agent/initiator) opened the door. (agent if anthropomorphised)

(9) FRED (agent/initiator) accidentally broke the plate.

Patient: entity affected/changed by the event, undergoing it:

(10) He painted THE WALL.

They shot JOHN

Theme: Several different uses of the term:

 Entity whose position or direction is indicated.

(11) He kicked THE BALL over the fence.

THE BALL rolled down the hill

(12) THE VASE is on the shelf.

We left THE VASE on the shelf.

 Entity which has a property ascribed to it (mostly arguments of adjectives):

(13) THE VASE is old; JOHN stayed sober.

Some linguists (often loosely) use the term instead of ‘patient’. This makes the most sense in cases
where the verb explicitly says that one of its arguments enters a particular state as the result of an event, as is
particularly clear in verbs derived from adjectives (cf. the use of theme in the previous paragraph):

(14) They dried THE DISHES (=caused them to be dry)

(15) THE SKY darkened (=became dark)

Often, theme is used as a vague default term covering other structures for which there is no more
specific term. Cf. e.g. the use with possessed objects.

Patients and themes (in the sense of entities changing state or location) are acceptable in
constructions like What happened to x was…or What I did to x was.

(16) What happened to John was that Joe shot him

(17) *What happened to Joe was that he shot John

(18) What I did to the vase was to break it

(19) What happened to the car was that it rolled down the hill/became rusty.

Experiencer: entity to which a particular emotion or psychological state is attributed. Usually this response is
due to some other entity, which is called the stimulus or theme.

(20) JOHN (exp) feared/loved/admired/saw THE DOG (stimulus/theme)

(21) THE PICTURE (stimulus/theme) frightened/appalled/appealed to/interested JOHN (experiencer)

(22) JOHN (exp) was/felt angry at THE DOG (stimulus/theme)

(23) JOHN (exp) thinks that the world is flat.

For the notion ‘experiencer’ to be of any use, the psychological state has to be described explicitly by the
predicate. For instance, treating the subject in John got a parking ticket or John was sick as an experiencer
because he feels bad is not justified, since get/sick don’t specifically describe John’s mental state. Verbs
which express mental/emotional phenonema and have experiencer arguments are called psych-verbs
(psychological verbs). They are a challenge for linking theory because experiencers can appear in more
positions than e.g. agents or patients.

Stimulus: whatever causes a psychological response (i.e. positive or negative) in the experiencer.

(24) THE SITUATION scares me.

Source: place or entity at start of path of theme:

(25) He came out of THE HOUSE/ from LONDON; She left THE HOUSE

Goal: place or entity at end of path traversed by the theme:

(26) He went into THE HOUSE/ to LONDON; She entered THE HOUSE

Location: Place of an entity or event. (Distinguish from Source/Goal.)

(27) It was/remained in THE KITCHEN; I left it THERE

It is raining in LONDON

The terms source/goal/location are used to describe either PPs or NPs inside PPs.

Path: General term for directional PP which ignores source-goal distinction:

(28) He went INTO/OUT OF THE HOUSE

Recipient: Person/thing receiving something. Recipients are sometimes called goals, when the destination
of an entity is considered broadly.

(29) She gave/sent/bequeathed {JOHN the book/ the book TO JOHN}

(30) After her death, her house went to HER SON.

Beneficiary: (animate) entity benefitting from an action. Often the benefit is that an agent performs an act
vicariously. Beneficiaries are often intended recipients, so they behave like recipients grammatically in some
languages (e.g. double object construction in (b)).

(31) a. I cooked his dinner for HIM; I opened the door for HIM; a present for HIM b. I made HER some
coffee (but drank it myself)

Instrument: the means by which an action is performed. Instruments are acted on by agents, and in turn act
on something else (often a patient). Instruments are impossible without (at least implicit) agents. (32) She
polished the surface with A RAG; Lincoln was killed with A GUN

Percept: the entity which is perceived by an experiencer:

Sam suddenly saw THE GAP.

Given that the meaning of a predicate which determines the nature of the arguments
is a lexical property, the Θ-roles that it determines must also be part of its lexical entry.
We call the part of a predicate’s lexical entry which informs us about which Θ-roles the
predicate has its theta-grid, and this may be represented as follows:

(32) sleep Θ-grid: <agent>

hit Θ-grid: <agent, patient>

see Θ-grid: <experiencer, percept>

place Θ-grid: <agent, theme, location>

(32) clearly represents that sleep is a one-place predicate, hit and see are two-place
predicates and place is a three-place predicate.

We can therefore group verbs together in classes that share the thematic roles pattern:

EXPERIENCER, STIMULUS

– admire, enjoy, fear, like, love, relish, savour, etc.

STIMULUS, EXPERIENCER

– amuse, entertain, frighten, interest, please, surprise, thrill, etc.

AGENT, THEME, RECIPIENT

– give, lend, supply, pay, donate, contribute, etc.

RECIPIENT, THEME, SOURCE

– receive, accept, borrow, buy, purchase, rent, hire, etc.

External argument: argument of a head which does not appear inside the phrase of which it is head (e.g.
subjects are external arguments of verbs). The opposite notion is that of an internal argument. (33) External
arg. of V = subject of sentence.

(33) Ext. arg. of P: I put BOOKS [PP on the shelf]; BOOKS were put [PP on the shelf]

(34) Ext. arg. of A: THE BOOK seems to be [AP very good]