High Low

1. Number of

participants of 2 or more; 1 participant

the event, presence of subject

including and object

subject and object e.g.: He did the job. e.g.: She is kind.

2. Kinesis action non-action

(actional characteristics) -//- -//-

3-4. Aspect result no result

(вид) instantaneous action multiple action

-//- -//-

5.Affirmativeness/ affirm. negat.

Negativeness -//- e.g.: He is not able to

do the job.

6. Mode reality irreality

(модальность) e.g.: He would like to

-//- do the job.

7.Volitionality (волитивность) + --

Intentionality -//- e.g.: She is kind. (интенциональность)

8.Degree of agency high low

of subject -//- -//-

9.Degree of affectedness total affectedness no affectedness

of object -//- e.g.: He looked at her.

10. Degree of high ---

individualization -//- e.g. He likes looking at

of object her.

Taking into consideration these criteria we can judge that constructions (sentences), describing the event where the concrete subject (semantically characterized as agency) commits the concrete intentional action (semantically described as patience), resulting in modification of the object, including its creation or destruction, can be characterized as prototypical from the point of transitivity.

So, we can see that within the cognitive approach the transitive syntactic constructions are believed to make up a prototypical category.

J. R. Taylor examines the semantic potential of syntactic constructions (compare: “He swam across the Channel. He swam the Channel.” In the second sentence the “path” is incorporated into the verb: thus, a motion event is constructed as a transitive event.).

J.R. Taylor views this semantic divergence as categorial extension motivated by metaphor. (R. Dirven and M.A.K. Halliday, the representatives of the functional approach in linguistics, deal with sentences like “The fifth day saw our departure.” in terms of grammatical metaphor.)

J. R. Taylor argues that metaphorical extension of the said category presupposes that the agent- action- patient schema (characteristics of transitive events) is projected onto states of affairs which are not inherently transitive. Non-prototypical transitive sentences are interpreted in terms of an agent acting as to cause a change of state in a patient:

e.g.: the sentence “Guns kill people” suggests such like interpretation: “guns” are responsible agents for what is happening.

e.g.: “The book sold a million copies” Here the subject “book”, which looks more like a patient than an agent, receives certain aspects of agency. And in this respect the sentence is interpreted as follows: the seller does not have complete control over the act of selling, the successful sale depends on the attributes of the thing that is sold.

Thus, J.R. Taylor examines the semantic basis of the prototypical category of transitive constructions and states that transitivity is a property of the sentence, not lexical items. The prototypical transitive sentence is made up by a prototypical subject, which is an agent, and by a prototypical object, which is a patient.

The problem which is to be solved here is to disclose the principles according to which we give a particular constituent of the event the status of the syntactic subject or that of the syntactic complement (including the object and the adverbial). The plausible solution of the problem was suggested by R.Langacker.

R.Langacker argues that a unified explanation of the syntactic diversity is possible if the subject-verb-complement pattern is viewed in terms of schematization and understood as a reflection of the general cognitive principles of figure/ground segregation, role archetypes and ‘”windowing” of attention.

According to the figure/ground principle the subject in a simple transitive sentence corresponds to the figure and the complement – to the ground ( with the object being a more prominent element of the ground and the adverbial as less prominent), the verb expresses the relationship between figure and ground. So, linguistically, the way to manifest prominence is to put the preferred element into subject position. The influence of this principle is most plausible in symmetric constructions, as illustrated by the sentences:

1. Susan resembles my sister.

2. My sister resembles Susan.

The role archetypes principle governs the choice of syntactic figure where the figure/ground principle alone doesn’t work.

It should be noted that the role archetypes are by no means a novelty, because role archetypes like “agent”, “patient”, “instrumental”, “experiencer” are very much the same as “cases” with Ch.Fillmore, “actants”, “participants” with L.Tiesnere, “semantic roles” with P.Quirk, “theta-roles” with A. Radford (transformational grammar).

In R.Langacker’s conception the roles are not just a linguistic construct, but a part of cognitive instruments, which we use for both linguistic and mental processing. The role archetypes emerge from our experience, they appear as cognitive constituents of any conceived event or situation.

The role of “agent” refers to a person who initiates motion or physical activity in objects or other persons. The “patient” refers to an object or organism, affected by physical impact from outside and undergoes a change of state or is moved to another location. The “instrument” is an intermediary between agent and patient, the “experiencer” refers to smn. engaged in mental activities, including emotions, the “setting” comprises different facets of an event which are present in our minds as “background”. The “setting” is stable compared to participants (agent, patient, instrument, experiencer), which are mobile and engaged in physical contact or mental interaction. In linguistic perspective “setting ” as “space” and “time” conventionally provides corresponding adverbials, while participants provide subjects and objects.

The principle which governs the process of putting a particular role in the subject or in the complement position is that of “windowing “ of attention. According to this principle any element of an event can be viewed as more or less prominent and according to the ascribed degree can be raised to the status of syntactic figure (subject), or syntactic ground (object), or syntactic background (adverbials of space and time, which also can be of different prominence).

Linguistically, a conceived event can be reflected in a number of syntactic constructions (1- 2 or 3-element constructions), which represent the event perspectives. Thus, the 3-element construction provides the overall view of the event, including the agent, patient and instrument roles as in the sentence “Floyd broke the glass with a hammer” with the agent viewed as syntactic figure and placed in the subject position. The 2-element construction, profiling the same event, expresses only a certain portion

(an intermediary stage) as in “The hammer broke the glass.” with the instrument as a syntactic figure and the subject. The 1-element construction, describing the same event, expresses the final stage of the event as in “The glass easily broke.” with the patient as a syntactic figure and the subject. R.Langacker notes, that the choice of subject, i.e. syntactic figure is governed by a hierarchy “agent-instrument-patient”, the hierarchy which repeats/structures the event as an action “chain” in our mind.

Due to the principle of “windowing” of attention “setting” can be given different degree of prominence and raised to the status of object or subject.

Compare the following sentences:

1. Susan swam in the Channel.

2. Susan swam across the Channel.

3. Susan swam the Channel.

In (a) sentence the agent initiates an action which takes place in a certain setting (Channel). Linguistically this is expressed by an intransitive structure with a place adverbial. In (b) sentence the setting is more tangible, it has two boundaries and it is fully traversed by the agent/figure, this is implied by the preposition “across”, as a result, this setting is more prominent than in (a) sentence. In (c) sentence the preposition is dropped and cognitive interpretation will claim that “the Channel” in its syntactic prominence has moved further away from being a plain “setting”. It is treated more like a participant in an interaction with the agent-subject, e.g. an enemy that has to be overcome and this is reflected in the object-like use of the noun phrase. Thus, the “setting” is given the status of object. Greater prominence of “setting” results in the subject position of the latter:

e.g.: a) The garden is swarming with bees.

b) There was a loud bang.

“There” is used to express a kind of abstract or unspecified setting.

Thus, in cognitive linguistics the use of syntactic structures is largely seen as a reflection of how a situation is conceptualized by the speaker, and this conceptualization is governed by the attention principle. Salient participants , especially, agents, are rendered as subjects and less salient participants as objects; verbs are selected as compatible to the choice of subject and object; locative, temporal and many other types of relations are “windowed “ for attention by expressing them as adverbials.