Patient (grammar)

In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific 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 patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. At the very least, there is debate to this effect. Also, patient is the name of the thematic relation with the above definition.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence

Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language—a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words, representing distinct and differentiated concepts, and combined to form a meaningful statement, question, request and command....

, the action by a verb

Verb

kalleah hit meIn 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 tense, aspect, mood and 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 cross-linguistically, but some languages like Tuscarora and Cayuga have been argued to lack this category.- Form :Noun phrases normally consist of a...

.

For example, in the sentence "Jack ate the cheese", "the cheese" is the patient.

In linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific 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 patient, also called the target or undergoer, is the participant of a situation upon whom an action is carried out. A patient as differentiated from a theme must undergo a change in state. At the very least, there is debate to this effect. Also, patient is the name of the thematic relation with the above definition.

Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence

Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is an expression in natural language—a grammatical and lexical unit consisting of one or more words, representing distinct and differentiated concepts, and combined to form a meaningful statement, question, request and command....

, the action by a verb

Verb

kalleah hit meIn 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 tense, aspect, mood and 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 cross-linguistically, but some languages like Tuscarora and Cayuga have been argued to lack this category.- Form :Noun phrases normally consist of a...

.

For example, in the sentence "Jack ate the cheese", "the cheese" is the patient. In certain languages, the patient is declined

Declension

In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as number , case , gender, and possession. Declension occurs in a great many of the world's languages, and features very prominently in many European languages, but is much less...

 for case

Grammatical case

In grammar, the case of a noun or pronoun indicates its grammatical function in a greater phrase or clause; such as the role of subject, of direct object, or of possessor. Usually a language is said to "have cases" only if nouns change their form to reflect their case. Others indicate cases in...

 or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role. In Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family. There are a number of proposed relationships with other languages, but none have gained general acceptance...

, for instance, the patient is typically affixed with |o| (the hiragana

Hiragana

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

 を). Although Modern English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...

 does not mark grammatical role, patienthood is represented irregularly in other ways; for instance, with the morpheme

Morpheme

In morpheme-based morphology, a ' is the smallest linguistic unit that has semantic meaning.In spoken language, morphemes are composed of phonemes , and in written language morphemes are composed of graphemes .The concept morpheme differs from the concept word, as many morphemes...

s "-en", "-ed", or "-ee", as in "eaten", "used", or "payee".

The grammatical patient is often confused with the direct object. However, there is a significant difference. The former is based explicitly on its relationship to the verb

Verb

kalleah hit meIn 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 tense, aspect, mood and voice...

, whereas the latter is based primarily on its relationship to the subject

Subject (grammar)

The subject is one of the two main constituents of a clause, according to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle. The other constituent is the predicate...

. For example, in the phrase "The dog

Dog

The dog is a domesticated form of the Gray Wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The domestic dog has been one of the most widely kept working and companion animals in human history...

 bites the man

Man

A man is a male human. The term man is used for an adult human male, while the term boy is the usual term for a human male child or adolescent human male. However, man is sometimes used to refer to humanity as a whole...

", the man is both the patient and the direct object. By contrast, in the phrase "The man is bitten by the dog", the man is still the patient, but now stands as the phrase's subject; while the dog is only the agent

Agent (grammar)

In linguistics, a grammatical agent is the participant of a situation that carries out the action in this situation. Also, agent is the name of the thematic role with the above definition...

. The term "theme" is often used to describe the same relation as patient.