Talk:Theta role

message: First, some history (some of which can be gleened from the discussion below): There were originally two articles Thematic role and Theta role. These largely overlapped in content (with the theta role article actually describing thematic relations). The two articles were merged. Neither article was properly referenced and the definitions were fairly inaccurate. But the merger into theta roles was unfortunate, since the article already mixed up the two notions. 
I've completely rewritten this article so it is actually about theta roles and not about thematic relations. I have also created a new article on Thematic relations that now contains an edited and corrected version of the original contents of this entry. The two entries should now (hopefully!) be distinct. 
This entry still needs to have the reference section properly wikified to the proper Harvard Citation template. The article on thematic relations still needs some proper referencing done in the text, as well as some wikification. 
In addition to the above, I have also changed the redirect on Thematic role so that it allows the reader to point to this article or to Thematic relations. If people notice links to this article that should go to thematic relations please fix them!AndrewCarnie 21:14, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks! :-D —RuakhTALK 22:38, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  June 2007, complete rewrite of this article 

message: I just completed the merge from Thematic role.  Reading the discussion on the merge was quite confusing.  I know everyone doesn't agree with the merge, but neither article cited sources for their statements.  Hopefully as a merged article the development will progress more quickly.  Anyone who believes a section of this new article should stand on its own please improve the section here first by citing sources and start a discussion on this talk page when you have facts to support your argument. Alan.ca 08:33, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge from Thematic role 

message: I'm baffled by the merger of thematic roles with theta roles. I'm an associate professor of Syntactic Theory at the University of Arizona. Ph.D from MIT in 1995. I've published a major textbook on syntactic theory (Carnie 2006). I can assure you all, these are different things. Thematic roles are semantic notions; theta roles are representations of syntactic argument positions. It is true that many generative syntacticians use the terms interchangeably, but that's sloppiness, not synonymy. The term theta role isn't used outside of generative approaches, but the term thematic relation is. I'm willing to rewrite this article (and the one on thematic roles) if we can split them apart again. Here's how I envision it: The bulk of this article will be moved to Thematic roles, changing all the incorrect references of theta role to thematic  relations. There will be a crossreference to this article regarding theta roles. This article (theta roles) will be completely rewritten a shorter one outlining the basic idea of argument positions tied to thematic relations and a brief explanation to the theta criterion. I'll probably also add a few lines about other approaches (LFG a-structure, HPSG Arg-STR), as well as the newer theories which link theta roles to position (i.e. Hale and Keyser) or to theta features. The current article also mixes up grammatical relations (A, S, O -- which are wrongly defined by the way) with thematic relations. I can fix this too.  But I'm only going to do this if there is a consensus to split this back into thematic relations and theta roles. I'm not going to waste my time if someone is just going to switch it back. AndrewCarnie
:I'd support that. It seems that the problem is that theta role was originally written incorrectly, in a way that made it sound synonymous with thematic role. If you can rewrite them in a way that makes the difference clear, please do. :-) —RuakhTALK 02:30, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposal to resplit these 

message: The article says "Theme: is the recipient of an action but does not change its state (e.g. Bill gave Mary a present)."
However, I've always understood that in this sentence, 'present' is the theme and Mary the recepient. This is also what the Theta-role stuff says. Jalwikip 16:15, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theme 

message: "If an argument fails to have the correct match between the number of arguments (typically NPs, PPs, or embedded clauses) and the number of theta roles. "
....not a sentence.... 134.93.59.195 (talk) 20:11, 28 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fragment... 

message: In the article:
"By contrast, Theta roles are a syntactic notion about the number,  type and placement of obligatory arguments. For instance, in the  sentence Fergus ate the kibble, the fact that there are two  arguments (Fergus and the kibble) and Fergus must be  capable of volition and doing the action and the kibble must be  something that can be eaten is a fact about theta roles (the number and  type of the argument)."
I thought that "capable of volition" and "something that can be eaten" were semantic qualities, not syntactic quantities. Not being a syntactician or linguist myself, when I read the "type... of obligatory arguments" I assumed that meant what type of phrase: NP (DP), PP, etc.
Can I get a clarification? --Robert.Baruch (talk) 22:04, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Theta roles directly refer to hematic relations (the semantic type specified in the theta role), so a theta role refers to the thematic relation (say agent) within it. Comhreir (talk) 03:20, 2 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Volition and capable-of-being-eaten are syntactic qualities? 

message: I did not understand this article. I suppose I probably could if I followed every link in it and came back and read it several times, but that would be several days’ work and I doubt if it would help me learn and understand any real-world languages. The article is densely written. It is full of jargon, some undefined. It relies heavily on symbols, some undefined. (One example even has unbalanced brackets.) In every paragraph, my eyes glazed over. No doubt the jargon and symbols are well known to linguists, but I bet 99% of Wikipedia users have never taken a course in linguistics.
It compares θ-roles to other theories. I get the impression that theoretical linguistics is full of many different mutually inconsistent theories trying to explain languages at some elevated abstract level. It left me more confused than before I read it. In the future, if an article is marked "category:theoretical linguistics", I will skip it. Vita brevis est. — Solo Owl (talk) 03:56, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I get the impression that theoretical linguistics is full of many different mutually inconsistent theories trying to explain languages at some elevated abstract level. That is an accurate description of the state of theoretical linguistics, so you haven't misunderstood on that count. Still, I agree with you that the article could be clearer. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Too dense

message: I don't understand how volition fits into this example.  "The solvent ate the plastic" seems like the same thing to me.  Can you make it a bit clearer? Wnt (talk) 12:50, 3 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fergus ate the kibble 

message: t appears that, in addition to the two definitions of "predicate" discussed in the first paragraph in https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predicate_(grammar), the current article introduces het another one: noun or adjective or preposition or verb. I must say this confused me a lot.
# a thing or being;
# a purpose;
# or a direct or indirect object?
I think many terms used are overloaded in that they carry with them multiple possible meanings.
The article would, I think, benefit from a list of clear definitions for the most prominent words used in it.Redav (talk) 13:09, 21 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  The words "predicate" and "object" have multiple possible meanings, which confuses 

message: I found this random article circa 2002 that describes many theta roles. Some are introduced in the article (agent, theme, goal) but others are left unmentioned (possessor, trigger, constructum, location, etc). I think it would be nice to have a consised list of all of them. NotHasn't (talk) 02:41, 4 January 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Theta roles?