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A full clause profiles a grounded instance of a process type. Conceptual archetypes function as the prototypical values of basic clause types and clausal elements. Languages naturally differ in their implementation of this general characterization, and within a language clauses are varied and complex. Subject and object are defined schematically as trajector and landmark, i.e. primary and secondary focal participant. In most languages a particular semantic role represents the typical choice of trajector: either agent or theme (a patient-like participant). Each is the starting point along a natural path: the path of energy flow in the case of agent, and a path based on conceptual autonomy in the case of theme. In varied proportions and for different grammatical phenomena, every language makes some use of these two basic strategies. This is the basis for nominative/accusative, ergative/absolutive, and agent/patient organization. It can be argued that subject is a grammatical universal when defined abstractly in terms of primary focal prominence. In addition to the most typical clausal organization, every language offers a variety of alternatives for special purposes. Voice alternations (such as active, passive, and middle) pertain to the semantic role of the participant focused as trajector. The trajector can also be a non-participant, e.g. a setting or location. There is comparable variation in the choice of landmark, resulting in different kinds of objects. In agent-oriented languages, clauses which choose the theme as trajector represent an important secondary option. The verb of a clause is often complex. In addition to incorporating nominal or adverbial elements, the verb can exhibit layers of morphological derivation, be a phrase instead of a single word, or even consist in a series of verb-like elements.

In this chapter, the lexeme is characterized as an entry in a relational database defined in terms of four attributes: FORM, SYNTAX, SEMANTICS, and a LEXEMIC INDEX, which functions as a kind of database key. The SEMANTICS (SEM) attribute defines basic meaning in terms of ontological classes of events, things, properties, and relations. The FORM attribute defines the inflected word forms of a lexeme. The SYNTAX (SYN) attribute includes an argument structure representation which includes a ‘semantic function role’: the E (Event) for role for verbs, the R (Referent) role for nouns, and an innovation, the A* role, which mediates the grammatical function of attributive modifier. It is argued that the semantic function roles can replace traditional syntactic category labels ‘N’, ‘V’, ‘A’, and that this will provide a way of solving notorious problems with ‘mixed categories’.

This chapter provides an analysis of complex demonstratives, constructed from a demonstrative and a nominal, such as ‘that man’ or ‘that politician’. It considers five views about the semantic role of complex demonstratives that fall into two camps. The first camp takes them to be referring terms but includes four views of the role of the nominal: (1) it contributes to the truth conditions of the containing sentence but not to constrain the referent; (2) it constrains the referent of the complex demonstrative but contributes nothing to the truth conditions; (3) it constrains the referent and contributes to the truth conditions; and (4) it neither helps fix the referent or contributes to truth conditions. The second camp treats complex demonstratives as pure quantifiers. The chapter argues all these views are wrong but both have hold of elements of the truth, and offers an analysis of complex demonstratives on which ‘that F’ is equivalent to ‘the F identical to that’.

This chapter presents a set of formal mechanisms for describing argument structure alternations as lexical phenomena which have complex interactions with syntactic form and with semantic content. The semantic function rules, E, R, and A*, are coded as asemantic predicates in LFG argument structure (following Manning 1996) and using the model of argument structure in LFG developed by Matsumoto (1996). The chapter also briefly addresses the question of how verb complementation patterns can be enriched constructionally (as in Kim whistled to the dog to come).

This chapter fixes what compositional facts are and what they are for. Five semantic roles are distinguished that entities can play in the theoretical space at the intersection of language and world, and compositional facts are characterized as entities able to play two such roles (sentence-object, and truthmaker). A reconstruction of Armstrong’s argument in favor of compositional facts as truthmakers is then offered, and in this connection, seven ontological characteristics are individuated that facts are taken to possess. These ontological characteristics distinguish facts from neighboring entities (propositions, states of affairs, tropes, events, integral wholes and complexes) and form, taken together, the seven conditions of the (working) definition of the notion of compositional fact. A compositional fact is characterized as a complex entity with a fixed number of constituents (minimally two) that is part of the furniture of the world, and whose composition is formal, nonmereological, and heterogeneous both from the ontological point of view and from the point of view of the categories involved.

How the simple model of senses as procedures can handle two important issues presented is elaborated in this chapter. It begins by presenting the conflicts on the formation and semantic role of incomplete expressions. Frege's writing reflected two different perspectives of senses which are characterized as compositional and decompositional. These two perspectives adopted by Frege in his thinking about senses offer conflicting views concerning both the structure of senses and the relative epistemic priority of sentential senses and their parts. A verbal resolution to eliminate such conflict is presented in this chapter. This verbal resolution, through the two perspectives presented, is then applied in the semantic framework set out earlier in the book. Also included and analyzed in this chapter are defined expressions.

This chapter explores examples of applications of purported Gricean communicative intentions to names and to ostension. It shows how the use of such intentions distorts actual speaker-hearer experience of the use of names and of gestures. In the case of names, speakers do not have any intentions to keep using names as they have been used previously; they do have intentions to change those uses in cases where they deliberately do this. In the case of gestures, speakers experience those gestures in tandem with sortals as indicating what they indicate independently of the gesturerer’s intentions. Thus, gestures are not salience enhancers. Views of Bach, Kaplan, Kripke, Reimer, among others, are discussed.

This chapter begins by addressing general concerns in detecting, and not detecting, the evidence for historical syntax and then discusses possible theories and methodologies for investigating the issues raised in the first chapter. A review of several case studies of near-synonymous verbs in early English and the recent treatment of semantic roles is offered, followed by discussions of causation and aspect, which are two of the crucial concepts in the literature on psych-verbs in modern languages. The range of factors concluded to be important in all these studies, namely constructional patterns, animacy of the Target of Emotion, argument alternation, causation, and aspect are summarized at the end of the chapter as potentially promising factors which distinguish impersonal verbs of emotion from near-synonymous non-impersonal verbs.

The syntax–lexicon interface, one of the most controversial and elusive problems in contemporary linguistics, is introduced and explained. Predicate argument structure, a representation of the mapping between semantic roles and syntactic expression of the arguments of a verb or other predicator, is defined and discussed. The organization of the book and the topics that it covers are outlined.

Chapter 2 begins by explaining what this book is about and goes on to exemplify things which will be explained. There is discussion of the meanings of derivational affixes, their genetic origins, their forms, types of fusion, and productivity. The natures, meanings and forms of prefixes and suffixes is contrasted. This is followed by discussion of double duty (a.k.a. conversion or zero derivation) plus an introduction to semantic types and semantic roles.