This document discusses linguistic concepts such as sentences, propositions, verb valency, and semantic roles. It defines sentences as grammatical units with minimal syntactic relation between words. Propositions are abstract meanings that can be expressed in different sentences. Verb valency refers to the number of arguments a verb takes, such as zero arguments for "it is snowing" and two arguments for "Chris is making an omelet." Semantic roles assign labels like subject, verb, and object to the arguments in a proposition.

3.  A sentence is a grammatical unit consisting
of one or more words that bear minimal
syntactic relation to the words that precede
or follow it
 Sentences are more knowable than thoughts
Example:
 We discuss about Semantics Roles
 We walk in the park

4.  A proposition is something abstract but
meaningful.
 A proposition can be seen as consisting of a
predicate and various phrases(referring
expression)
 A proposition can be expresesed in different
sentences
Example:
 Our walk in the park => we enjoyed our walk in
the park
 We discuss about semantics roles => we don’t
understand about semantics role so we discuss it

6.  Verb valency or valence refers to the number of
arguments controlled by a verbal predicate
 Valency refers to the capacity of a verb to take a
specific number and type of arguments (noun
phrase positions).
 An account of the number of arguments that a
predicate has is called the valency of the predicate.
 Valency theory is a description of the semantic
potential of predicates in terms of the number and
types of arguments which may co-occur with them.

7.  It is snowing => valency zero
 My brother snores => valency one
 Chris is making an omelet => valency two

8.  Subject => it
 Verb => snow
 Subject does not correspond to anything in
the underlying proposition.
 We say that snow is a zero-argument verb.
Other example
 It’s raining

9.  Subject => my brother
 Verb => snores
 This sentence has a subject but n o object
 They are intransitive verbs or, one-argument
predicate
Other example
 The dog is sleeping

10.  Subject => Chris
 Verb => make
 Object => an omelet
 Most verbs take a subject and an object,
they are two arguments predicates.
 One of them is “make”
Other example
 The cat killed a rat

11. We need to take account not only of how many
arguments a verb may have but also how
many it must have

12. Agnes wrote her mother a letter
 It is possible to omit “her mother” or “a
letter” or both of them and say just “Agnes
wrote a letter” or “Agnes wrote (to) her
mother” or “Agnes wrote”.
 The sentence is less informative when it has
fewer arguments, but it is a legitimate
sentence and the meaning of write does not
change.

13. A. We ate lunch (in the kitchen)
B. We ate (in the kitchen)
The verb “eat” is different. We see that
“a” contains more specific information
than “b”, but the meaning of “ate” is the
same.
 The predicate “eat” is inherently two-
argument because the action “eat” refers
to is two-argument.
 if you eat, you eat something, but in
English we can use the predicate “eat”
without mention what is eaten.

14. a. Maureen bathed the baby (in the tub)
b. Maureen bathed (in the tub)
 Sentence “a” has two obvious arguments:
Maureen, the actor and the baby the
affected.
 In sentence “b” the argument Maureen
could be said to have two roles, actor and
affected, since it is Maureen who bathes
and Maureen who gets bathed.