Instruments as agents: on the nature of semantic relations

Abstract

There is a widespread current assumption that the semantic relations underlying linguistic constructions reflect the way human beings ineluctably, and hence universally, perceive events and situations. This assumption will be questioned in this paper. To make the point, a linguistic construction purportedly expressing the instrumental case will be examined. It will be convenient here to juxtapose my treatment of this construction with the one proposed by case grammarians, and by Fillmore in particular. However, the discussion has implications for semantic relations in any linguistic theory, whether they appear there as semantic roles, thematic relations, theta roles, or whatever. These implications will be discussed in the final section.