Roles and role-players

We said above that grammatical criteria establish very broad categories. We have already seen that grammatical patterns in English establish a very general role of Patient; the differences in meaning that led analysts to propose the roles of Result and Theme arise from the meaning of specific lexical verbs and should be handled in the lexical entries for these verbs. We now look again at the role of Agent, invoking the concept of prototype that was so useful in the discussion of word classes and distinguishing clearly between roles and role-players.

It has long been demonstrated that the most reliable and general criteria for Agents – answering questions such as What does X do? or What is X doing?, completing WH clefts – What X does is __ and occurring in the progressive – lead to a very general concept of Agent. Prototypical Agents are human beings acting of their own volition, initiating an action, carrying it out using their own energy and producing an effect on something. Jim in (25) is a prototypical Agent.

Prototypical Agents allow clauses to be continued by be at it and to contain adverbs such as enthusiastically or masterfully, as in (26a) and (26b).

Some Agents meet the general criteria outlined above but achieve some goal by exerting their will-power. Consider the examples in (27).

Verbs such as die and lie do not denote actions but can be put into the imperative, which is not a test for actions but is a test for volition: Die a hero’s death for Sparta! and Lie still or they will see you! An adverb such as accidentally signals that an action is not voluntary, but it can occur in imperative sentences and the latter can be given an interpretation. Thus, Kick the defender accidentally can be taken as an instruction to kick the defender but to make it look accidental.

Some Agents do not have volition, do not initiate an action and do not expend energy. Nonetheless, they produce an effect by virtue of being in a certain position in a certain place. Example (28) is an instance of this; note that it meets the above general criteria, as demonstrated by (29).

Some Agents initiate an action but do no more because they merely give a command to others to carry out some action. An example is in (30).

A fourth type of Agent is conceived of as using its own energy – a living creature, a machine or a natural force. Examples are in (31).

The above are answers to questions such as What is the computer doing? and What did the flood do?; they fit into WH clefts – What the computer is doing is playing six simultaneous games of three-dimensional chess and What the flood did was sweep away whole villages. An extra role of Causer was proposed at one time for nouns such as flood in (31c). As with the other proposed extra roles, it is not required. Floods have their own non-human properties, and these are set out in the lexical entry for flood. Floods are simply a subtype of Agent, not prototypical but not hopelessly peripheral either.

To round off this account of roles and role-players, we will look briefly at the Instrument role and at other examples relating to the (discarded) Agent–Causer distinction. The typical instrument in this world is a tool such as a saw, hammer, screwdriver and so on, or a machine, with impromptu tools, such as lengths of wood or stones, on the periphery of the set. It is possible to imagine situations in which human beings are used as instruments: compare Bond smashed the window with his opponent. Of course, such situations are not normal, but they do occur from time to time, even if mostly in novels. The crucial fact is the occurrence of with, signaling an Instrumental role, and the unusual nature of the particular instrument will emerge from the combination of that role with a human noun.

Finally, consider the examples in (32).

Cold in (32) is an Agent and has the Agent preposition by in (32b). In (32c) it is preceded by with, which is the Instrument preposition (but see below). Some entities can be involved in a causal role in some situation but can be perceived now as Agent, now as non-Agent. Again the important point is that we have to go by the grammar, and the grammar indicates that cold is presented as an Agent in (32b) but as a non-Agent in (32c).

The argument has been put for a broad notion of Agent based on grammatical criteria, with other details coming from the dictionary entries for individual nouns. One major criterion is that a difference in preposition indicates a difference in role, but we have not yet discussed whether all occurrences of the same preposition can be analyzed as signaling the same role. Consider the sentences in (33).

The one noun that obviously denotes an instrument is key in (33a). In the situation described by (33b), the visas and the passports are in the same place – the passports are used as an orientation point for stating the whereabouts of the visas. In the situation described by (33c), Sally and Andrew are in the same place; they are together as they make their way to the party and they are together at the party. In the situations described by (33d) and (33e), the flour and the concrete blocks are perforce in the same place as the loaf and the wall, since the latter two are made out of the former. The examples in (33) have in common the notion of being in the same place, for which the term Comitative (= accompanying) is commonly used.

Returning to (33a), we should note that a person using an instrument is typically in the same place as the instrument. Examples (33a–e) all contain with and can all be interpreted as involving the notion of being in the same place. To this evidence can be added the fact that, in a range of languages, examples corresponding to (33a–c) employ the same case suffix. Finally, there is evidence from experiments with speakers of twelve languages from different language families that the concepts of Instrument and Comitative are related. We propose that key in (33a) is in the Comitative role and that the specific properties of key as denoting an instrument are set out in its lexical entry.