Semantic roles,

case roles,
semantic relations

PS Semantics

Session 4

Semantic roles
• What is the meaning of these clauses?
(1) John is tall.
(2) John washes his car.
(3) Mary brings a book to John.
Æ How can we semantically characterize them?
• Predicates:
– 1-place: tall (John)
– 2-place: wash (John,car)
– 3-place: bring (Mary,John,book)
• Other 1-place, 2-place, 3-place predicates?
• give, put: both 3-place predicates
• But what is that difference between them? And how to
account for it?

Semantic roles
• Grammar:
– give: Subject, Direct Object, Indirect Object
– put: Subject, Direct Object, Directional Locative
• Difference in valency (number of arguments and
kinds of arguments)
• Can we come up with a similar abstraction at the
semantic level?
• Æ case roles or semantic roles (or semantic
relations), such as Agent, Patient, Goal, Cause,
Effect etc
• Two approaches (there are more!):
– Fillmore: case roles
– Halliday: participant roles

1
 Case roles
• come: MOVE (ENTITY, SOURCE)
• go: MOVE (ENTITY, GOAL)
• move: MOVE (ENTITY, SOURCE, GOAL)
• Notation convention: capital letters for semantic
categories
• Create some examples!
• Fillmore, 1968. The case for case. In Bach &
Harms (eds), Universals in Linguistic Theory. Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, New York
• a set of roles, which can be applied to more than
one language (universal): ENTITY, ATTRIBUTE,
PLACE, AGENT, PATIENT, CAUSE, EFFECT,
SOURCE, GOAL

http://framenet.icsi.berkeley.edu/

2
 Participant roles

• describes the kinds of participants in a

clause (process) as well as the
circumstantial elements that accompany
a process
• Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG;
Halliday, 1985/1995/2004; Halliday &
Matthiessen 1999)

Quite recently the Norwegians were whaling off Greenland.

Circumstantial Actor Process: Circumstantial

(time) Material (place)

• PROCESS TYPES and ROLES

• English:
– material (processes of doing & happening): Actor,
Goal, Beneficiary, Range
– mental (processes of cognition, perception &
affection): Senser, Phenomenon
– verbal (processes of saying): Sayer, Saying
– relational (processes of “being“); Carrier, Attribute
– Token, Value
– behavioral (intermediate between mental/verbal
and material; Behaver)
– existential (resemble relational, but only one
participant: Existent)

3
• Material processes
– One inherent participant: Actor; who/what did it?
She drove (down the coast).
– possibly: Goal; what did x do to/with whom?
She drove him (down the coast).
– possibly: Beneficiary (participant benefiting)
I built a gazebo for the kids. (Client)
She gave a teapot to his aunt. (Recipient)
– If no Goal, possibly a Range (scope of a
happening)
They climbed a mountain.
test: *what did they do to the mountain? (unlike
Goal)

• Mental processes
– One inherent participant: Senser; endowed with
consciousness
The man knew too much.
– possibly: Phenomenon; what is being sensed
The man knew too much.
I like swimming in the morning.
Her tasks interested her.
The witness heard her threatening him.
He thought that the moon was a balloon.
wide range of realizations of the Phenomenon
(nominal groups, adverbial groups, verbal groups,
projected clauses); unlike Goal in material
processes

• Relational processes
– Cf. copula construction in traditional terms
– Attributive (class membership): Carrier, Attribute
This girl is very energetic.
This girl is an energetic type.
– Identifying: Token, Value
Peter is the boss.
The boss is Peter.
Chien means dog.
The reservoir functions as emergency supply.

4
• Verbal processes
– Processes of ‘saying‘, but also semiotic processes more
generally
– Central participants: Sayer (human or human-like),
Verbiage (content of what is being said; verbal Range)
She told me a funny story.
The note says that he went back to the office.
The sign indicates that his office is left of the entrance.
– Possibly: Receiver (verbal Beneficiary)
– She told me a funny story.
– Range of realizations of the Verbiage: nominal group,
projected clause (finite, nonfinite); unlike Goal in
material clauses

• CIRCUMSTANTIAL (across process types)

• English:
– Extent (temporal/spatial), e.g., for three hours, for six
miles
– Location (temporal/spatial), e.g., in June, in the back
yard
– Manner (means/quality/comparison), e.g., with a
hammer, quickly, like mad
– Cause (reason/purpose/behalf), e.g., because of this,
for the better, on behalf of him
– Contingency (condition/concession/default), e.g., in
the case of, in spite of, in the absence of
– Accompaniment (comitative/additive), e.g., with,
instead
– Role, e.g., as a teacher I‘m concerned with this issue
– Matter, e.g., about Halliday
– Angle, e.g., according to Halliday

(1) The cat chased the mouse.

(2) The cat jumped.

(3) The prime minister resigned.

(4) The mayor dissolved the committee.

(5) Mary liked the gift.

(6) The gift pleased Mary.

(7) Mary is smart.

(8) Mary is the boss.
(9) The workshop is on Friday.
(10) Tomorrow is the 25th.
(11) Carl has a trombone.
(12) The trombone belongs to Carl.

(13) John said (to me) 'I'm hungry'.

(14) John said (to me) that he was hungry.
(15) He told me a pack of lies.
(16) He told me to buzz off.

5
There are many species of whales. They are conveniently divided
into toothed and baleen whales. The toothed whales are found world-
wide in great numbers. The largest is the Sperm whale, which grows
to about the size of a boxcar. Other species familiar to Canadians are
the Beluga or white whales, the Narwhal with ist unicorn-like tusk,
the Killer whale or Ocra, the Pilot or Pothead whale, which is commonly
stranded on beaches, the Spotted and Spinner Dolphins that create a
problem for tuna seiners, and the Porpoises which we commonly see
along our shores.
There are fewer species of the larger baleen whales, that filter krill and
small fish through their baleen plates. The largest is the Blue whale
which is seen frequently in the Gulf of St Lawrence. It reaches a length
of 100 feet and a weight of 200 tons. The young are 25 feet long at birth
and gain about 200 lbs a day on their milk diet.
...
(Martin, W.R., 1989. Innovative fisheries management: international
whaling)

My name‘s Laura and this is my place. I turned ten last week. Our
house is the one with the flag on the window. Tony says it shows
we‘re on Aboriginal land, but I think it means the colour of the earth,
back home. Mum and Dad live here too, and Terry and Lorraine, and
Aunty Bev, and Tony and Diane and their baby Dean. He‘s my nephew
and he‘s so cute! We come from Bourke, but Dad thought there‘d be
more jobs in the city. This [picture] is me and Gully. I have to keep her
on a lead because she chases cars. She comes from Bourke too. I guess
she thinks they are sheep. This is a map of my place. We‘ve got
McDonalds right on the corner!

(Wheatley N., 1989. My place)

Semantic roles and syntax

• relation to syntactic functions:
– expression relating to e.g., an Agent will tend to be expressed
as Subject
– expression relating to e.g., a Goal will tend to be expressed as
Object
– expression relating to a Circumstantial will tend to be expressed
as an Adjunct
• relation to syntactic category:
– expression relating to a whole proposition will tend to be
expressed as a clause,
– expression relating to a participant role will tend to be realized
as a nominal group,
– expression relating to a circumstantial role will tend to be
realized as an adverbial group or prepositional phrase
Æ we call this tendency congruent realization: it is that
realization which is most typical in a particular context
(noncongruent realization: grammatical metaphor)

6
 Grammatical metaphor

• same semantic configuration at different ranks

(syntactic category), e.g., object (student, theory)
(1) The student objected to the theory.
(2) The student’s objection to the theory
(3) The student objecting to the theory

(4) Probably, the student didn’t object to the theory.

(5) I don't believe the student objected to the theory

Grammatical metaphor
• same semantic configuration and different
grammatical types/classes, e.g., reach (they,
summit)
(1) They arrived at the summit on the fifth day.
(2) The fifth day saw them at the summit.
(1) Actor, Circumstantials (Place & Time );
material process
(2) Senser, Phenomenon, Circumstantial (Place);
mental process

Summary

• lexical semantics and “sentence” semantics

• lexical semantics: relations between lexemes;
meaning of lexemes (internal)
• “sentence” semantics: relations between propositions
(logical semantics); aspects of the meaning of
sentences (truth values; semantic relations)
• metaphorical meaning:
– lexical: relation between sense and reference
– grammatical: relations between semantics and grammar

7
 References

Fillmore C., 1968. The case for case. In Bach & Harms (eds),
Universals in Linguistic Theory. Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
New York.
Halliday M.A.K., 1985. Introduction to Functional Grammar.
Edward Arnold, London (chapter 10).
Leech G., 1974. Semantics. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth
(chapters 7, 8 and 9).
Steiner E., U. Eckert, B. Weck & J. Winter, 1988. The
development of the EUROTRA-D system of semantic relations.
In: Steiner, Schmidt & Zelinsky-Wibbelt (eds). From Syntax to
Semantics. Insights from Machine Translation. Pinter, London,
pp. 40-104.
Halliday MAK & C.M.I.M. Matthiessen, 1999. Construing
experience through meaning. Cassell, London.