Recall from my previous posts that certain words (we will call
predicates) require additional material to complete their
message. I used the examples of ate and the. Ate requires at
least two additional pieces of material to be complete. That is,
someone ate something. And, the requires at least one additional
piece of material, the what? So, the argument behind this
hypothesis is that all verbs have specific thematic, or semantic
roles that must be assigned to their arguments in a sentence.
Let’s look at a new example, the verb “drive.” Drive must have a
subject to which it will assign the role of agent as in, “John
drives.” This agent role is an active one. John is actively
responsible for the driving of some vehicle. So drive needs at
least one additional piece of material in order to convey a
complete message. When a verb has only one “role” to assign we
call these intransitive verbs. When a verb can assign more than
one role, as in, “John drives the car” we call these transitive
verbs. In the second sent