Patiens
Patiens (from Latin pati , 'to suffer') describes the semantic role in linguistics that does not act actively, but suffers something . A patient has no control over the action expressed by the verb of the sentence . The patient is thus the opposite of the agent . The patient is thus the argument that is affected by the action or act promised by the verb.
Grammatical function - semantic role
In principle, a distinction must be made between the semantic role of patient and the syntactic function of a direct object , even if a phrase that functions as a direct object typically has a patient function.
However, this only applies to sentences in the active; in passive sentences , direct objects become subjects and retain their patient function.
Subjects of verbs like “die”, “sneeze” and “scare” can also be interpreted as Patiens, even if they are marked with the nominative in German .
Examples
In the following examples, Peter takes on the role of patient:
- "The father beats Peter." (Active)
- "Peter is beaten by the father." (Passive)
In the first example, the father is the agent and subject of the sentence, Peter is the patient and direct object (accusative in the case terminology) of the sentence. In the second example, Peter is the subject, but still the patient.
literature
- Beatrice Primus: Semantic Roles. Winter, Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-8253-5977-5 .
