ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
Unit 20 Study Guide and Exercises
Directions: After you have read Unit 20 you should be able to tackle the following questions to
test your understanding of the main ideas raised in the unit.
1. You should understand these terms and concepts from this unit:
some participant (semantic) roles
agent
affected (patient)
instrument
location
beneficiary
experiencer
theme
role frame of a verb
grammatical positions in the sentence
subject position
object position
complement position
2. What are participant (semantic) roles? Is there any current fixed number of such roles
accepted by linguists?
Participant roles are the roles played by the entities identified by the referring
expressions in a sentence. They characterize the different ways in which these
entities participate in the situation described the sentential predicator. There is
no fixed number of roles accepted by all linguistis, although there are some,
such as Agent, Affected (patient), Instrument, etc. that are commonly accepted
by most linguists.
3. Translate each of the following sentences into an augmented logical formula, indicating which
entities play the roles of agent, affected, and instrument.
a. The worker moved the beam with a crane.
AGENT AFFECTEDINSTRUMENT
w MOVE b c
b. The crane moved the beam.
INSTRUMENT AFFECTED
c MOVE b
c. The beam moved.
AFFECTED
b MOVE
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© James R. Hurford, Brendan Heasley and Michael B. Smith 2007
ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
d. The arsonist burned the house with fire.
AGENT AFFECTED INSTRUMENT
a BURN h f
e. The fire burned the house.
INSTRUMENT AFFECTED
f BURN h
f. The house burned.
AFFECTED
h BURN
4. In each of the following sentences identify the participant role and the grammatical position
(i.e. either subject, object, or complement) of each referring expression. Possible semantic roles
include agent, affected, instrument, location, beneficiary, experiencer, and theme.
a. Mary roasted the duck.
AGENT AFFECTED
subject object
b. Jane smelled the burning dinner.
EXPERIENCER THEME
subject object
c. The duck was roasted by Mary.
AFFECTED AGENT
subject complement
d. The bomb destroyed the building.
INSTRUMENT AFFECTED
subject object
e. Jane kicked the tire with her foot.
AGENT AFFECTED INSTRUMENT
subject object complement
f. Fred saw a comedy show in that club.
EXPERIENCER THEME LOCATION
subject object complement
g. I saw Mortimer in Detroit.
EXPERIENCER THEME LOCATION
subject object complement
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ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
h. Jane gave Mary the book.
AGENT BENEFICIARY AFFECTED
subject object complement
i. Mary was given the book by Jane.
BENEFICIARY AFFECTED AGENT
subject object complement
j. Jerry did the favor for me.
AGENT AFFECTED BENEFICIARY
subject object complement
k. Detroit is a big city.
LOCATION THEME
subject
l. Jane gave the book to Mary.
AGENT AFFECTED BENEFICIARY
subject object complement
Comment: the grammatical position of a big city in 4k is problematic, because
even though it immediately follows the main verb, this position is not
traditionally identified as an object position after the verb to be. It is also not a
complement in the way we defined it in this unit, because complements were
defined as not occurring immediately after the main verb. We choose not to
associate this noun phrase with any grammatical position.
5. What problem arises when we try to assign semantic roles such as Agent and Affected
(Patient) to the participants in a sentence like Mortimer saw Millie (as opposed to sentences such
as Mortimer chased Millie or Fred broke the glass)? How was this problem dealt with?
Mortimer's role in the situation is not that of a typical Agent, since he is not
deliberately carrying out the action of seeing Millie. And Millie is not a typical
Affected entity, because she is not obviously affected or changed by being
seen. We dealt with this problem by introducing the new roles Experiencer and
Theme to represent noun phrases like Mortimer and Millie, respectively, in this
example.
6. In a sentence such as Mortimer kicked the bully, is it possible that the bully might have more
than one semantic role? If so, which ones? Explain briefly, and justify your choices. Can you
give another example where a given participant could conceivably have more than one role
assigned to it?
Yes. The bully is clearly affected by Mortimer's action, so he seems to be an
Affected entity, but it is conceivable that he is also a Beneficiary, because the
action is being carried out to his detriment. Another example like this: John
punched the boxer.
7. Formulate a role frame for each of the following verbs which would be part of the dictionary
entry for the verb. To do this think of several sentences involving the verb in which you try to
leave out various arguments (in much the same way as done in this unit). Which role seems to
always be present if it is permitted at all?
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ANSWER KEY Semantics: a coursebook
a. set SET: (AGENT) AFFECTED LOCATION (INSTRUMENT)
b. snow SNOW: (LOCATION)
c. donate DONATE: (AGENT) AFFECTED (BENEFICIARY)
d. melt MELT: (AGENT) AFFECTED (INSTRUMENT) (LOCATION)
The Affected role is required, if permitted at all.
8. How does the role frame approach to dictionary entries compare and contrast with the logical,
meaning postulate approach? What are the strengths and weaknesses of each?
We mentioned in the unit that the two approaches are not incompatible, but
have different emphases.
Role frame approach:
a. states semantic relationships between referring expressions
b. pays more attention to such roles as Location, Beneficiary
c. focus is on the verb, neglects the fact that other grammatical categories
can function as predicators in a sentence
d. more economical
Meaning postulate approach:
a. emphasizes logical entailment relations between sentences
b. neglects such roles as Location, Benficiary
c. recognizes that not only verbs, but other grammatical categories can
function as predicators
9. We claimed that a problem with the role frame approach is that it is difficult to propose a
suitable semantic role for the italicized referring expressions in subject position in sentences like
the following:
a. This book is for Louise.
b. The car is red.
c. The movie is interesting.
What exactly is the difficulty, given how we have defined the roles presented in this unit? We
suggested that we might be able to extend the Theme role somehow to deal with this problem,
but we didn’t provide any details as to how this might be done. Another possibility, not
mentioned previously, would be to propose a different role in addition to those described in this
unit which could account for these examples. See if you can sketch out a way of elaborating the
theory of participant roles to deal with these issues.
Answers will vary. See the discussion in this unit for details.
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© James R. Hurford, Brendan Heasley and Michael B. Smith 2007
