Thematic Roles in Image Schemas. Part 2. A Missing Link from Reality to Mind
Thematic Roles in Image Schemas. Part 2. A Missing Link from Reality to Mind

Summary/Abstract: For a long time, Thematic roles have received much attention, raising many disputes and controversies, but they still remain a ‘murky construct’ (Newmeyer, 2010, Rissman and Majid, 2019). Dowty’s words of 1986 that “the perennial vexing problem is the lack of agreement among linguists as to which thematic roles exist, and the absence of any obvious way to decide this question”, still hold true. Departing from the traditional ‘intuitive semantic’ approach, I provided evidence that Thematic roles are indispensable components of image schemas, and constitute a scaffolding for language structures (2022, forthcoming). A natural question arose then, where they come from in the image schemas. Fillmore (1968) proposed that they may be, “presumably, innate concepts”, while Langacker (1991) alluded to their “nonlinguistic” origin. The present paper argues that Thematic roles come from “nonlinguistic” sources, i.e., human interpretation and categorization of reality, completing the Thematic roles embodiment process.

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