SEMANTIC ROLES AND DEFINITNESS

Question 1

SEMANTIC ROLES

Answer 1

Active-Stative alignment
S & A = “agentive” case or AG (or ACT for actor)
S & P = “patientive” case or PAT (or UND for undergoer)

Question 2

DEFINITENESS

Answer 2

a grammatical category concerned with the identifiability and non-identifiability of referents on the part of the speaker or the addressee
Definite: S (speaker) presumes that A (addressee) can identify the referent of the referring expression
Indefinite: S presumes that A is not able to identify the referent of the referring expression

Question 3

TYPES OF IDENTIFIABILITY

Answer 3

TEXTUAL, mentioned in the preceding discourse
SITUATIONAL, present in the immediate context of the discourse
INFERENTIAL, can be deduced from something else in the discourse
UNIVERSAL, can be assumed to be generally known
+ distinction:
specific: S signals that they, but not A, has a particular referent in mind
non-specific: S signals that the referent only has imaginary/virtual reality

Question 4

RELATION TO S and A

Answer 4

tend to be definite in the world’s languages; indefinite S and A are treated differently (word order, case, passivisation)

Question 5

RELATION TO P and R

Answer 5

word order: dative shift (the Rmoves closer to the verb thanP; theRloses its case marker; whenP= indefinite andR= definite, dative shift is likely to happen)
agreement/case: differential object marking - neutral case alignment