[Lingtyp] semantic role of participant that needs something
Christian Lehmann
christian.lehmann at uni-erfurt.de
Fri Jul 1 08:42:35 UTC 2022
For a start, I am ready to agree that Fillmorean semantic roles are a
bit outdated. Still, some of them, like recipient, experiencer or
possessor, may be met in publications to this day. So this question is
directed to those of you who think that under suitable conditions, it
makes sense to speak of semantic roles (or whatever you prefer to name
them).
What is the role of the participant that needs something? On the one
hand, Latin /carere/ and /egere/ mean 'to not have'. This would seem to
involve a possessor. On the other hand, Cabecar /kiana̱/ means 'be
wanted' and /shë́na̱/ means ‘be missed’. This would seen to involve an
experiencer (a pretty ill-defined role, anyway).
Such evidence from descriptive linguistics may imply that the
presupposition of my question, viz. that there is a language-independent
notion of 'need', is not fulfilled. This would be a pity, as it would
render a comparative investigation of the kind 'how is the notion of "X
needs Y" coded cross-linguistically' (in the spirit, e.g., of the
Leipzig valency database) more complicated or even - from a theoretical
point of view - impossible.
Grateful for any helpful suggestions,
Christian
--
Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland
Tel.: +49/361/2113417
E-Post: christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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