Thematic Relations

Book excerpt: Thematic Relations provides information pertinent to thematic relations, which focus both on what sematic roles are expressible in the grammar and how these roles come to be associated with noun phrases. This book presents the interaction of components of the language faculty and other aspects of cognition. Organized into 13 chapters, this volume begins with an overview of the semantic relations involved in verb-argument structure. This text then examines the predicate-argument representations, which have come to figure prominently in all current generative theories of syntax. Other chapters consider the generalizations about thematic relations that are most insightfully captured at the level of syntax of at the level of semantics. This book discusses as well the importance of thematic roles to the grammar. The final chapter deals with the central role of thematic roles in language comprehension. This book is a valuable resource for linguists, syntacticians, and semanticists with an active involvement in research on natural language.