A Summary of Role and Reference Grammar

ipheral PP. These language-specific details would be represented in the constructional schema
for the English passive. See Van Valin (2005) for detailed discussion and explication of all of
these points.
A simple example of the linking from syntax to semantics is given in Figure 20. Here again
the numbers refer to the general steps in the algorithm: (1) extract all of the information possible
from the overt morphosyntactic form of the sentence, including the voice of the verb (if the language
has voice), case marking, word order, and adpositions; (2) retrieve the LS of the predicate
in the nucleus from the lexicon and assign macroroles to the extent possible; and (3) link of the
information derived from steps (1) and (2). The syntactic representation is produced by the
parser, which turns the acoustic input into a labeled syntactic representation.
Voice? -- Active
∴ PSA = Actor
LEXICON
PARSER
1
2
3
NP
SENTENCE
CLAUSE
CORE
NUC NP
PRED
V
Kim smashed the glass
Actor
Undergoer
Actor Undergoer
[do´ (x, Ø)] CAUSE [BECOME smashed´ (y)]
Figure 20: Linking from syntax to semantics in a simple sentence in English
The linking in a WH-question in English, in both directions, is illustrated in Figure 21; this
figure summarizes the linking procedures from both of the previous two figures . Note the direct
linking of the WH-word between the PrCS and its LS position.
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