ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION This chapter presents experimental evidence on the processing of thematic role. Thematic role (also called semantic role and functional role) is an idea that provides a theoretical bridge between inflectional descriptions of grammatical case and semantics. It works by describing the valency of predicates, as in the following two sentences, He jumped through the window and He recuperated through walking. In both sentences, the verbs subcategorize for a subject and a prepositional phrase. However, the semantic functions of the two prepositional phrases differ. The thematic roles of the noun in the first sentence and the gerund in the second characterize the ways that they take part in the events denoted by their verbs. Thus, the word window takes part by fulfilling the role of location denoted by the verb jump. The idea of source and destination locations are implicit in the verb's meaning. In the second sentence, the word walking fulfills the role of instrument that is denoted by its verb. In a theoretical description of each verb, one would have to include a listing of these and other thematic roles that are permitted for its arguments . Such a list would contain the roles of agent and location as permissible roles for the arguments of jump and the roles of patient and instrument as permissible roles for the arguments of recllperate .
