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Agent (grammar)

 

 
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Agent (grammar)
 
 
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In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, a grammatical agent is the participant of a situation that carries out the action
Action (philosophy)

In philosophy, action has developed into a sub-field called philosophy of action. Action is what an Agency can do.For example, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent....
 in this situation. Also, agent is the name of the thematic role
Thematic role

Thematic role is a linguistics notion, which may refer to:* Theta role * Thematic relation ...
 (also known as the thematic relation) with the above definition. The word comes from a participle of the Latin verb agere, to do.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
, the action by a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase
Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
.

For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", Jack is the agent.






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In linguistics
Linguistics

Linguistics is the science study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of Meaning ....
, a grammatical agent is the participant of a situation that carries out the action
Action (philosophy)

In philosophy, action has developed into a sub-field called philosophy of action. Action is what an Agency can do.For example, throwing a ball is an instance of action; it involves an intention, a goal, and a bodily movement guided by the agent....
 in this situation. Also, agent is the name of the thematic role
Thematic role

Thematic role is a linguistics notion, which may refer to:* Theta role * Thematic relation ...
 (also known as the thematic relation) with the above definition. The word comes from a participle of the Latin verb agere, to do.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
, the action by a verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase
Noun phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
.

For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", Jack is the agent. In certain languages, the agent is declined
Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
 or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role. In Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
, for instance, the agent is typically affixed with |ga| (the hiragana
Hiragana

is a Japanese language syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the romanization of Japanese. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one mora ....
 ?). Although Modern English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
 does not mark grammatical role, agency is informally represented using certain conventions; for instance, with the morpheme
Morpheme

In morpheme-based morphology, a is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantics Meaning .In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes ....
s "-ing", "-er", or "-or", as in "eating", "user", or "prosecutor". (Cf. agent noun
Agent noun

In linguistics, an agent noun is a word that is derived from another word denoting an action , and that identifies an entity that does that action....
.)

The notion of agency is easy to grasp intuitively but notoriously difficult to define: typical qualities that a grammatical agent often has are that it has volition, is sentient or perceives, causes a change of state, or moves. The linguist David Dowty
David Dowty

David Dowty is a linguist known primarily for his work in semantics and syntax theory, and especially in Montague grammar and Categorial grammar....
 included these qualities in his definition of a Proto-Agent, and proposed that the nominal with the most elements of the Proto-Agent and the fewest elements of the Proto-Patient tends to be treated as the agent in a sentence. This solves problems that most semanticists have with deciding on the number and quality of thematic roles. For example, in the sentence His energy surprised everyone, His energy is the agent, even though it does not have most of the typical agent-like qualities such as perception, movement, or volition.

The grammatical agent is often confused with the subject
Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituent every sentence can be divided into, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle....
, but these two notions are quite distinct: the former is based explicitly on its relationship to the verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
, whereas the latter is based on the flow of information
Information flow

In discourse-based grammatical theory, information flow is any tracking of reference information by speakers. Information may be new, just introduced into the conversation; given, already active in the speakers' consciousness; or old, no longer active....
, word order, and importance to the sentence. In a sentence such as "The boy kicked the ball", "the boy" is the agent and the subject. However, when the sentence is rendered in the passive voice, "The ball was kicked by the boy", "the ball" is the grammatical subject, but "the boy" is still the agent. Many sentences in English and other Indo-European languages
Indo-European languages

The Indo-European languages are a Language family of several hundred related languages and dialects, including most major languages of Europe, the Iranian plateau , Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent ....
 have the agent as subject.