Summary

Participant roles play a useful part in the analysis of the syntax and interpretation of various constructions. Typical roles are Agent, Patient, Instrument, Place, Goal and Source. It is essential to have criteria for limiting the number of roles; a small number of very general roles can be set up on the basis of grammatical criteria. Two distinctions are fundamental. One is between roles and role-players, as in the recognition that the prototype or best central example of a player in the Agent role is a human being using his or her own energy and acting of their own volition. A peripheral example is an inanimate column without volition and not using energy. The second distinction is between the very general roles and the information contributed by individual lexical verbs to the meaning of a clause. An Agent may be involved in many kinds of action, and a Patient may be unaffected by an action, say watch, or be affected to a large extent, as in the actions denoted by break or lift. Patients can be created, as in write a book, or destroyed, as in burn the manuscript. Roles do not connect up directly with the world but with the ways in which the speakers of languages conceive of and present situations in the world.