Thematic role

A thematic role or semantic role is a way in which an object can relate to an event.

Some examples of thematic roles are:

• “agent”: who is willfully causing this event?
• “benefactor”: who benefits from this event?
• “patient”: who or what is affected/changed by this event?

Syntactic and thematic roles

Thematic roles exist in contrast to syntactic roles, like “subject” or “direct object”: these describe a way in which something participates in a verb at the syntax level.

In Toaq, syntactic roles are the ones already represented by the “blanks” in verb definitions:

choıdea: ___ stabs ___.

Whereas thematic roles are represented using verbs that relate an event to an object, generally used as prepositions ():

nhuq: ___ happens for ___'s benefit.

An example

In the two sentences below, the syntactic subject and object are exchanged, but the thematic roles stay the same: Brutus, the agent, is causing change, while Caesar, the patient, suffers this change.

Sentence	Syntactic roles		Thematic roles
	Subject	Object	Agent	Patient
(1) Choıdea mí Butusu mí Kaısa da. Brutus stabs Caesar.	Brutus	Caesar	Brutus	Caesar
(2) Bọchoıdea mí Kaısa mí Butusu da. Caesar is-stabbed-by Brutus.	Caesar	Brutus	Brutus	Caesar

Note that the assignment of Agent and Patient roles to Brutus and Caesar happens “automatically” according to the semantics of choıdea. To stab is for an agent to stab a patient.

We can further dress the event up with a “benefactor” using a preposition:

(3) Choıdea mí Butusu mí Kaısa nhûq mí Loqgınu da.
(4) Bọchoıdea mí Kaısa mí Butusu nhûq mí Loqgınu da.

We say that the stabbing-event, or the being-stabbed-event, “happens for” Longinus's sake.

In Toaq deep syntax

(TODO: mention Spec𝑣P thematic role assignment vs. Spec/CompVP syntactic roles)

Table of thematic role words

Each of these has a definition like: “___ is an event with ___ as its (Role).”. The first column lists “transparent” forms, or one that are built from some representative root (like lıe ‘to experience’ for Experiencer, etc.). The second column is a made-up root that has the same meaning, but offers the convenience of being shorter or more elegant than its “transparent” counterpart – note that the word forms with an outgoing link (↗) are unofficial.

Toaq word			Role	Example
Transparent		Opaque
bọtua	tuacha	ecı	Actor	bộtua jí, “brought about by me”
bọtao	taocha		Intentional actor	bộtao jí, “done by me”
bọne	(necha)	nhe	Extent	loq náo nhê néıheı keıcıu, “the water is 90°C hot”
		zuo	Purpose	zûo ꝡä jaı súq, “so that you may be happy”
		fana	End point, direction, goal	jara nháo fâna búe, “they run toward the house”
		duo	Duration	jara nháo dûo sá hora, “they run for an hour”
		kuı	Reason	soa jí súq kûı ꝡä paı súq jí, “I help you because you're my friend”
		sını	Starting point, source, origin	jara nháo sînı búe, “they run from the house”
	gecha	gem	Stimulus	achu jí gêm hóegıo, “I sneeze from the sunlight”
	techa		Patient	ruqshua têcha jí, “it rains on (affecting, i.e. wetting) me”
	taqcha		Agent + patient (affecting self)
	lıecha		Experiencer
	juqcha	com	(Intended) recipient	shoı jí côm súq, “I shout at you” kuq jí sá côm súq, “I say something to you” juo ní côm súq “This is a letter for you”

“Agent” and “patient” roles are usually baked into a transitive verb, so translating toıcha and techa can be a bit tricky or ambiguous.