Semantic Roles in English and German:

a Contrastive Study
Module QXL 4450 – “Issues in Cognitive Linguistics”

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW ................................................................................................ 1

SEMANTIC PARTICIPANT ROLES .................................................................................................. 2

ACTION CHAINS AND PARTICIPANT ROLES IN COGNITIVE GRAMMAR ........................................ 4

THE GERMAN CASE SYSTEM ........................................................................................................ 7

ANALYSING ENGLISH AND GERMAN ........................................................................................... 7

THE STANDARD CASE .......................................................................................................................... 8

DIATHESES ....................................................................................................................................... 9
SPECIAL CASES ................................................................................................................................ 12

SUMMARY AND FINAL THOUGHTS ............................................................................................ 13

GLOSSING ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................................... 14

REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 14

Introduction and Overview

English and German are both members of the West-Germanic branch of the Indo-
European family of languages. As such, they are closely related and one would expect
them to have much in common. And in fact, on the whole this expectation is
confirmed when one takes a look at many linguistic features, be they lexical,
grammatical, or even phonological.
However, over the many centuries of their geographical separation, which
began when the Anglo-Saxon invaders left their previous homes in what is today
northern Germany and Denmark to find a new home in the British Isles, the two
languages have also developed several distinctive differences. Many of these
differences can be found in the lexicon, a fact that is due in large part to the many
foreign influences that affected the English language but left German for the most
part unaffected. The differences are far from purely lexical, however. Grammatically,

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the two languages also differ greatly. While English, in the course of its history, has
gradually lost almost all of its inflections, for example, German still boasts quite a
complex inflectional system, which covers both verbs, e.g. in the form of tense, and
nouns, largely due to its case system.
The particular difference between English and German that shall be examined
in more detail in this essay mainly concerns the latter of the two mentioned word
classes: the nouns and their case inflection. Specifically, what shall be analysed here
are semantic participant roles in a sentence, as well as the ways there are of mapping
these onto syntactic structure. This issue has been thoroughly researched for
English and to a lesser extent also for German. What this essay would like to achieve,
however, is a contrastive analysis of the relationship between semantic and
syntactic participant roles in English and German, from a Cognitive Linguistic, more
precisely a Cognitive Grammatical, perspective.
The essay is divided into several sections. Section 1 will introduce the notion
of participant roles in general, giving a general overview of the topic. Section 2 will
then go on to describe the same issue from the point of view of Ronald Langacker’s
(1987; 1991) Cognitive Grammar, in the context of the so-called action chain model.
In section 3, then, a very brief overview of the German case system will be given,
which is necessary in order to properly understand section 4, which will apply the
Cognitive Grammatical model of participant roles to the German language, while
contrasting it throughout with English. Finally, section 5 will summarise the findings
of the previous sections and conclude with some final thoughts on the issue.

Semantic Participant Roles

Verbs, when used in a sentence, almost always require at least one noun phrase in
order to make sense. The word ‘swims’, for example, cannot usually be a sentence
by itself, since in English it is grammatically required that one states additionally
who is doing the swimming. So one might say ‘John swims’, which would be a
legitimate sentence. These noun phrases which are required by the verb are known
as complements. This term contrasts with the term ‘modifier’, which describes an
optional noun phrase not required by the verb, as in the sentence ‘John swims in the
lake’.

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Several verbs require more than one complement. These are transitive and
ditransitive verbs. The verb ‘to hit’ for example requires two complements: one that
describes the entity (usually a person) doing the hitting and one that describes the
entity being hit. Since it obviously makes a big difference whether one hits someone
else or gets hit oneself, one can tell that there are several different types of
complement. In this case we have and AGENT (the entity performing the action) and
a PATIENT (the entity being affected by the action). These categories describe nuances
of meaning attributed to the phrases in question and are thus semantic categories.
It is these semantic categories that are meant when one talks of semantic participant
roles or, abbreviated, simply semantic roles.
It is important to note that semantic participant roles are not just types of
verbal complement. Verbal modifiers also always have a semantic role within the
sentence. The major semantic roles such as the aforementioned AGENT and PATIENT
are generally performed by complements, however, while modifiers are usually
used to take on minor, often optional roles.
Defining a definitive list of semantic roles is an endeavour which many
linguists have attempted and which is highly problematic and controversial. As
Dowty (1991: 547) says: “There is perhaps no concept in modern syntactic and
semantic theory which is so often involved in so wide a range of contexts, but on
which there is so little agreement as to its nature and definition, as THEMATIC ROLE

[…]”. The reason for this is that meaning is a continuum. The semantic nuances of
complements and modifiers vary from verb to verb, so it is hard to it is very hard to
generalise. This has led some (Cognitive) linguists to define semantic roles in terms
of prototypicality effects (Lakoff 1977), which may well be the solution but would
mean that it is impossible to define the semantic roles.
For the purposes of this text, however, it is unnecessary to get involved in this
particular debate. It is sufficient here to use the broad terminology most commonly
used. The following four semantic roles (taken from Evans and Green (2006: 675))
should suffice:
 AGENT volitional initiator of action
 PATIENT undergoes effect of action; change of state
 BENEFICIARY for whose ‘benefit’ action is performed
 INSTRUMENT means by which action is performed

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Other common semantic roles include EXPERIENCER, THEME (sometimes also equated
with PATIENT (Engels & Vikner 2006: 20)) and LOCATION.

Action Chains and Participant Roles in Cognitive Grammar

Several of the major semantic roles can be accounted for in Langacker’s Cognitive
Grammar by the so-called action chain model. Langacker’s (1991: 283) theory,
which is based upon earlier work done by Fillmore (1968), is that a prototypical
action event consists of an energy transfer initiated by an AGENT (the energy source),
via an INSTRUMENT, to a PATIENT (the energy sink), which absorbs the energy and in
doing so undergoes a change of state. The resulting action chain can thus be
represented in schematic form, as in (1). This pattern can be illustrated by the
following sentence (2) (Taylor 2002: 421):

(1) AG  INSTR  PAT

(2) John opened the door with the key.

This sentence contains all three parts of the action chain. ‘John’ is the AGENT who sets
the action in motion. He does this by means of ‘the key’, which represents the
INSTRUMENT. Finally, ‘the door’ absorbs the energy, thus opening, which constitutes a

change of state. It therefore represents the PATIENT.

These three semantic roles are conceptual categories that have become
entrenched in the mind through repeated use. In order for these semantic elements
to be codified through language they need to take on phonetic form in the form of
syntax. Due to their conceptual nature and the fact that the semantic properties of a
verb’s complements vary from verb to verb, the semantic roles can be (and most
likely are) infinite in number. There can however only be a limited number of
syntactic roles, since phonological entities need to be learned by speakers. So these
infinite nuances of semantic roles have to somehow be mapped onto the set number
of syntactic categories. Sentence (2) represents the most basic way of doing so in
English for a prototypical action chain: The AGENT is put in subject role, the PATIENT
in direct object role, and the INSTRUMENT is realised through a prepositional modifier
phrase.
Since the aim of this essay is to view the subject matter from the perspective
of Cognitive Grammar, the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ will not be used for the

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remainder of the text. Instead, we shall speak of ‘trajector’ (TR) and ‘landmark’ (LM),
terms coined by Langacker. When an element in a scene gains linguistic realisation,
this is called profiling. A profiled element is termed a ‘profile’, and Langacker
distinguishes between ‘nominal profiles’, which designate entities (mostly nouns
and pronouns in traditional terminology) and ‘relational profiles’, which designate
relationships between elements, i.e. nominal profiles and other relational profiles
(verbs, adjectives and prepositions, among others). The primary element linked by
a relational profile is called the trajector, while the one or more other elements
linked are called landmarks. In the case of (2), ‘John’ is the trajector, ‘the door’ is the
primary landmark, and ‘the key’ is the secondary landmark.
There are, however, also various alternative ways of linguistically encoding the
action chain scene described by (2). In sentence (2) all three members of the action
chain are profiled, that is, explicitly linguistically mentioned. In the following
examples, only some of the participants are mentioned:

(3) John opened the door.

(4) The key opened the door.
(5) The door opened.

In sentence (3), AGENT and PATIENT are profiled, while the INSTRUMENT is not. The
mapping consequently stays largely the same as in (2), since the complements stay
the same and it is only a modifier that needs to be eliminated. In (4) and (5),
however, things start to change. In (4) it is the AGENT that is not profiled. This leads
to the INSTRUMENT becoming the trajector of the verb in the sentence instead. In (5)
neither the AGENT nor the INSTRUMENT is profiled, so the PATIENT moves into the
vacated position of trajector.
The important fact here is that although the INSTRUMENT or PATIENT moves into
trajector position, it nevertheless remains the INSTRUMENT or PATIENT respectively.
The AGENT in sentence (4) for example is still John, even though he is not profiled.
Semantic roles, in other words, are completely independent from syntactic roles,
though some semantic roles are more likely than others to be encoded by certain
syntactic roles. This is a consequence of the fact that the linguistic realisation of a
concept does not change the concept itself. Whether John is profiled or not, any

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hearer of sentence (4) will still know that there is an AGENT involved in the event,
since keys, being inanimate, are by nature unlikely to be AGENTS themselves.
Attentive readers may notice that this could be understood to contradict a
statement made earlier, that a transitive verb such as ‘hit’ or ‘open’ necessarily
requires an AGENT and a PATIENT. Some linguists actually do deny that INSTRUMENT and
PATIENT retain their identities when put in the position of trajector, as in (4) and (5)

(Welke 2002: 96). In actual fact verbs usually do not strictly require certain
semantic roles as complements. As we have now seen, often a similar semantic role
can be mapped onto a syntactic role. For example an agent might be replaced by an
EXPERIENCER or INSTRUMENT. When this happens, however, the alternative semantic
role often gains certain properties usually only displayed by the semantic role
usually occupying the spot. For example, the INSTRUMENT in (4) has gained some
vaguely animate qualities. Taylor (2002: 421) illustrates this fact with example
sentences such as ‘The key easily opened the door’ or ‘The key just won’t open the
door’.
There is one common factor that influences the way semantic roles are
mapped onto syntactic structure. That factor is grammatical voice, such as the
passive. In this context, rather than ‘voice’ the term ‘diathesis’ (from Ancient Greek
διάθεσις, meaning ‘arrangement, composition’) is perhaps more appropriate. A
diathesis, in broad terms, is a means of rearranging the complements in a sentence
in order to change the construal of the scene. It is a kind of template or pattern of
profiling and syntactic mapping. The passive diathesis has the effect of eliminating
the previous trajector from the linguistic realisation of a scene (i.e. it is no longer
profiled) and moving the element hitherto in the role of primary landmark into
trajector position. The verb ‘to open’ does not need the passive in order to do this,
as previously shown in sentence (5). But other verbs, such as ‘to stroke’, do:

(6) John stroked the dog.

(7) *The dog stroked.
(8) The dog was stroked (by John).

Sentence (7) is ungrammatical. Instead, the passive diathesis (8) is employed in

order to take emphasis off the AGENT and instead emphasise the PATIENT. If one still
wishes to profile the agent, it can be reintroduced by means of a ‘by’ construction.

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The German Case System
Before we finally go on to analyse the methods German has of mapping semantic to
syntactic structure, a short description of the German case system is useful. German
has four grammatical cases, three of which are of major importance for this text. The
four cases are the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive case. While case is
sometimes marked directly on the noun itself, it is more clearly marked on the
definite article. Let us briefly take a look at each in turn.
 The primary function of the nominative case is to mark the trajector of a verb.
The nominative forms of the definite article for masculine, feminine and neuter
gender are der, die and das.
 The accusative designates what is traditionally called the direct object, which
usually (but by no means always) corresponds to the primary landmark of the
finite verb. The accusative definite articles are den, die and das.
 The dative case most often marks a secondary landmark. It can in some cases
however also mark a primary landmark. The definite articles are dem, der and
dem.
 Finally, the genitive case is almost exclusively used to mark a possessor. As such
it is not of great relevance to this text. In some rare cases however it can also
designate a landmark. The definite articles are des, der and des.
The following sentence (9) contains all four cases, each in its most typical role:

(9) Der Sohn des Lehrer-s gab dem

the.M.NOM son the.M.GEN teacher-GEN give.PST the.N.DAT
Mädchen den Blumenstrauß.
girl the.M.ACC bouquet.
“The teacher’s son gave the girl the bouquet.”

Analysing English and German

We can now go on to the main part of this text and take a close look at how the
German language syntactically encodes the most important semantic roles.

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The standard case
We will first examine the most usual way of doing this, using as an example the
translation of the standard transitive sentence (2) discussed above:

(10) John öffn-et-e die Tür mit dem Schlüssel.

John open-3SG-PST the.F.ACC door with the.M.DAT key
“John opened the door with the key.”

The major difference between the sentence in German and in English is the use of
case. Apart from this, the coding is identical. The AGENT is the trajector of the verb,
which is evident in English through its position at the beginning of the sentence, in
German through its nominative case marking (it needn’t necessarily be in sentence-
initial position). The PATIENT is the primary landmark, which is marked by its
position as final verbal complement in English and by the accusative case in German.
The instrument, finally, is represented in both languages by a prepositional
modifier.
The same observations can be made when examining the ditransitive sentence
(9) above. The AGENT and PATIENT are joined by a new semantic role, the BENEFICIARY.
This role is a secondary landmark in both languages, which is coded in English by
being inserted between the verb and the primary landmark and in German by the
dative case. There is one difference, however. In English, the scenario could equally
well be described by sentence (11):

(11) The teacher’s son gave the bouquet to the girl.

(12) ?The teacher’s son gave the bouquet.

In this case, the BENEFICIARY retains its identity as a complement, since it is still
required by the verb (The grammaticality of (12) is questionable at best.), but now
it is encoded by means of a prepositional phrase. This kind of structure is not
possible in German.
Let us next take a look at the German equivalents (13), (14) and (15) of
sentences (3), (4) and (5) respectively above, which are alternative construals of the
scene described by (2), in which various participants are not profiled.

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 (13) John öffn-et-e die Tür.
John open-3SG-PST the.F.ACC door
“John opened the door.”
(14) Der Schlüssel öffn-et-e die Tür.
the.M.NOM key open-3SG-PST the.F.ACC door
“The key opened the door.”
(15) Die Tür öffn-et-e sich.
the.F.NOM door open-3SG-PST REFL.ACC

“The door opened.”

Sentences (13) and (14) show no great differences in structure compared to their
English counterparts. Sentence (15), however, is interesting. Here we notice that the
German verb ‘öffnen’ cannot be used intransitively, as the English verb ‘to open’ can.
So, when the PATIENT is put in trajector position, the verb nonetheless requires a
landmark, which is represented by a reflexive pronoun with accusative case
marking. A literal English translation would be “The door opened itself”. This
pronoun functions as a kind of dummy landmark in the absence of an alternative.
We see, therefore, that it is not as easy in German to put a PATIENT in trajector
position as it is in English.

Diatheses
As discussed above, Diatheses are common and regular patterns for changing the
standard syntactic coding of semantic roles. By far the most widespread diatheses
in both English and German are the active and the passive. Arguably, however, there
is another diathesis in both languages: the causative. And German even has another:
the applicative.
First, however, let us examine how the passive works in German, by using as
an example the translation (16) of sentence (8):

(16) Der Hund wurde von John ge-streichel-t.

the.M.NOM dog AUX.PASS.PST by John PTCP.PRF.PASS-stroke-CIRC

“The dog was stroked by John.”

We see that the passive in German works in exactly the same way as in English.
Reintroduction of the agent by means of a prepositional modifier is equally optional

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in German. There is however one interesting, if very rare, phenomenon concerning
the passive which does not exist in English (adapted from Sommerfeldt et al. 1991:
46):

(17) Das Gebäude ist polizei-lich ge-sperr-t.

the.N.NOM building is police-ADV PTCP.PRF.PASS-bar-CIRC

“The building is barred by the police.”

In this construction the PATIENT, being the trajector, is marked by the nominative, as
expected. The AGENT however is not coded by a prepositional modifier but rather by
an adverb derived from the original noun. From a Cognitive Grammar point of view,
this makes perfect sense, since adverbs are viewed as relational profiles that
inherently contain their landmark. This is exactly the same as a prepositional
phrase, which as a whole is also a relational profile, since the preposition is a
relational profile and has profile determinacy, that is it “determines the profile of
the composite structure as a whole” (Evans & Green 2006: 585).
The next diathesis to be found in German also exists in English, though to a far
lesser extent. That is the causative. While the passive causes one entity (the
trajector) in an active sentence no longer to be profiled, thus causing the landmark
to ‘move up’ to trajector position, the causative does the opposite: It profiles a new
entity which takes the place of trajector. This causes the previous trajector to ‘move
down’ into primary landmark position and the previous landmark (if present) to
become a secondary landmark. The semantic role of the new entity can be called
CAUSER. An English example of a causative would be sentence (19), derived from the

active sentence (18):

(18) The boy wiped the blackboard.

(19) The teacher made the boy wipe the blackboard.

In (19), the teacher is profiled as CAUSER of the action. The same is possible in
German, where the causative auxiliary is usually ‘lassen’ (to let):

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 (20) Der Lehrer ließ den Junge-n
the.M.NOM teacher AUX.CAUS.PST the.M.ACC boy-ACC
die Tafel wisch-en.
the.F.ACC Blackboard wipe-INF
“The teacher made the boy wipe the blackboard.”
Sentence (20) shows that in German causative constructions the CAUSER receives
nominative case marking, while the AGENT has accusative case, the same as the
PATIENT.

As a final case study, let us examine a diathesis in German that is completely

alien to English: the applicative. The applicative does not introduce or eliminate
participants in a sentence. What it does instead is to switch around the two
landmarks of a verb, so that primary becomes secondary and vice versa. The
following two sentences exemplify the phenomenon:

(21) Der Mann wirft die Stein-e gegen

the.M.NOM man throw.3SG the.ACC.PL stone-PL against
die Wand.
the.F.ACC wall
“The man throws stones against the wall.”
(22) Der Mann be-wirft die Wand mit
the.M.NOM man APPL-throw.3SG the.F.ACC wall with
den Stein-e-n.
the.DAT.PL stone-PL-DAT
*“The man throws X at the wall with the stones.”

We see that the applicative diathesis, formed by the prefix ‘be-’, causes the PATIENT
and primary landmark (the stones) to be coded by a prepositional modifier, while
the secondary landmark, in this case a LOCATION (the wall), becomes a complement
with accusative case marking. What is more, the modifier containing the PATIENT in
the applicative construction is optional, so that it is possible to profile only AGENT

and LOCATION, while leaving the PATIENT implicit.

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Special cases
After talking about the most common and typical constructions and their variations
discussed in the introductory sections, as well as the effects of the various diatheses,
we shall now go on to examining some more unusual cases. We will do this by
examining the different semantic roles one by one.
When a German sentence contains an AGENT, that AGENT is almost always the
trajector, unless a change in diathesis has occurred. The one exception to this
concerns certain unusual verbs such as ‘gelingen’ (to succeed), which has the AGENT
as its landmark in dative case, while the PATIENT is the trajector in nominative case:

(23) Der Kuchen gelang dem Bäcker.

the.M.NOM cake succeed.PST the.M.DAT baker
“The baker successfully made the cake.”

The PATIENT in a sentence is usually the primary landmark, unless this is changed by
a diathesis. As landmark, it is usually encoded by the accusative case. However,
examples can be found where the PATIENT, in spite of being primary landmark, has
dative or even genitive case marking, or is encoded by a prepositional phrase. The
reason for this is usually the peculiarity of certain verbs.
Finally, the INSTRUMENT, when it is profiled at all, is generally encoded by an
optional prepositional phrase. The main exceptions to this are certain verbs such as
‘dienen’ (to serve), which require an INSTRUMENT as a complement, due to their
semantic properties. The complement can either be the trajector, as in (24), or the
landmark, as in (25).

(24) The sword served him well as a weapon.

(25) He used the sword to kill his enemies.

As we see, this phenomenon exists in English too. The only difference is that the
instrument can be marked by different cases in German, when it is in landmark
position.

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Summary and Final Thoughts
We have now extensively examined several different methods the German language
has of mapping semantic roles, an elusive and often indefinable mental category,
onto the highly finite syntactic structure of language. In many regards the two
languages do this in very similar ways. Both treat the AGENT as the most important
semantic role by very consistently assigning it the role of verbal trajector in a
sentence. Both languages also tend to put the PATIENT in primary landmark position,
though this is not done as consistently. By not profiling certain semantic roles, a
scene can be construed in different ways, and both languages do this very similarly,
too. In the area of diathesis, the passive and causative exist in both languages and
work in very similar ways.
The two languages do also differ in various ways, however. Most of these
differences are due in large part to German’s linguistic feature of grammatical case,
which is almost completely absent in English. The three cases relevant here
(nominative, accusative and dative) appear to have certain semantic roles typically
assigned to them mentally: the nominative case usually marks the AGENT, the
accusative marks the PATIENT and the dative marks the BENEFICIARY. This has certain
advantages. For example, it has the well-known effect that the word order within a
sentence is far looser, so that the participants can be moved around relatively freely,
thus adding an additional way of emphasising the individual participants. However,
it also means that it is cognitively not as easy to assign alternative roles to
grammatical cases, because the standard correlation described above is so strongly
entrenched in the minds of German speakers.
This might explain certain phenomena we have observed in the course of this
essay, such as the fact that it is not as easy in German to put the PATIENT in trajector
position, which would mark it with the nominative. It may also be the reason why
German has more formal ways of changing the semantic-syntactic mapping in a
sentence, such as diatheses, as well as more verbs with unusual complements, such
as the word ‘gelingen’ in (23): Since speakers find it hard to think of a certain case
as corresponding to any other than one particular role, more formulaic methods of
assigning alternative roles are required instead.

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Glossing Abbreviations
3 3rd person M masculine
ACC accusative N neuter
ADV adverb NOM nominative
APPL applicative PASS passive
AUX auxiliary PL plural
CAUS causative PRF perfect
CIRC circumfix PST past
DAT dative PTCP participle
F feminine REFL reflexive
GEN genitive SG singular
INF infinitive

References
Dowty, David. 1991. Thematic Proto-Roles and Argument Selection. Language 67(3). 547–
619.
Engels, Eva & Sten Vikner. 2006. Satzglieder, Kasus und semantische Rollen: Eine
Einführung. Tidsskrift for Sprogforskning 4(1-2). 17–37.
Evans, Vyvyan & Melanie Green. 2006. Cognitive Linguistics: An introduction. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Fillmore, Charles J. 1968. The Case for Case. In E. Bach & R. T. Harms (eds.), Universals in
Linguistic Theory, 1–88. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
Lakoff, George. 1977. Linguistic Gestalts. In, Papers from the 13th regional meeting Chicago
Linguistic Society, 236–287. Chicago.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. I: Theoretical
Prerequisites. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol. II: Descriptive
Application. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press.
Sommerfeldt, Karl-Ernst, Herbert Schreiber & Günter Starke. 1991. Grammatisch-
semantische Felder: Einführungen und Übungen. Berlin, München, Leipzig: Langenscheidt.
Taylor, John R. 2002. Cognitive grammar (Oxford textbooks in linguistics). Oxford, New
York: Oxford University Press.
Welke, Klaus. 2002. Deutsche Syntax funktional: Perspektiviertheit syntaktischer Strukturen
(Stauffenburg Linguistik). Tübingen: Stauffenburg.

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