Abstract
The assignment of thematic relations to individual complements is a more complex mechanism than usually shown in the literature. In this chapter it is shown that in many cases assignment must be done by default, that is, by associating a sentence complement with a cognitive relation directly taken from the schema evoked by the main verb. Assignment in such cases is subject to cognitive and also linguistic constraints. Some examples are given of the action of assignment by default to particular sentences, and it is argued that the traditional system results in unnecessary repetition of information. Assignment by default is also convenient in describing the occurrence of thematic relations not formally realized, as in the children have eaten, where an “eaten thing” is necessarily understood, although no complement exists in the structure that can be assigned this relation; no grammatical marking is needed in order to account for this.
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Notes
- 1.
This is recognized in the corresponding entry in Framenet (worship, frame Rite). ADESSE, for adorar, gives Experimentador (Experiencer) and Estímulo (Stimulus), which is correct for this verb in its reading “love” but not for “worship.”
- 2.
There may be other factors at work here: for instance, an NP cannot convey Location, Manner or Time, which are peripheral CRSs connected to the schema WORSHIP.
- 3.
Read: almost never; but exceptions are few, and belong to clearly delimited sets. For instance, the NP a semana passada “last week” can convey Time; but the NP o século passado “last century” cannot, and requires a preposition in order to express Time: no século passado.
- 4.
- 5.
As is well known, no semantic deviance is entirely beyond rescue; I refer here to an immediate (“literal”) interpretation, without a special effort to understand the sentence in a metaphorical or poetic way.
- 6.
Following the analysis adopted in Sect. 11.5.
- 7.
The subject receives its role (Experiencer) by prototype rule; I find it unlikely that the same happens with the Stimulus.
- 8.
Goldberg (1995, p. 33).
- 9.
Framenet: “Cause_to_perceive”; “core participants: Agent, Phenomenon, Perceiver.”
- 10.
Comment and examples from Tagnin (2016).
- 11.
- 12.
NPs convey peripheral variables only in exceptional cases like cheguei o mês passado “I arrived last month,” where the last NP is the Time of arrival. This is one of the few cases where an NP is not thematically opaque. Bolinger (1992) studies similar phrases in English and Spanish.
- 13.
It will be eventually elaborated into the “opiner.”
- 14.
Framenet (entry Categorization) gives Cognizer, Item and Category.
- 15.
There is a way to improve the acceptability of [18] by pronouncing o melhor jogador do time “the best player in the team” with a low and rapid intonational contour. This has still to be studied.
- 16.
In the standard language; bur I have heard a corresponding construction used by substandard speakers from the Brazilian Northeast.
- 17.
That is, in this case, “frightened entity”—possibly an Experiencer.
- 18.
There is some evidence that exceptional readings tend to arise more promptly to mind, perhaps because they are learned as lexical material, without the intermediation of rules. Thus, Fulgêncio (p.c.) has observed that idioms are always more readily available than the grammatically generated interpretation of the same sequences.
- 19.
- 20.
It is easy to see that, if it were not so, linguistic mechanisms would become superfluous.
- 21.
It may not be possible; core variables can be unexpressed, as in the girl is reading.
- 22.
This is not necessarily Croft’s opinion; he only mentions these points as being widely accepted “in at least the earliest semantic role list approaches” [apud Levin and Hovav, 2005, p. 35].
- 23.
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Perini, M.A. (2019). Assignment by Default. In: Thematic Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28538-8_7
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