 Last time we started looking at thematic relations among constituents of a sentence. And then we were looking at what are those constituents which have got thematic relations among one another. In order to look at thematic relations we started talking about categorical selection and semantic selections. Remember, categorical selections and semantic selections. The idea of categorical selections, the idea behind that discussion was there are two types of things in a sentence. At rather there are two types of two aspects through which we can look at a sentence. So far we have been looking at a sentence from the perspective of grammatical relations such as subjects and objects. Subjects and objects are grammatical relations. No NP is inherently a subject or no NP is inherently an object. Depending upon a sentence an NP could be in a subject position or it could be in an object position. And then we know about rest of the constituents of a sentence. So like subjects and objects are thematic relations in a sentence we started looking at like subjects and objects are grammatical relations in a sentence we started looking at thematic relationships. And then today I will talk to you about how to summarize the whole thing and the way we look at thematic relationship in a sentence is called Theta theory. There are not several at least some of the things which are needed to connect both structural relations and thematic relations. Grammatical relations and thematic relations give it couple of days and you will see the connection between the two. And also shortly we are going to look at in a way you understand this but as a practical demonstration we will see how a sentence in fact we looked at it little bit how a sentence is bigger than a bigger than an IP. Remember when we were talking about when we started talking about a CP how a sentence is bigger than an IP and also how the subject position of a sentence can be what have you seen so far in the subject position of a sentence mostly an NP. You will see how in a subject position of a sentence we can have things which are bigger than an NP that is sometimes an IP and may be bigger elements as well. And all these things put together give us recursiveness for which languages are famous. So we come to that and then these things will make little bit more sense. So let us look at first the relationship between first two perspectives and then the unified statement about a Theta we have looked at endocentricity and I am only going through these things just to refresh your memory. Then we started looking at categorical selections and we simply meant to put the point forth that certain elements, certain categories take specific objects or subcategorizes for specific elements and this is called categorical selection. For example, nouns like no ask and wonder how these verbs like no ask and wonder how these verbs can have only certain things as its object in and such a restriction is called categorical selection and we call that this now this verb no subcategorizes for an NP it can subcategorize for a CP and it can also subcategorize for a question sentence. This is what we meant and again I want to underline when we are talking about no ask and wonder we are not talking about all the verbs we are only talking about these verbs this is what is important about categorical selections. Similarly, we looked at some adjectives, nouns and prepositions how they require certain types of certain types of compliments in other words how they subcategorize for only certain types of elements. And when we started looking at semantic selection that is S selection and we were talking about differences between categorical selection and semantic selection that is C selection and S selection we looked at different ways of saying things so that things will be clearer. Then is the same thing that a verb no subcategorizes for an NP or an IP or a CP or a question sentence we say with respect to semantic selection a verb no for verb no compliment must be a question or a proposition that is it just that we do not use grammatical terminology for this thing. Keep in mind a short discussion that we have gone through about autonomy of syntax we have discussed that there is evidence available in natural language which shows us with the help of that we can argue that syntax is independent of semantics that is meaning of a sentence has very little to do with grammatical composition of a sentence a sentence can be totally meaningless and still be grammatical that is the baseline argument for autonomy of syntax or independence of syntax however that is not enough there are way there are we do have evidence in natural language which also suggests that not necessarily it is independent all the time all right fine it looks independent to great extent but not all the way and that is this is what this is what selectional restriction tells us that for a sentence to be more meaningful not in the semantic terms for a sentence the point is sentences do care about semantic relations as well otherwise we do not really get a grammatical sentence and lot of times grammaticality of sentence may depend on semantic selections as well that is all is the is the point there is something called lexical selection and in this category you will see that the verbs or different elements select for a particular lexical item why how we do not know much about the much about that but I just want to show you a list of some of the things for example if we are talking about a verb like rely or depend it can only allow a post position on it does not allow other post positions we never say rely for or rely in or depend in stuff like that remember we are not talking about categorical selection at this time the difference between lexical selection and a categorical selection is the following for a categorical selection we were talking about the full phrase and how a verb is selecting an NP or CP or IP in semantic selection we were talking about how a verb selects a question sentence or a proposition or a sentence itself in lexical selection we are talking about pure lexical elements like proposition namely proposition that you see on this screen are you with me so far are these things making sense if there is a doubt please let me know we are only talking about the terms so far and then I want to go to thematic relations in a moment making sense and then you see further more verbs like hope and toy and the list goes on the point here is and the reason why I have given only three examples is very simple we never see a word any other post position with a verb hope it sounds to a strong a statement just check it listen to people or try to make a sentence with anything else and this forces someone to look at it in terms of lexical selection we don't know I mean this is not a this is not an explanation that I am giving you I am categorically telling you we don't know why but it's in a statement of fact that it doesn't seem to be taking any other element what's the relationship between hope and for rely on own we don't know and like like I have been telling you and trying to connect once one point that we have made way too early in the class and it will be a contribution of this class if you if you can take or if you can really internalize only a few points even even a few points at the end of it if not a huge success that will be a partial success of the things that we have been discussing with again remember knowledge of language where we know that we know lot of things about language we do a lot of things about language is just that we don't know how to explain some of the things we know some of the things people have studied and then things have become clearer and still there are lots of things that we just don't know invariably irrespective of dialectal variations or our language variation speakers of English will only say only take on with rely what kind of restriction operates in human mind this definitely seems to be part of knowledge of language more so because we don't know why and has not been explained so far and then the list goes on and on nouns like love and desire remember these these two words are not verbs here there when they are used as nouns then they take these things the the noun desire does not seem to take off and it takes fall I am I am only knowing very well I am only showing you the list without giving you an explanation for this thing and I am I am not giving you explanation because we don't know the reason for that so again and these three sentences make the point that I have just a minute ago discussed with you that we do need we do need to look at semantic selection or selectional restrictions like categorical selection semantic selections and lexical selection in order to make sentences grammatical and these sentences are not preceded by a star mark because they are not ungrammatical sentences we have we have only put a hash mark because they are not they are they are semantically not I do not know how to say semantically not appropriate sentences it doesn't mean much that's all we can say about these sentences right the and I don't mean to go get into the arguments like in a certain context buildings walk slowly might be true okay might be I mean I am not talking about true and false values of these sentences what I am saying maybe maybe contextually allowed if you are looking at a computer game then this sentence may be perfectly alright in a in a given context but you know what I mean and I am only talking about selectional restrictions and in the larger context these sentences are grammatical but doesn't seem to be working quite well alright so with with these things we have we have only tried to make a single point which is keeping autonomy of syntax in mind we do feel or we do happen to need to look at selectional restrictions as well for for sentences to make sense which in turn me eventually means to say that we cannot really we cannot really say fully all the way that syntax is independent okay and this is where we stop now look at the look at these statements do are we are we clear about subcategorized elements now subcategorized subcategorized elements in a sentence the sentences that are the the elements that are required in a sentence okay so this is the story about those subcategorized elements that just like grammatically they are going to be either now or an object I am sorry either a subject or an object semantically speaking they they are also they are they also get names semantic names so thematic relations talks about semantic roles semantic relations that this is making sense let me let me let me repeat this thing again we are talking at two different levels we were we are talking about grammatical level and we are talking about semantic level at a grammatical level we have seen relationship between elements subcategorized elements in a sentence in terms of subjects objects right among objects we have seen some of the things are direct objects some of the things could be indirect objects right semantically speaking that is looking at the same sentence from semantic perspectives we we find that they also seem to have some sort of semantic roles which which are partly governed by syntactic roles keep this in mind which are partly governed by syntactic roles this is why I wanted to make the point first that syntax does not seem to be independent of semantics all the way that is there is no complete autonomy between syntax and semantics to a to a great extent semantics syntax do look independent but not all the way because there seems to be some overlap between them and therefore I want you to see a description of semantic roles and how those subcategorized elements are described semantically in a sentence it is it is okay and then what we are going to discuss is going to make going to make sense make sense is the is the distinction between syntactic level and semantic level clear to everybody are we okay with the syntactic relations do we understand what we mean by syntactic relations then we can look at semantic relations we among those elements from the semantic perspective and then we can see how how grammatical relations kind of force I don't want to use the word govern because that's coming coming soon it's a technical term how grammatical relations kind of force semantic relations okay so and we start with this statement that every every argument that is every subcategorized argument must have one and only one thematic role assigned in a sentence so for example if you have a sentence like this bad hit and dream how many subcategorized how many how many arguments do you see here one or two and this at this point we will need to make this thing clear grammatically speaking subjects are out of predicate everybody with me subjects are out of predicate right so we can say as far as verbs are concerned it has only one object it's it it helps you decide only one NP that is within the predicate and it has no control over subject in other words we mean to we end up saying its subjects are always there anyway right be the without a sub without a subject we don't have a sentence at all therefore we don't talk about subjects with relations with relation to verbs semantically speaking this is going to have two different arguments one is Brad and the other is Andrew and for a moment please don't look at it in terms of subjects and objects okay it has two arguments Brad and Andrew these two arguments have two different roles in a sentence okay two different roles in a sentence and at this point I want to take you back all the way back when I asked you a question for the first time about the subject what is a subject and several of you or at least some of you talked about subject is someone who does something right who the and when I was talking about verbs I do remember some people talking about something that the action is acted upon some of the description of those types at this point I want to bring that in this such descriptions are semantic descriptions where what you what we actually mean to say that we are not defining subjects we are defining agents when we say subject does something we are talking about agents so in this in this sentence the one of the arguments that is Brad is the agent of what agent of agent of the action carried off carried on okay and is this and this should be with with the smallest sentence it should be particular to you that only Brad Brad is carrying this a carrying out this action right we are we are not using the verb fight if we had the verb fight then the story would have been different because in the in the in a in a fight several other people could be agents but when we are talking about hitting only one could hit the other the the person who is getting hit men may have no role at all in being hit see this thing so look at the semantics of this verb or semantic description of its argument that one is the agent and then we will see what the other is so there are two arguments what the first statement simply means is one and only one role has to be assigned to arguments in a sentence if there are two arguments both of them will have one and only one role both of them will not have the same role that is Brad and Andrew both cannot be agents okay Brad can be assigned one role and Andrew can be assigned one role confusions problems they are coming up but at this stage any confusion any problems no alright the second statement x bar theory generate sentences and theta theory is a checking condition is this making sense to you and if the second part doesn't just just take it as a value take it for the value of the first part that x bar theory helps us generate sentences that is x bar theory helps us describe how sentences are generated and then we will talk about the second part later how it how thematic relations how the way to look at thematic relations which is called theta theory is a checking condition okay in fact in fact it is not too difficult in theta theory here simply means about selectional restriction and then selectional restriction becomes a checking condition for grammaticality of a sentence no no no I I qualified that how it what what we mean by how it generate sentences is it helps us describe understand a sentence that's not what it means what I am telling you what it means is no not just how to parse a sentence it helps us understand how a how different elements in a sentence are related and how human mind how sentence works in human mind okay that's all it does it it's not really a physical tool right it's not really a candy machine in which you put something and it gets you candy this making sense it it's it's a tool artificial tool hypothetical tool for us to understand if the if we are speaking a sentence how does how did that happen that several elements are connected and then what makes a sentence grammatical for us to understand underlying patterns x bar theory it's just a tool to understand that it's not a it it's not a like I gave you the example it's not a machine you put raw elements in it and it gives you candy candies so that in the in that sense it doesn't generate sentences alright okay there are these are these are just the names and which describes elements in a sentence now look at the there is a whole list of names of thematic relations given in the in one of the chapters in your book I have only taken few of them for us to go through I I do suggest you to look at that chapter that part of the chapter carefully to understand these things and here I want you to understand very simple simple point when we say sentences like Bob saw the car okay Bob saw the car or okay just just just let's look at the first sentence Bob saw the car do you see that with respect to two verbs that you have seen so far hit and see right with respect to two verbs hit and see do you see the difference between do you see the difference between the kinds of role Brad and Bob are playing in these two sentences no yes or no you see what's the difference with respect to hit and see when we say Brad hit Andrew and Bob saw the car what's the difference everybody understand this it's a it's not as subtle either right it's it's quite obvious when we talk about hit it requires some physical activity action right and in with respect to that scene is less eventful see this thing therefore the different there is a difference between the roles of Brad and Bob in the first sentence Brad clearly seems to be an agent of the action in this one Bob is different okay and and one can one can argue that it's it still is an agent of seeing which is okay and this is why I said it's going to things are going to get complicated little further but it does it is still does not contradict what we said earlier that argument will have only one and one and only one theater all you can assign it agent depending on how you perceive it if you see if you think seeing requires some action in that case it's it's agent for you if you think there is a huge there is a difference not subtle obvious difference between hit and see then you can assign a different theater all to this all right see this thing and larger point is the difference between Brad hit Andrew and Bob saw the car is not only captured through its grammatical relations for the difference between the two sentences and the nature of the two predicates looking at semantic relations is also important therefore semantics doesn't seem to be completely independent I'm sorry sentence sent syntax does not seem to be completely autonomous of semantic relations all right we have we have more sentences we can we can go through that but I want to leave them for you to to look at when we say syntax frightens Jim right is Jim the subject of the sentence not grammatically speaking Jim is not the subject of the sentence what is Jim grammatically speaking object of the sentence right but semantically speaking you can realize that Jim becomes the experiencer right an experiencer of what fear right so when we say experiencer or an AC agent is category agency can category can very clearly be mapped on to subject right but other theater roles cannot be directly mapped on to mapped on to their grammatical counterparts like subjects and objects this this is also not real not a contradiction but not a direct overlap either understand understand this point there is the the mapping between semantic roles and grammatical relations are not one-to-one it's not that subjects are the only one see look look at the next sentence Suzanne loves cookies right cookies are not the experiencer what who the the argument which is experiencer of love is not cookies but Suzanne and once the role is assigned it's done one and again here one can argue no no no no no I don't think it's a it's really experiencer it is an agent the the fight is not whether it's an agent or experiencer the the point is once it is once you think it's it for by you when I say once you think what I mean is once a native speaker this decides that for me for my English it seems to me as experiencer done for the other native speaker if it looks like an agent done but for the same speaker it cannot be to both experiencer and agent okay that's that's the point all right there are there is one or two more that I want you to see the next one is is called theme okay and it has its description you can read that but more importantly look at the look at the examples Mary loves cookies right compared to both the both the thematic relations that you have seen so far agent and experiencer is cookies an agent here definitely not right if at all if at all we can classify this agency to something that is going to be Mary right if at all and if we don't want to call Mary an agent in that case we can call it experiencer but Mary is definitely not theme theme is you see you see the description and the argument cookies seems to be qualifying for this this role of being theme any difficulty problems no all right and likewise we have we have few more like goal recipient source location instrument and and there is there is a huge list of huge list of these things I once again I do ask you to look at it in the chapter carefully and if if there are questions based on that please let me know and with with each one of them the the reason why I am not going through each one of them with you is because it's just a list important thing to keep in mind is what I what we saw as the first sentence and what I have been telling you and let me repeat this thing before we look at theta criterion once again at one level there seems to be total disconnect between syntax and semantics which is called autonomy of syntax you have seen one example researchers with lots of more examples vigorously argue for that sometimes for us this is not a religion we are only trying to understand how people have looked at language so we need to look at several perspectives we we are not going to commit ourselves to one view or the other so my job here is not to not to show you only one part of the story that no no no syntax is independent of semantics understand this there appears to be evidence in natural language which shows that syntax may not totally be independent of semantics and lot of semantic components have to play some role or the other if not everything some role or the other on constraining syntax okay for that we looked at C selection that is categorical selection S selection semantic selection and lexical selection putting all these things together we call them there we call them some sort of semantic criteria as semantic selection in in terms of the fact that sentences do care about these things too otherwise they may be okay in a given context but does not seem to be appropriate right away then we have looked at with with the help of that we are able to see two different levels that is a grammatical level in a sentence and a semantic level in a sentence grammatically speaking the the different terms subjects and objects are grammatical relations similarly several elements that are arguments in a sentence have different roles to play and these are the names of those roles these names are not mapped one to one with grammatical relations okay and what happens though is once to to a great extent it seems like agents are all the time subjects or subjects are getting agent theta role to to a great extent however other examples show that not necessarily there is one to one mapping between grammatical relations and thematic relations however what we observe categorically is once a an argument is assigned a theta thematic role it keeps that thematic role and one argument cannot be assigned more than one thematic role in a sentence at a time just like any NP can potentially be the subject in one sentence and the same NP can be object in other sentence similarly outside the sentence the nps will change their semantic role but in a sentence one NP one argument must be assigned one and only one thematic role and this is called thematic criterion or theta criterion and therefore with the list I have only suggested that you take a look at that take a look at that list on your own with with with the thing in mind that the whether you call something an experiencer or a an agent is is depending upon native speakers intuition however for people studying language people looking at natural language in these terms and particularly when we are not the native speaker of let us say language like English we can only say that whether a word whether an argument is agent or patient or experiencer can only depend on the nature of the word for example for a verb like hit the agent the the argument which is in the subject position cannot be experiencer cannot be patient it has to be an agent only when we look at other other verbs like love in a in a sentence like John loves Mary how do you say how do I say that John is an agent it could be an experiencer then the complication begins my point is for an for a non-native speaker to look at these things we need to look at the nature of the verb and the answer is located there that is in the verb for a native speaker these things are categorically clear in our languages too we have these things clarified and again I have already given you one example of knowledge of language this this will be another one that all these restrictions that you have seen and both the levels of semantic level or grammatical level whether they are independent or not they are all here we we all know these things rather in in other words we do not need to know these things obviously when we are speaking in the language which it which helps us understand that these things are part of knowledge of language and on the basis of these things the term knowledge of language is a technical term all right okay clear about them at Theta criterion it it's just a it's just a nice play of the words that you put it put it in a particular way to restrict or present it in the way that I have been describing to you again I I do want you to look at the examples carefully in the book adjuncts are not included in thematic grid that is in Theta grid so only sub categorized arguments are part of thematic relations not adjuncts remember the distinction between adjuncts and compliment so adjuncts are not part of thematic grid so we so verbs are not responsible for giving thematic roles to agents this is another example for us to understand that agents are really not required part of sentences from both syntactic perspectives and semantic perspectives okay they are they are optionals and all all kinds of things that that you have seen John put the book on the table on Friday on the table is a sub categorized element if that is missing the sentence is going to be ungrammatical we cannot say John put the book on Friday okay so that tells you however John put the book on the table is perfectly grammatical sentence even if we don't say on Friday it doesn't have any bearing on grammaticality of the sentence therefore in this sentence on the table will have a thematic relation will have a thematic role and when you look at the list carefully you will see that this has a thematic role location but on Friday will not have a thematic role because that's an adjunct that's another way another distinction between compliment and adjuncts that compliments get thematic roles adjuncts do not get thematic roles when we were discussing the distinction between compliment and adjuncts we had not discussed thematic relations therefore we didn't talk about this distinction clear give me give me another two minutes and I'll I'll wind it up okay so this this is the grid that I want you to see carefully just two grids in in the next two minutes so in a in this kind of a sentence these are the thematic relations okay and these are theta roles now I want you to look at the grid see for a for a for any for a predicate verb like love it has two grids one is experiencer the other is theme so when we say John loves Mary at a semantic level if both the grids are filled right that is both the arguments are present John and Mary do you see the coindices there for this verb then the sentence is grammatical semantically speaking the sentence is okay however the reason why we just cannot say John loves and the sentence becomes not acceptable or grammatical because the the other theta other element other argument in the thematic grid is empty it's not filled therefore this sentence is not not acceptable see this thing now one more John loves Mary Megan okay here pay attention to the sentence we are not saying John loves Mary and Megan and and and and don't don't don't get into extra semantic meanings okay I mean one one person may love 10 different people those are not the things that we are we are talking about here the moment we put John loves Mary and Megan Mary and Megan become becomes one one element and they will fulfill the requirement of theme and therefore the sentence is grammatical if we're saying John loves Mary Megan the the problem here is Megan becomes an additional argument for which there is no place in the thematic grid of the verb love therefore the sentence is ungrammatic see again with this these grids I'm only trying to tell you that these relations and semantic level do have something to do with grammaticality of a sentence therefore not complete autonomy all right anyway I mean these are the these are the same things that I want that you can you can look at the book I I I did want to talk about one particular sentence sentences like it rained and I'm I'm not going to discuss this thing we will discuss this tomorrow before we begin have you heard this kind of sentences it rains right can we say only rains okay no we have to say it rains why we'll discuss that tomorrow okay please look at this chapter this is not part of that chapter just the earlier part which we have discussed please look at that and then we will talk more about it tomorrow