Participant roles (palmer)

1 General roles

Valency, together with action may contribute to a better understanding of the semantics of the basic sentence patterns. The study of the number and kinds of participants that may be associated with verbs is called the study of valency. Like the category of action, valency is a controversial subject: there is no generally accepted terminology, and few linguists agree on how many participant roles should be identified and exactly how they should be defined. Strictly speaking, it is possible to argue that every verb has its own participant roles: KILL (killer, victim); OWE (creditor, debt, debtor); etc. However, as with the action category, we examine a number of roles that are important to the grammar of English.

First we draw a distinction between those participant roles which are involved in dynamic situations and those which are involved in stative situations.

The typical dynamic situation involves a “doer” and a “done-to”, i.e. someone /something bringing the situation about and someone or something passively affected by the situation. In Jack fixed the old motorbike, the subject Jack is the doer and object the old motorbike is the done-to (it gets fixed). In The landslide killed the old man, similarly, the landslide is the doer and the old man is the done-to (he gets killed). In addition to these very general primary participants, there are a number of relevant extras. For example, in Roger teased the rat with a stick, the subject Roger is the doer, the object the rat is the done-to (it gets teased) and the adverbial with a stick is an extra, indicating more specifically the instrument with which Roger brings about the situation [2, c.196].

By contrast, the typical stative situation, being a relation rather than a going-on, involves a “specifier” and a “specified”. A specifier determines the nature of the state (relation) in conjunction with the predicator, and a specified is someone/something for whom/which the state exists or is true. In Jack is in London, Jack is specified with respect to the locational specifier in London. In The girl is exceptionally clever, the girl is specified with respect to the qualitative specifier exceptionally clever. Like dynamic situations, states may involve various

extras. For example, in Jack was in London last week, the adverbial last week is an extra providing a temporal restriction of the extensive relation.

The very general roles proposed here are syntactically based in the following sense. In active declarative sentences, the doer or the specified always occupies subject position, the done-to always occupies object position and the specifier always occupies object or complement position. Whatever functions as a subject in an active declarative sentence expressing a dynamic situation is thus conceived of as the doer; whatever appears as the object in such sentences is conceived of as the done-to; and so forth. Thus, even in a problematic example like John received the telegram, John is the DOER of the situation of receiving, and the telegram is the done-to. In other words, our general participant roles reflect the semantic functions conceptually assigned at a very general level to the primary syntactic functions [2, c.197].

2 Specific roles

It is useful to operate also with a central system of specific roles based on the following two distinctions: dynamic vs. stative and volitional vs. non-volitional. The possible combinations of the values in these distinctions yield the following four more specific roles:

Agent represents the volitional (typically human) instigator of a dynamic situation (Jack fixed the old motorbike).

Cause represents the non-volitional (typically non-human) entity bringing about a dynamic situation (The landslide killed the old man). Note that an example like Sally ruined my marriage is ambiguous, or simply vague, between an agent reading and a cause reading of the subject noun.

Controller represents the volitional (typically human) participant for whom a state obtains for so long as the controller keeps it that way (e.g. John keeps a gun in the cupboard / Sally wants some ice cream / Roger is in London / Mick Jones is a university professor / John teaches linguistics).

Holder represents the non-volitional (typically but not inevitably non-human) participant for whom the state obtains (e.g. The villag e lies in a dark valley / The jar contained some milk / Victoria is beautiful / The sun rises in the east)[2, c.197].

Schematically the central system of specific roles looks like this:

	Dynamic	Stative
Volitional	AGENT	CONTROLLER
Non-volitional	CAUSE	HOLDER

To this central system of specific roles we must add an important default role:

Affected represents people or entities crucially involved in, or affected by, a dynamic situation (e.g. Jack fixed the old motorbike / The old man painted the wall / Somebody had beat him up) or passively forming part of the state description in extensive relations, attitudes, perceptions and habits (e.g. John keeps a gun in the cupboard / Sally wants some icecream 1say/ her clearly from my bedroom / Roger collects stamps).

Two other specific roles are recognized by most grammarians:

Beneficiary represents people or entities for whose sake the dynamic situation is brought about (e.g. Roger bought Sally an expensive necklace / Mother baked us a chocolate cake).

Instrument represents entities or means (typically non-human) used to bring about a dynamic situation (e.g. Roger peeled the potatoes with his pocket-knife / Sally travelled by train).

In addition, it is often useful to extend the notion of “participant role” to more general semantic meanings like the following:

Attribute represents three stative subroles: characterization (as in Victoria is beautiful), identification (as in Bill Clinton is the fellow in the corner) and classification (as in Mick Jones is a university professor).

Result represents an entity created by the situation (as in He dug a hole or a change of state (She became a raving lunatic / He got very upset).

Place represents a variety of spatial concepts, such as goal or “place to” (/ went to Rome), source or “place from” (He left the mansion), “path” (She moved along the corridor), location (Jack was in London), etc.

Time represents a variety of temporal concepts, e.g. temporal location (Jack was in London last year), duration (He read for several hours), “time as a resource” (Time is running out / We spent too much time on the project), etc.

Circumstance represents a variety of more specific meanings expressing the background, circumstance, setting etc. of the dynamic situation or some sentence-external relation (as in He assembled the model with great care / Quite honestly. I didn't even kiss her goodbye / On top of all this, she left her children / To my surprise, the jar contained milk only) [2, c.198].

Note first that participant roles are sometimes ambiguous or vague. In examples like He fell to the ground, the subject could be interpreted as either DOER AGENT or DOER AFFECTED depending on whether or not the subject falls intentionally.

Secondly, participant roles may change according to the nature of the state specified by the lexical verb even if the reality of the situation remains more or less the same, which indicates that participant roles are often a question of the speaker's presentation of situations; compare:

Mr. Wilson owns this house. (Mr. Wilson is a controller, this house is an affected.)

This house belongs to Mr. Wilson. (This house is a holder, Mr. Wilson is an affected.)

In the first example, Mr Wilson is the SPECIFIED CONTROLLER of the 'state of owning* and this house is SPECIFIER AFFECTED. In the second example, the same reality is presented differently: with This house as the SPECIFIED HOLDER of the 'state of belonging to^f and with Mr. Wilson as SPECIFIER AFFECTED.

It is important to emphasize that there are many alternative ways of handling the question of participant roles in English. We have tried not to make our system too fine-grained. Thus, for example we do not want to reflect the different degrees of 'affectedness' in units to which affected applies (e.g. Roger hurt Sally and Roger knows Sallv). Nor do we distinguish between participants truly benefiting from a situation (as in Roger bought Sally an expensive necklace) and e.g. “victims” (as in I'll give them hell and She told us a pack of lies): in both cases we operate with the label beneficiary [2, c.199].

On the other hand, unlike many other systems, we operate with two levels of role participation: the very general conceptual level associated with syntactic functions (doer, done-to, etc.) and the more specific level reflecting our knowledge of the nature of referents and their involvement in situations (agent, beneficiary, instrument, etc.).

This characteristic allows us to handle many cases of abstract and meta­phorical use of language. Consider, for example, the following sentences:

- John attacked Sally.

- His theory attacked the very notion of transformations.

- Inflation attacked the foundation of our economy.

In all three cases, the direct object can be analysed unproblematically as affected irrespective of the various degrees of concreteness. The subject, however, is to be analysed very differently in the three examples: in (John attacked Sally) it is agent; in (His theory attacked the very notion of transformations) it is instrument (cf. With his theory he attacked the very notion of transformations); in (Inflation attacked the foundation of our economy) it may be interpreted variously as the cause of the attack on the foundation of our economy, or as the result of certain developments in our society which may affect the foundation of our economy, or as a circumstance threatening our economy. In any case, the three subjects represent different degrees of abstractness: John is very concrete; His theory is more abstract but probably tied to some written exposition (e.g. a book or an article); and Inflation is - to most people - a very abstract concept, which may explain our difficulty in analysing it in precise participant terms. At the same time, however, all three subjects (even inflation) are doers at the more general level of analysis. A doer is typically an agent (as in example (John attacked Sally)) but all sorts of other participants may serve as doers (as in examples (His theory attacked the very notion of transformations) and (Inflation attacked the foundation of our economy)) [2, c.200]. The more a participant departs from our prototypical agent doer by not being human, volitional and concrete, the more we feel that language is used metaphorically: theory and inflation are presented as if they were agents. By thus relating the two levels of role participation, we may capture the more elusive examples of abstract and metaphorical use of language.

Answer the questions:

1. What sentence parts are usually identified?

2. What criteria is the description of sentence parts based on?

3. Why do some linguists prefer the term “complement” to “object”?

4. What does the IC-model of the sentence show?

5. What do the structural classifications of simple sentences reveal?

6. What does the difference between the one-member and the two-member sentence consist in?

7. What makes up the basis for identifying the elliptical sentence?

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