Semantic Roles within a Contrastive Grammar of Latin and German

Abstract

SummaryThis paper deals with the problem of defining and describing semantic roles. Methodologically, I follow Coseriu (1987), who argues for a sharp distinction between language-independent reference roles and language-specific semantic roles and criticizes earlier approaches which do not make this distinction. Recent contributions to the problem of defining and describing semantic roles or functions within Generative Grammar (Jackendoff 1991) and Functional Grammar (Dik 1997) differ from earlier approaches in that they try to take this distinction into account However, some problems remain. When we have to deal with syntactic and semantic contrasts between languages such as Latin and German, these contrasts cannot adequately be described with the help of language-independent theta-roles or semantic functions. Therefore, it seems preferable to adopt Coseriu's strategy of describing the expression of reference roles like 'Possessor' in Latin and German as a set of contrasting contextual meanings of cases, syntactic functions and constructions. Contrastive data show that the relevant constructions in Latin and German differ widely both as far as their number and their functional properties are concerned.