Argument structure and semantic role analysis of English speech act verb order

Abstract

This study is qualitative descriptive research that examines the English speech act verb “order” in English. The purpose of this study is to analyse the argument structure and its role in semantics. The type of data used in this study is secondary data sourced from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The research instrument utilized in this study is a human instrument supported by hardware such as a computer, along with software such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, as well as note-taking tools like pen and paper. Data for this study was collected using the corpus linguistics method and observation methods with note-taking techniques. The data were analysed by using the macro role theory by van Vallin & Lapolla (1997). The study results indicate that the verb "order" can have two arguments, the actor argument and the undergoer argument, and each argument can have its semantic role. The actor argument can entail the semantic role of the agent, while the undergoer argument can entail the semantic role of the theme.