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Understanding Semantic Roles in Language

The document discusses semantic roles, which are the conceptual relationships that participants have with the main verb in a clause. The two most common semantic roles are the agent, who performs the action, and the patient, who undergoes a change of state. For example, in the sentence "Jimmy opened the door with his keycard," Jimmy is the agent and the door is the patient. These semantic roles remain consistent regardless of word order variations of the sentence.

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228 views7 pages

Understanding Semantic Roles in Language

The document discusses semantic roles, which are the conceptual relationships that participants have with the main verb in a clause. The two most common semantic roles are the agent, who performs the action, and the patient, who undergoes a change of state. For example, in the sentence "Jimmy opened the door with his keycard," Jimmy is the agent and the door is the patient. These semantic roles remain consistent regardless of word order variations of the sentence.

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Semantic Roles

Jose Valenzuela
English 420 Principles of Language (010) SU2 2021
Los Angeles Pacific University
Semantic Roles

Semantic Roles: A semantic role is the underlying relationship that a participant


has with the main verb in a clause. Semantic roles are conceptual. The most
common roles are the agent and the patient.
Semantic Roles

The Agent: The entity that performs the action. Typically, human.
Semantic Roles

The Patient: The thing that is affected by an event. The entity undergoing a
change of state or location. Typically, non-human, but can be human.
Semantic Roles

Jimmy opened the door with his keycard.

Agent: Jimmy Verb: Opened Patient: The door


Semantic Roles

The Agent and the Patient will remain the same, no matter how the two are arranged
around the verb.

Jimmy opened the door with his keycard.

• The door was opened with Jimmy’s keycard.


• Jimmy’s key card opened the door.
• Using his key card, Jimmy opened the door.
References

• [Link]. (2021). Semantic Roles. [Link]

• Glossary of Linguistic Roles. (2021) Semantic Role. [Link]

• Yule, George. (2016) The Study of Language 6th Edition. Cambridge University Press

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