A McMichael Linguistics L2 & L3 Semantic Roles

Semantics and Syntax: Verbs, Complements and

Semantic Roles
There must be something to talk about and something must be said about this
subject of discourse once it is selected. This distinction is of such fundamental
importance that the vast majority of languages have emphasized it by creating
some sort of formal barrier between the two terms of the proposition. The
subject of discourse is a noun. As the most common subject of discourse is
either a person or a thing, the noun clusters about concrete concepts of that
order. As the thing predicated of a subject is generally an activity in the widest
sense of the word, a passage from one moment of existence to another, the form
which has been set aside for the business of predicating, in other words, the
verb, clusters about concepts of activity. No language fails to distinguish noun
and verb, though in particular cases the nature of the distinction may be an
elusive one.
Sapir 1921: 119

In this course paper, we will be discussing the various verb types in English
through the study of the simple clause (or sentence). The description of some
semantic and syntactic aspects of the simple clause will serve as the basis for
understanding complex clauses. We consider that the complex clause can be defined
as being made up of various combinations of simpler clause types.

As noted by Edward Sapir, languages, and English among them, distinguish

more or less clearly between two major syntactic categories: nouns (N) and verbs (V).
We will forego a precise characterization of these categories for the time being in
order to focus on some of the semantic properties of the verb. It is hoped that the
characterization of the verb will become at least partly clear through our discussion.
The student is referred to the other contributions made by teachers of this course
concerning Time and Tense, Aspect and Modality for a more complete coverage of
the verb.
The verb is the semantic core of a clause, evoking its propositional frame1.
Therefore, the type of verb at the core of the proposition will define the clause type.
Because there is a strong correlation between meaning and form, the semantic type of
verbs will also help us describe the syntactic type of the simple clause.

1- The semantic types of verbs

The propositional content of a clause (the basic situation which the clause is
evoking) can be defined through the verb under three main headings: states, events
and actions. These headings are a refinement of Sapir’s general and inaccurate
description of verbal meaning, i.e. concepts of activity. However, there are other
semantic characterizations to be taken into account that will be discussed later. These
three main headings cover the vast majority of verb types.

1
The propositional frame is the semantic structure corresponding to the situation evoked by the clause
(basically, indicating “who is doing what to whom/what”).

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1.1 States
A proposition can denote a state (quality). A state can be defined as an existing
condition that does not involve any change in time. This state can be construed as
either temporary (of limited duration) or permanent (of relatively long duration or of
some intermediate duration).

 Temporary state: John was angry. It is likely that John will not remain in this
state for long.
 Permanent state: John is tall. It is unlikely that John will change size.
 Intermediate: John is middle-aged. Although the state is not permanent, it has
a relative duration.

1.2 Events
A proposition may denote an event, a state of affairs involving a change of state over
time. The change may be fast and bounded, i.e. understood as a change from a distinct
initial state to a distinct final state. Other changes may be slow and unbounded, i.e.
understood as a continuous process without clear boundaries.

 Fast and bounded event: The book fell off the shelf.
 Slow and unbounded event: The stone gathered moss.

1.3 Actions
Actions are like events in that they can be bounded or unbounded. But the difference
between the two is in the deliberate and active participation of the referent of the
Subject in the event (i.e. the participant): the referent of the grammatical Subject of
the verb is the deliberate initiator of the action. NB: it is important to make a
systematic distinction between the notions “Subject” (a grammatical function
expressed by an NP or a clause, see below) and the “referent” (what the word refers to
outside of language) of that expression, also called the Participant.

 Bounded action: John kicked the ball.

 Unbounded action: John looked for the ball.

2- Valency – the syntactic types of verbs

In English, every verb has at least one Noun Phrase2 that is related to it.
Coming back to Sapir’s description of syntactic categories, he speaks about a subject
of discourse (which he calls a noun but is more accurately a Noun Phrase) of which
the speaker talks about (predicates about) and the predication3 takes the form of a
verb or Verb Phrase (VP). We can translate that into terms that we have adopted here.
In a given situation described in discourse, at least one participant takes part in the
event as described by the semantic content of the verb.
More technically, we can say that a verb is an inherently relational entity in that its
existence or presence requires the existence or presence of at least one other entity.
We will use the term participant to refer to the entities implied by the relational

2
At least one exception to this statement concerns impersonal or “dummy-subject” verbs such as in it’s
raining, or it’s so nice here. The subject it doesn’t correspond to any participant, semantically
speaking. These constructions have also other peculiarities.
3
On predicates and predication, see J. Durand’s chapter.

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entity that take part in the event denoted by the meaning of the verb, and the term
complement4 to refer to the obligatory NPs and phrases that are required by the
syntax of the verb.
For instance, the verb sleep is inherently relational because the existence of
the situation denoted requires the existence of one participant, namely a sleeper. On
the other hand, the verb catch requires the existence of two participants, a catcher and
the object caught. The verb throw may have as many as three participants, a thrower,
a thing thrown, and a location to which the thing is thrown. These participants may or
may not all surface as the complements of the verb.
1) Goldilocks is sleeping on the sofa. =>
2) *is sleeping.
3) Goldilocks is sleeping.
Goldilocks is the “sleeper” and is obligatory if the sentence is to mean
anything. This is why the second sentence has a star (*) in front of it to indicate that it
is not grammatically correct because it is missing an obligatory Complement: the
Subject.
On the sofa is not an obligatory constituent as the sentence in (3) is still
grammatically correct without it, albeit with a change in the meaning (semantics).
However, as a participant in this event, the sofa is the place or “location” where the
event is happening. This constituent is called an Adjunct; it brings circumstantial
information.

Exercise 1
In the examples below, identify all the participants in the events denoted by
the sentences and decide which ones are obligatory for the sentence to be
grammatically correct (≠ semantically the same!).
4) Gus Evans caught the ball in his left hand.
5) Gus threw the ball to the second-base man.
6) Gus threw the second-base man the ball.
7) The second-base touched the runner.
8) The runner was out after having been touched.
9) After the game, the players all ate at Ruby’s Diner.
10) They ate hamburgers and donuts.

The grammaticality of a sentence is a syntactic notion, and we must turn to that now.

2.1 Syntactic types of verbs

This notion of inherent relationship is technically known as valency. The
valency of a verb is at least one for intransitive verbs such as sleep, two for
transitive verbs such as catch and throw, three for ditransitive verbs, such as give
(for which you necessarily have a giver, a receiver and an object given), and also
throw. There is even a specific category of verb (“exchange transaction” verbs such as

4
The term “complement” traditionally includes the constituents that come after the verb. We will also
use it for the Subject of the verb even if it is obligatory for every verb in English.

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buy and sell) that involves three or even four objects. But it is “nil” for impersonal
verbs such as in: It is snowing. These labels of intransitive, transitive, ditransitive and
impersonal are syntactic ones5; they describe the syntactic type of the verb.
Below is a list of some of the large syntactic types of verbs together with some
verbs that have special syntax.
 Copula constructions: be
o Change of state verbs and Attributive verbs: become, get, turn (into),
remain, …
 Intransitive constructions: SV
 Transitive constructions: SVO
 Ditransitive constructions: SVO1O2 or SVO1[prepO2] or [IO]

It should be pointed out that the maximum number of obligatory Complements

a verb can have is three, even if there may be more Participants in the event.
There are also some verbs that can be grouped semantically and which have
special syntax. These verbs are typically followed by a second proposition in the form
of a verb form (to V, V-ing) or a subordinate clause. They are therefore the basis of
complex sentences. We will deal with them more specifically in Section 4.

o Aspectual verb constructions: start, begin, stop, finish, go on,

continue, …
o Modal verb constructions: want to, like to, need, have to, …
o Perception, Cognition, Utterance verbs: see, wish, be afraid, think,
know, pretend, say, announce, ask, …
o Manipulative verbs: tell, make, get, prevent, forbid, want, …

2.2 Grammatical roles

The Semantic Roles we will see in the next section map onto the obligatory
Complements and the optional Adjuncts6 of the verb. Only the Complements have
syntactic or Grammatical Roles, traditionally labeled as:
 Subject (SUBJ) (obligatory in all verbs, except in ellipsis and imperative
forms)
 Object (OBJ) (obligatory in Transitive and Ditransitive verbs)
 Indirect Object (IO) [or Oblique (OBL)] (obligatory with some Intransitive
verbs and some Ditransitive verbs)
 Predicative Complement7 (PRED) (obligatory with copula verbs)
 Circumstantial (CIRC) (optional Adjunct or adverbial)

5
See F Cornish’s course on Syntactic Categories and Functions.
6
Please refer to F Cornish’s course on functional categories for a more complete overview of these
notions.
7
See Jacques Durand on “Predicates and Predication” for discussion and clarification of this often
misused term.

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Grammatical Roles are defined by structural criteria, namely: word order,

morphology, grammatical constraints, and topicality in discourse (a discourse-
pragmatic feature).

[The teacher] gave [the book] [to the student].

SUBJ OBJ IO
[The teacher] gave [the student] [the book].
SUBJ OBJ1 OBJ2
[The student] went [to the board].
SUBJ IO
[Jack] is [a teacher].
SUBJ PRED

You have noticed that when talking about the complements of a verb, the
semantics of the verb gives a description of the role of the participants in the
predicating relationship. For example, the semantic frame of the event catch requires
a participant that does the catching (the catcher) and another participant that the
catcher can catch. Potentially, every verb has its own specific participants of which
each has a specific semantic function. And this is further complicated by the fact that
many verbs are polysemous and can thus have several types of participants depending
on the particular meaning of the verb in that particular construction. It is more
practical, rather than to describe the complements of each verb semantically, to use
more general labels. These descriptions are called the semantic roles of the
complements.

3- Semantic roles
It would be unwieldy to describe the semantic role of each verb with its
specificities. Linguists more or less agree on eight or nine major semantic roles8.
These roles (SRs) should be understood as abstractions or generalities covering many
specific cases that will depend on the fine semantics of the verb type. In other words,
the semantic role is the prototype of a category with most members conforming to the
specific criteria of the category, but with some members (a minority) with less clear
membership. These sub-members are specified below the main heading. Although
these display finer distinctions, they are still general prototypes.

1. Agent (AGT): the participant in the event that is animate, typically human,
and who acts deliberately to initiate and control the event.
e.g. John (AGT) kicked the dog.
o Positioner (POS): the participant controlling the position of an entity.
John (POS) kept his hands in his pocket.
2. Force (FOR): the non-controlling participant acting to initiate the event. This
role is related to AGT but is felt to be sufficiently specific to have its own
status.
The wind (FOR) blew some leaves across the path.

3. Objective (OBJV): (also known as Patient, Theme, Neutral or Absolutive)

the participant, typically animate or inanimate, which registers a change of

8
The number of semantic roles is variable depending on linguists and linguistic theories. The ones
described here seem to be the most widely accepted, the most usable and are the least “theory-bound”.

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state or condition as a result of the event.

e.g. The dog bit John (OBJV).
o Zero (Ø): the typically animate or inanimate participant primarily
involved in a state.
The dog (Ø) was on the floor.
o Mover (MOV): the participant, typically animate or inanimate, which
moves or is moved by an AGT participant.
e.g. The wind blew the leaves (MOV) away.
o Stimulus (STIM): Related to the role of EXP (below) in that the cause
of the experience (e.g. the bark of the dog) can receive a specific
semantic role.
e.g. John (EXP) heard the dog (STIM).

4. Experiencer (EXP): (a.k.a. Dative – but this term is best avoided because of
the potential confusion with the morpho-syntactic case “dative”) the typically
human participant who experiences a psychological state or physical sensation
in the event, but is not its deliberate initiator.
e.g. John (EXP) heard the dog.

5. Locative (LOC): the place, typically concrete and inanimate, where the state
is located, or where the event occurs.
e.g. John was at the doctor’s (LOC) for half an hour.
o Source (SOURCE): the direction from where the movement
originates.
e.g. He left the doctor’s at 8.30.
o Path (PATH): the direction of the path of the movement.
e.g. He walked aimlessly along the pavement.
o Goal (GOAL): the endpoint direction of the movement.
e.g. He finally went into a bar.
o Reference (REF): the second term in a relation with reference to
which the relation is said to hold.
e.g. He looked like a zombie.

Related to, but not LOC (these roles are typically found in the non-obligatory
adjuncts called circumstantials):
o Temporal (TEM): locates the event in time.
e.g. He arrived home at midnight.
o Manner (MAN): describes the manner or way the event is done.
e.g. He wandered along in a dream.

6. Benefactive (BEN): the typically human participant for whose benefit the
action is performed. Often in circumstantials.
e.g. The doctor made out a prescription for John (BEN).

7. Recipient (REC): The typically human participant that benefits from a

transfer of possession. Often in circumstantials.
e.g. The doctor gave John (REC) the prescription.

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8. Instrument (INST): a participant, typically inanimate, used or controlled by

the agent to perform an action. Often in circumstantials.
e.g. The doctor wrote the note with a ballpoint pen (INST).

9. Associative (ASSO): (also known as Comitative) a participant that is the

associate of the Agent, Objective or Experiencer of the event, whose role is
similar, but who is not as central or important. Typically in circumstantials.
e.g. John decided to go for a walk with his dog (ASSO).

As can be noticed in the descriptions of these roles, especially the sub-roles, there
can be some overlap between the categories. Consequently, it would be justifiable to
map two Semantic Roles onto one Complement. For instance, in:
John went to see the doctor.
John is both AGENT and MOVER as John is voluntarily carrying out the activity,
and he is changing locations in the process. The doubling of SRs allows a refined
description of the particular involvement of the participant in the event without
having to resort to specific labels, e.g. GOER for the SR of the Subject of the Verb
go. However, the semantic nature of the Verb is going to be very useful in
characterizing the Semantic Role of the Grammatical Role of Subject.

Exercise 2
Take the case of the same Subject in these sentences:
1) The dog broke some eggs.
2) The dog ate some eggs.
3) The dog has some eggs.
4) The dog needs some eggs.
5) The dog loves eggs.
Does the grammatical Subject of each sentence have the same semantic role?
There is a gradience between the action verbs in 1) and 2) and the experience verbs in
3), 4) and 5). Hence, the SR of the dog does not depend solely on its position (syntax),
nor on its particular meaning (semantics), but also on the semantics of the verb.

Rearrange these verbs in the same way for the sentence:

6) Harry the date.
recalls, writes down, knows, guesses, remembers, figures out.

3.1 Hierarchy of Semantic Roles in the grammatical Subject of the

Verb in simple clauses
There are strong restrictions on the freedom of the Semantic Roles of the
Participants in simple sentences or clauses to map onto the grammatical functions of
the Complements of the verb. These restrictions9 appear below:
1) If one of the Participants is AGENT, then it must be the Subject of the clause.
2) An OBJECTIVE can be Subject (in the absence of an AGT and EXP), Direct
Object or Indirect Object of the clause.
3) An EXPERIENCER can be Subject (in the absence of an AGT), Direct Object
or Indirect Object of the clause.

9
Adapted from Givón 1993: 93.

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4) The other Semantic Roles (BEN, REC, INSTR, ASSO, LOC, etc.) are
typically found as Indirect Objects or Adjuncts in the clause.

In the simple clause in which there is more than one participant, access to
subjecthood will follow these rules:

1) If a simple sentence has one participant that has AGENT properties, then it
will hold the Subject position.
2) If a simple sentence has a participant with EXPERIENCER properties (and no
AGT), it will occupy the Subject position.
3) If there is no AGT and no EXP participant roles, but it has an OBJECTIVE,
then it will occupy the Subject role.

To summarize these rules:

Subject  AGT > EXP > OBJV > Others

Of course, these rules are only valid in simple clauses. For instance, a sentence in
passive voice will reorganize the hierarchy:
1) Active voice: The dog chased the ball.
2) Passive voice: The ball was chased by the dog.
In both sentences, the dog is AGT regardless of its grammatical role (Subject in 1 and
Indirect Object in 2). But passive sentences are typically complex. So, it is only in
passive clauses that the OBJV can displace the AGT from its preeminence of Subject
grammatical role.
In our summary, ‘Others’ typically contains metaphorically extended roles
such as Instrument that gained subjecthood through assimilation of the AGT with the
thing the action was done with10. A LOC would be difficult to place as Subject of the
Verb, e.g.
3) The garage is a safe place (to put your bicycle).
NB: Notice that this sentence is a copular construction and that it is unusual to assign
a Semantic Role to the Complements for the simple reason that there is only one
participant in the event! Indeed, garage (the Subject) and place (the Nominal
Predicate) refer to one and the same participant.

3.2 Direct Objects and semantic roles

As we saw above for subjecthood, the Direct Object (DO or Object) of a verb
in a simple clause is never an AGT. The SRs of the Object are various with a net
preference for the OBJECTIVE. Prototypically, the transitive sentence has an AGT
Subject acting on a passive OBJV Object.
4) John cut the meat.
AGT OBJT
But the Object of the verb may have various other semantic roles:
5) John used a knife. (Object = INST)
6) John cursed the butcher. (Object = EXP)
7) Julie helped John. (Object = BEN)
8) John left the house. (Object = SOURCE)

10
Cf. Schlesinger (1971 or 1981).

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3.3 Indirect Objects and semantic roles

Indirect Objects (IO) either follow the intransitive verb or follow the Object of
the transitive verb if present. The IO is morphologically marked with a preposition (it
is therefore a PP) and the semantics of the preposition usually gives a clear idea of the
semantic role of the IO.
9) John went to the butcher’s. (IO = GOAL)
10) John took the meat out of the fridge. (IO = SOURCE)
11) Julie walked on the dog’s tail. (IO = LOC)
12) Julie took the dog to the vet. (IO = GOAL)
13) She came home with the dog. (IO = ASSO)
14) She told the story to John. (IO = OBJV)
15) John cut his finger with the knife. (IO = INST)
16) Julie found a plaster for John. (IO = BEN)
You will note that sometimes a same preposition can introduce a different semantic
role, e.g. with in (13) compared with (15). Nevertheless, the SR is usually easier to
determine in an IO than in a DO thanks to the semantics of the prepositions.

3.4 Circumstantials and semantic roles

In many cases, the circumstantial appears as a Prepositional Phrase (PP), just
like the Indirect Object. For instance:
17) The dog ran after the ball [in the park].
The PP in the park is a circumstantial adjunct and clearly gives us information about
where the event “the dog ran after the ball” took place. There seems to be no problem
to assign the PP constituent the SR of LOC (Locative).
But there are less clear-cut cases:
18) The dog ran after the ball [in the morning].
Here, the PP in the morning is not a Locative expression, but one feels that there must
be some relationship between locating something in space and locating it in time. And
indeed, there are many cases in which we talk of the abstract concept of time using
the concrete vocabulary of space11 (inside five minutes, the day after tomorrow, a
handful of seconds, time is flying, etc.). A specific SR for time expressions has been
provided in the list = TEM.
But PPs are often compared to adverbs, and can also be replaced by adverbs in
many situations (e.g. place adverbs here, there can replace LOC PPs, a time adverb
then can work likewise for TEM PPs, and an adverb of manner can replace a MAN
PP. But we are now faced with a serious problem concerning the traditional definition
of grammatical classes: if a prepositional phrase contains a NP, thus potentially
referring to a Participant in the event, what would an Adverb ‘refer’ to? And so, can
we assign a SR to an adverb? Here, we have reached one of the limits of grammatical
categorization and of semantic roles, a limit that requires further research.
In the same way, can we assign a SR to a noun that is derived from a verb?
For instance:
19) Smoking kills thousands every year.
Is smoking an AGT here? Obviously not and hence the sub-categorical distinction we
introduced with the SR of FORCE. However, you will agree that this is not a totally
satisfactory label for it. In order to answer questions of whether deverbal nouns have
the noun-like properties of volition or animacy, we will have to define more precisely

11
Cf. Johnson (1987) for lengthy discussion and copious examples of metaphorical extensions of this
kind.

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the classes of Noun and Verb. This will not be attempted here. However, you may
wish to apply the notions of metaphorical transfer that we briefly saw above for the
correlation between time and space.

4- Semantic Roles in complex sentences

Our descriptions and semantic characterizations of the grammatical
complements of verbs in simple sentences are relatively straightforward to apply. As
we saw briefly above, complex sentence constructions, such as the passive,
complicate the picture slightly. The way to get around the problem is to analyze the
complex sentence into its basic propositions and hence clauses. The proposition will
give you an idea of the participants and the clause will give you the complements of
the verb. Here are some examples:

20) I want you to do the next exercise.

Two verbs = complex = two propositions
I want something (from you) + You will do the next exercise.
Subject Object (IO) Subject Object
AGT OBJV (SOURCE) AGT OBJV
As you can see, complex sentences deserve their name. The participant corresponding
to the IO in the first proposition does not in fact appear in the sentence as such due to
a discourse-pragmatic feature that has not been discussed yet: topicalisation. The
participant in the discourse that is most important is the primary topic and is Subject
of the sentence. The Object tends to be the secondary topic (i.e. it is less important or
‘topical’ in the discourse than the Subject). The Indirect Object is even less topical
than the Object. Hence, the Object tends to take second place in any competition
between Subject and Object, which is the case when the two propositions come
together to form the complex sentence: the you Subject of the second proposition
moves into the Object position of the main verb. It is both Object of want and co-
referent with the implicit Subject of do. The IO loses any competition.
Consequently, the complements that are left in the complex sentence will
usually have the same semantic roles as in their simple clauses. Be careful here
especially not to confuse the participants with the complements of the verb. It will be
also necessary to combine SRs, but paying due care to the hierarchy of roles.
Example 20 becomes:
21) I want you to do the next exercise.
AGT OBJV/AGT OBJV
You is the explicit Object and is semantically OBJV for the main clause, but it is co-
referent with the implicit Subject of the second action verb do. The first and main
verb and its complements take precedence over the second verb and its complements
in the subordinate clause structure. Thus, you is OBJV first and AGT second.
When you are assigning semantic roles to complements in a sentence, the key
to success will depend on a) the correct analysis of the sentence into constituent
clauses (grammatical structures) and propositions (semantic relations and
participants) and b) on not confusing these different levels of analysis.

AM Jan. 2011

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DELANCEY, Scott. 1984. “Notes on agentivity and causation.” Studies in Language 8.
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DIK, Simon C. 1997. The Theory of Functional Grammar. Part 1: The structure of the
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DOWTY, David R. 1991. Thematic proto-roles and complement selection. In: Language
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FILLMORE, Charles J. 1968. “The Case for Case.” Universals in Linguistic Theory.
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GIVÓN, Talmy. 1984. Syntax: a Functional Typological Introduction. Volume 1.
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Grammar of the English Language. Harlow: Longman.
SAPIR, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace.
SCHLESINGER, I. M. 1971. Semantic assimilation in the development of relational
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SCHLESINGER, I. M. 1981. Semantic assimilation in the acquisition of relational
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