Talk:Theta role

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Thematic relation was split from this article after a merger between Thematic role and Theta role. For more discussion that may be relevant here, see also Talk:Thematic role.

Contents 1 June 2007, complete rewrite of this article 2 Do we really need two separate articles - thematic role and theta role? 2.1 Not the same thing 2.2 Please don't merge, They're not the same! 2.3 This is not a unitary concept 2.4 Merge from Thematic role 2.5 Proposal to resplit these 3 Recipient is more important than instrument 4 Theme

[edit] June 2007, complete rewrite of this article

First, some history (some of which can be gleened from the discussion below): There were originally two articles Thematic role and Theta role. These largely overlapped in content (with the theta role article actually describing thematic relations). The two articles were merged. Neither article was properly referenced and the definitions were fairly inaccurate. But the merger into theta roles was unfortunate, since the article already mixed up the two notions.

I've completely rewritten this article so it is actually about theta roles and not about thematic relations. I have also created a new article on Thematic relations that now contains an edited and corrected version of the original contents of this entry. The two entries should now (hopefully!) be distinct.

This entry still needs to have the reference section properly wikified to the proper Harvard Citation template. The article on thematic relations still needs some proper referencing done in the text, as well as some wikification.

In addition to the above, I have also changed the redirect on Thematic role so that it allows the reader to point to this article or to Thematic relations. If people notice links to this article that should go to thematic relations please fix them!AndrewCarnie 21:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! :-D —Ruakh_TALK 22:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do we really need two separate articles - thematic role and theta role?

Do we really need two separate articles - thematic role and theta role? Boraczek 21:44, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe put a merge tag on thematic role? Right now that article is somewhat messy, while this one is written much more clearly (perhaps because I wrote it ;). VeryVerily 22:34, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I agree, this article is much better. Good job!

Another problem to solve: I'm afraid this article (theta role) is inconsistent with the article Morphosyntactic alignment. The article theta role describes "experiencer" in semantic terms, while the article Morphosyntactic alignment says that the main argument of an intransitive verb is "experiencer" with no regard to the meaning. In the sentence "John went to San Francisco" we have an intransitive verb, so according to the second definition "John" is an experiencer, but semantically "John" is an agent. Boraczek 23:39, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hm, well this is a somewhat unstable area of linguistics, so such discrepancies aren't too surprising, but my humble opinion is that the Morphosyntactic alignment article needs some work. It's certainly hard to believe that in John screamed or Fido ran away that 'John' and 'Fido' are experiencers, even though they'd be marked absolutive in an ergative language. My understanding (and I don't have references handy) is that the threefold S/A/P (subject/agent/patient) distinction is preferred these days, where S can be either 'Sa' (an agent-like subject) or 'So' (an object-like subject, as in The window broke), but this latter distinction is not usually case-marked, hence the catch-all (but hard to define) 'S'. Then we say that in accusative languages S and A fall together, and in ergative ones S and P do. Well, I'm not up for taking a stab at working on the alignment article just yet, but it being Wikipedia I'm sure it will happen one way or another. VeryVerily 19:40, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC) (P.s., sorry it took so long to reply; when I tried to reply last time the database was down and then I just forgot about it....)

Thematic role and Theta role denote the same concept. Actually the Greek letter theta is used to indicate the theme. My suggestion is that we move Theta role to Thematic role and provide a redirect here. Hirzel 11:15, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Is this not just a convoluted term for "theme" in linguistics? - Centrx 16:46, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

My point exactly. "Theta role" is just a condensed form of the term. There's no point in naming the encyclopedic article after the linguistic shorthand. I'll list the article at RM.

Peter ^Isotalo 09:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Not the same thing

Hi All,

I strongly disagree. Thematic relations (not roles) and Theta Roles are totally different things. Thematic relations are semantic relations like "theme", "agent" etc. Theta roles are syntactic objects, which correspond to syntactic argument structure. Theta roles reference thematic relations (I haven't yet fixed the article so it says this... but it's the way Gruber intended the terms), but they are not synonymous. AndrewCarnie

[edit] Please don't merge, They're not the same!

Hello,

Though these two concepts are easily confused even by beginner linguistics/syntax students, they are not the same. Thematic roles/relations are a semantic issue, while theta-roles are a sort of abstraction developed by syntacticians the be able to determine thematic assignments in the absence of a full lexical/semantic theory. In literature these terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but in the linguistics domain they are not.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Promethean (talk • contribs).

[edit] This is not a unitary concept

The notion of theta-role comes from formal Chomskyan syntax. In functional linguistics the terms thematic role and semantic role are used instead. This article does not adopt a NPOV with regard to this disagreement.

Some of the differences are significant. For example, S, A and O may be considered to be theta roles in formal syntax, but they are considered ot be grammatical roles in functionalist syntax (and thus have semantic roles too: for example, an A might be an agent, experiencer, source etc.; an O is not always a patient; etc.)

however, more clearing up than I have time for is needed.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.33.156.75 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Merge from Thematic role

I just completed the merge from Thematic role. Reading the discussion on the merge was quite confusing. I know everyone doesn't agree with the merge, but neither article cited sources for their statements. Hopefully as a merged article the development will progress more quickly. Anyone who believes a section of this new article should stand on its own please improve the section here first by citing sources and start a discussion on this talk page when you have facts to support your argument. Alan.ca 08:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to resplit these

I'm baffled by the merger of thematic roles with theta roles. I'm an associate professor of Syntactic Theory at the University of Arizona. Ph.D from MIT in 1995. I've published a major textbook on syntactic theory (Carnie 2006). I can assure you all, these are different things. Thematic roles are semantic notions; theta roles are representations of syntactic argument positions. It is true that many generative syntacticians use the terms interchangeably, but that's sloppiness, not synonymy. The term theta role isn't used outside of generative approaches, but the term thematic relation is. I'm willing to rewrite this article (and the one on thematic roles) if we can split them apart again. Here's how I envision it: The bulk of this article will be moved to Thematic roles, changing all the incorrect references of theta role to thematic relations. There will be a crossreference to this article regarding theta roles. This article (theta roles) will be completely rewritten a shorter one outlining the basic idea of argument positions tied to thematic relations and a brief explanation to the theta criterion. I'll probably also add a few lines about other approaches (LFG a-structure, HPSG Arg-STR), as well as the newer theories which link theta roles to position (i.e. Hale and Keyser) or to theta features. The current article also mixes up grammatical relations (A, S, O -- which are wrongly defined by the way) with thematic relations. I can fix this too. But I'm only going to do this if there is a consensus to split this back into thematic relations and theta roles. I'm not going to waste my time if someone is just going to switch it back. AndrewCarnie

I'd support that. It seems that the problem is that theta role was originally written incorrectly, in a way that made it sound synonymous with thematic role. If you can rewrite them in a way that makes the difference clear, please do. :-) —Ruakh_TALK 02:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recipient is more important than instrument

I think recipient is important enough to be included with instrument in the theta-roles illustrated by the example sentences, as it is often more central to the verb as one of the arguments of a ditransitive verb than the more oblique role of "instrument". Should a sentence be added, or should the existing ones be modified to accommodate that? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 169.229.64.31 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Theme

The article says "Theme: is the recipient of an action but does not change its state (e.g. Bill gave Mary a present)."

However, I've always understood that in this sentence, 'present' is the theme and Mary the recepient. This is also what the Theta-role stuff says. Jalwikip 16:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)