Semantics 3

Question 1

What are Semantic Roles?

Answer 1

Words alone are not enough. Structure of sentence important:

• The dog bit the man
• The man bit the dog

Can have the same referential meaning but active / passive sentence:

• the dog bit the man
• the man was bitten by the dog

Semantic Roles:

• How referent (noun) relates to verb
• not the same as syntactic strucutre (because active / passive differs sentences differ)

-> Careful: same noun phrases can have different semantic roles in different contexts:

• Michael was injured with a friend
• Michaeil was injured by a freind

Question 2

What are the different Semantic Roles?

Answer 2

Agent:

• Carries sout an action
• Sam kissed Pat

Patient:

• Affected entity, often undergoes a change
• Sam (agent) eats the cake (patient)
• The cake (patient) was eaten by Sam (agent)

Experiencer:

• does not act activley
• Undergoes physical or mental sensation
• John loves to cook
• John feels threatedn by the governemnt

Recipient:

• Entity recieves physical object from someone
• I gave Morgan a puppy

Benefactive:

• benefits or recieves an action (not physical)
• John passed me a message for Morgan

Instrument:

• Tool in which Agent preforms an action
• with
• Michael was injured with a stone

Cause:

• natural force that changes smth
• does not have will
• by
• Michael was injured by the storm

Locative:

• Location of an action
• We live in London

Temporal:

• time at which action occurs
• Rebecca left yesterday

Question 3

What Methods do we use to study linguistics?

Answer 3

Assumptions:

• Competent speaker introspection

Empirical methods:

• Interviews, Questionnaires, Experiments

Data-mining large scale digital corpora:

• Analysing already existing language data

Question 4

What is a corpus?

Answer 4

Collection of texts

• empircal basis for linguistic study

Monitor Corpus:

• constantly updated collection of texts
• E.g. the internet
• Huge size, up to date, not systematically compiled

Finite corpus:

• snapshot of a language at specefic time period
• Representative
• Can be quantified but restriced size and not up to date

Principles (Finite Corpora):

• balances between all media (written, spoken, books, newspaper)
• Meta-Info (speaker age, gender region)

-> Uses: Detailed and reliable understandung of a words meaning