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In generative grammar, this is encoded in terms of the number and type of theta roles the verb takes. The theta role is named by the most prominent thematic relation associated with it. So the three required arguments bear the theta roles named the agent (Reggie) the patient (or theme) (the kibble), and goal/recipient (Fergus).
The grammatical agent is often confused with the subject, but the two notions are quite distinct: the agent is based explicitly on its relationship to the action or event expressed by the verb (e.g. "He who kicked the ball"), whereas the subject is based on a more formal title using the theory of the information flow (e.g. "Jack kicked the ball").
For example, driver is an agent noun formed from the verb drive. [ 2 ] Usually, derived in the above definition has the strict sense attached to it in morphology , that is the derivation takes as an input a lexeme (an abstract unit of morphological analysis) and produces a new lexeme.
In English, the object of a noun phrase is assigned a Case by the closest c-commanding V (verb) or P (preposition) head, which is usually the verb or preposition that selects it as a complement. Similarly, the subject of a noun phrase is assigned Case from the finite tense head, T. The subject of a finite clause in English is nominative.
agent, specifies or asks about who or what; specific agent that is subset of a general topic or subject: it was she who committed the crime; as for him, his head hurts Japanese [5], Mongsen Ao [8] Direct case: direct subject or object of a transitive or intransitive verb I saw her; I gave her the book.
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Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence, the action by a verb in the sentence, and the patient by a noun phrase.. For example, in the sentence "Jack ate the cheese", the cheese is the patient.
The recipient of a sentence's action is referred to as the patient. In sentences using the active voice, the subject is the performer of the action—referred to as the agent. Above, the agent is omitted entirely, but it may also be included adjunctively while maintaining the passive voice: The enemy was defeated by our troops.