On Tue, 23 Mar 1999, Bob Yates wrote:

> Johanna Rubba wrote:
> >
> > Are thematic roles of any use in grammar teaching?
>
> It depends on who we are teaching.  I know of no non-standard dialects
> of English which are stigmatized because the wrong thematic role is
> associated with a grammatical position.  I also don't see an application
> even if one has to think about how information is structured in a text.
>
This makes it sound like the only people we are teaching to when we teach
grammar is speakers of nonstandard dialects. I don't think Bob intends
this to be inferred.

And I do see a connection to text structure. I've claimed before that
choices about sentence structure are governed by the need to manage
information flow in texts. This need might come into conflict with another
function of language, namely, to portray which participant is playing
which role in the situations being described in the text. Therefore
text-level needs might override the most natural choices for sentence
structure from just the point of view of who is doing what to whom. The
common misstatement that the subject of the sentence is the 'doer' of the
action of the verb comes from elevating the most natural choice (agent =
subject) to the definition of 'subject'. As passive sentences show, there
is often a text-level need to put a patient in subject position. What
could that text-level need be? The subject position is extremely commonly
used as a slot for (a) primary or secondary text topics and (b) 'given' or
'old' or already-mentioned information. When a text is about a patient,
and that patient has already been mentioned, it becomes natural to put it
in subject position -- voila, a passive sentence!

Where different phrases get placed, and which grammatical forms get chosen
to code them, can also vary depending on text-level needs. Yet the
thematic role of a constituent doesn't change no matter how it's 'clothed'
or placed.

Karen broke the window with a hammer.
A hammer was used to break the window.
A hammer broke the window.
The window was broken with a hammer.

In all of these sentences, 'a hammer' retains its instrument thematic
role, although it is 'packaged' into different syntactic roles: object of
preposition, subject of passive clause, subject of active clause. It may
seem like the subject of the active clause is agent, but remember that
thematic roles depend on real-world status (or our conceptualization of
same), not syntactic status in a given sentence. Languages differ in what
kind of thematic roles can become subjects of passive sentences, and some
languages will not allow an instrument to be coded as subject of a
passive.

> On the other hand, thematic roles are a problem for non-native
> speakers.

This is true, and it makes thematic roles more immediately useful in
teaching non-native speakers. But that's not our primary concern in ATEG,
as we have been reminded in the past.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics              ~
English Department, California Polytechnic State University   ~
San Luis Obispo, CA 93407                                     ~
Tel. (805)-756-2184     Fax: (805)-756-6374                   ~
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Office hours Winter 1999: Mon/Wed 10:10-11am Thurs 2:10-3pm   ~
Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba                     ~
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