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RESERVED THEMATIC THEORY_ Comparing the operations of theta-theory in the English and Igbo languages
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The centrality of verb in syntactic constructions and its relationship with other elements of a sentence in terms of concord and agreement has received the attention of many linguists over the years. This is because it is believed that the thematic role of arguments plays a central role in the transmission of lexical information necessary for syntactic structure and its interpretation. Moreover, in language specific study, it is important to ascertain how arguments are realised because there are varying number of argument linking verbs used for argument structure and argument realisation across languages; each of these argument linking types of verb represents a way of reducing ambiguities caused by verbs that have more than one nominal argument. Even in languages with a core agreement pattern, which conforms to the traditional characterisations, it is obvious that there are instances where verbs do not conform rigidly to the traditional canonical patterns systematically. This creates parametric variations which occur across languages in the application of the universal principles of language.
Although many works have been done on Igbo verbs, such as Ubahakwe (1976), Emenanjo (1975), (1978), (2005), (2015), Uwalaka (1981) (1983), Nwachukwu (1983), (1989), Anoka (1983) Mbah (2006), (2011), (2012), Anyanwu (2003), Ndiribe (2008), only very few focuses on thematic relation especially on comparative basis.
The study of thematic relation otherwise known as theta-theory dates back to the work of early grammarians in the 1960s especially in the pioneering work by Gruber (1965), Fillmore (1968), Jackendoff (1972) and lately Chomsky (1981) (1986) Koopman (1983), Gruber (1990) Horrocks (1987) and Radford (1998). Such works are distinguished by different names such as thematic hierarchy by Jackendoff (1972), theta-roles by Chomsky (1981) and semantic roles. Each of these names reflects a particular theory’s account of the relations of the semantic representation between a verb and its implied arguments. Evaraert, Marelj & Siloni (2012:4) note that investigation in this area has focused on three major topics, which include:
- The type of information relevant for determining argument structure
(b) The way these pieces of information are coded so that they are usable by the computational system and by the interference system.
(c) The mapping from lexico-semantic information into syntactic structure.
Everaerte, , Marelj & Siloni (2012:4)
Theta -theory as a sub-theory of government and binding deals with the functional relationship between a predicate and its arguments. A relationship in which predicates assign roles to arguments in syntactic structures is based on allowed predicate argument structure of each language.
Theta- roles specify the syntactic properties of a verb, which assign arguments while thematic relationship defines the semantic properties or information about a verb in propositions in relation to the subject and object of the sentence (that is, the arguments). The centrality of a verb in sentence constructions makes it mandatory that the other nominal elements (arguments) are dependent on it for their full interpretation; theta-theory is constrained by theta-criterion, and passive thematic hierarchy condition.
This thesis explores the formal mechanisms of thematic relations in English and Igbo with the view to discover areas of similarities and differences in the two languages.
